The demographics of Chicago show that it is a very large, and ethnically and culturally diverse metropolis. It is the third largest city and metropolitan area in the United States by population. Chicago was home to over 2.7 million people in 2020, accounting for over 25% of the population in the Chicago metropolitan area, home to approximately 9.6 million.
Greektown is a social and dining district, located on the Near West Side of Chicago. Today, Greektown consists mostly of restaurants and businesses, although a cultural museum and an annual parade and festival still remain in the neighborhood.
The National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) is a museum featuring Mexican and Chicano art and culture. It is located in Harrison Park in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The museum was founded in 1982 by Carlos Tortolero and opened on March 27, 1987. It is the only Latino museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The museum describes itself as the largest Latino cultural institution in America.
The Red Ocher people were an indigenous people of North America. A series of archaeological sites located in the Upper Great Lakes, the Greater Illinois River Valley, and the Ohio River Valley in the American Midwest have been discovered to be a Red Ocher burial complex, dating from 1000 BC to 400 BC, the Terminal Archaic – Early Woodland period. Characterized as shallow burials located in sandy ridges along river valleys, covered in red ochre or hydrated iron oxide (FeH3O), they contain diagnostic artifacts that include caches of flint points, turkey-tails, and various forms of worked copper. Turkey-tails are large flint blades of a distinct type. It is believed that Red Ocher people spoke an ancestral form of the Algonquian languages.
The Polish Museum of America is located in West Town, in what had been the historical Polish Downtown neighborhood of Chicago. It is home to numerous Polish artifacts, artwork, and embroidered folk costumes in its growing collection. Founded in 1935, it is one of the oldest ethnic museums in the United States and a Core Member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a consortium of 25 ethnic museums and cultural centers in Chicago.
Both immigrant Poles and Americans of Polish heritage live in Chicago, Illinois. They are a part of worldwide Polonia, the Polish term for the Polish Diaspora outside of Poland. Poles in Chicago have contributed to the economic, social and cultural well-being of Chicago from its very beginning. Poles have been a part of the history of Chicago since 1837, when Captain Joseph Napieralski, along with other veterans of the November Uprising first set foot there. As of the 2000 U.S. census, Poles in Chicago were the largest European American ethnic group in the city, making up 7.3% of the total population. However, according to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, German Americans and Irish Americans each had slightly surpassed Polish Americans as the largest European American ethnic groups in Chicago. German Americans made up 7.3% of the population, and numbered at 199,789; Irish Americans also made up 7.3% of the population, and numbered at 199,294. Polish Americans now made up 6.7% of Chicago's population, and numbered at 182,064. Polish is the fourth most widely spoken language in Chicago behind English, Spanish, and Mandarin.
The American Council for Polish Culture (ACPC) is a national non-profit, charitable, cultural and educational organization that serves as a network and body of national leadership among affiliated Polish-American cultural organizations throughout the United States.
The Arab American Action Network (AAAN) is a Chicago-based community center founded in 1995 to strengthen the Arab immigrant and Arab American communities in the Chicago area by building their capacity to be active agents for positive social change. As a grassroots nonprofit, its strategies include community organizing, advocacy, education, providing social services, leadership development, cultural outreach, and forging productive relationships with other communities.
Favianna Rodriguez is an American visual artist, and activist, known for her work in political posters, graphic arts, and public art. Her artwork topics include global politics, economic injustice, interdependence, patriarchy, migration, and sexual liberation. She worked as a director of the National Arts Organization CultureStrike, in which writers, visual artists, and performers engage in migrant rights.
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) is a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that mobilizes the Jewish community of the region to advance racial and economic justice. JCUA partners with diverse community groups across the city and state to combat racism, antisemitism, poverty and other forms of systemic oppression, through grassroots community organizing, youth education programs, and community development.
The Polish Women's Alliance of America is a fraternal benefit society that was founded on May 22, 1898 in Chicago, Illinois.
Beninese American are Americans of Beninese descent. According to the census of 2000, in the United States there are only 605 Americans of Beninese origin. However, because since the first half of the eighteenth century to nineteenth many slaves were exported from Benin to the present United States, the number of African Americans with one or more Beninese ancestors could be much higher. The number of slaves from Bight of Benin exported to present United States exceeded 6,000 people, although this might consist not only in Benin, but also washes the shores of Ghana, Togo and Nigeria. It is also important to note that they were slaves from modern Benin, who exchanged voodoo practices with Francophone African descendants in Louisiana. Currently, there are Beninese communities in cities such as Chicago or Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and in other states as New York. As of 2021, there were over 500 Beninese immigrants in the town of Austin, Minnesota.
The Irish American Heritage Center is a non-profit organization located in Chicago that seeks to enhance the study of Irish culture with programming centered on Irish dance, literature, heritage, music, and Irish American cultural contributions to the United States. The center also supports Irish immigrants, and three Presidents of Ireland have attended ceremonies at the center.
Tajik Americans are Americans who trace their origin to Tajikistan, or Samarkand and Bukhara region of Uzbekistan. The majority of Tajik Americans are ethnic Tajiks.
The American Indian Center (AIC) of Chicago is the oldest urban American Indian center in the United States. It provides social services, youth and senior programs, cultural learning, and meeting opportunities for Native American peoples. For many years, it was located Uptown and is now in the Albany Park, Chicago community area.
The Niagara Foundation is a nonprofit organization, founded in 2004, dedicated to the mission of fostering civic conversations and sustained relationships between people of different cultures and faiths, and part of the Alliance for Shared Values.
Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police. She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us (2021). The Mariame Kaba Papers are held by the Chicago Public Library Special Collections.
The Hoxie Farm site (11Ck-4) is located on Thorn Creek in Thornton, Illinois Cook County Forest Preserve in Cook County, Illinois, near the city of Chicago. It is classified as a late prehistoric to Protohistoric/Early Historic site with Upper Mississippian Huber affiliation.
