By the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff
Several neighborhoods in Lake Forest have long roots in the community’s African American history, which dates to the founding of the town. Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black residents built homes mainly in four specific areas of the city. Some were eventually overtaken by development: on Maplewood, near what was then the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church (now Lake Forest College South Campus), and at Illinois Road and Bank Lane (now the site of the Deer Path Inn). Others thrived for decades at Illinois and Washington roads, and along Spruce Avenue and Edgewood Road.
Two threads run through the evolution of these neighborhoods. Even though African Americans have held property in Lake Forest nearly since the town was founded, by the 1920s race-based restrictions, most commonly in the form of background “gentleman’s agreements” but also in writing on deeds, limited which lots in town could be sold to Black homeowners. It was not until the Civil Rights movement in 1968 that Lake Forest passed an open housing ordinance addressing this issue.
Despite this, also underlying the Black neighborhoods was a vibrant sense of community, personal connections based on proximity and shared life experience. The neighborhoods provided a landing place for African American migrants from the South, as they adapted to a whole new milieu. Neighbors helped prop each other up, exchanging vegetables and casseroles, watching each other’s kids and mowing each other’s lawns.
Maplewood: Lake Forest’s First Black Neighborhood
Lake Forest’s first African American residents created a home for themselves right in the heart of the community. City founders, led by Sylvester Lind, sold land to the Black families who settled here in the 1860s. Three of the lots on Maplewood near Washington soon housed the Marshall, Williams, Hayes, Slater, Fletcher, and Hughes families, as well as the AME Church, built in 1870. These homes were located just south of Lake Forest Academy and Lake Forest University, where several early Black residents worked, including Alexander Marshall, custodian and caretaker at LFA.
None of the Maplewood homes are extant, having been taken down in the early 1900s as Lake Forest Academy expanded. We know about them from archival sources like the U.S. Census, Shields Township tax assessment rolls, and Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. In recent years, Lake Forest College professor Rebecca Graff has led archaeology students on excavations of the site, now part of South Campus.
Illinois and Washington: A Growing Community
As the congregation of Lake Forest’s African Methodist Episcopal church grew, Black residents continued to build homes nearby, south on Washington and along Illinois Road. Longtime Lake Forest family names like McIntosh, Matthews, Virden, Cathcart, Gregory, and Rodger called this neighborhood home for decades, and some of their residences remain extant to this day.
Around 1920, the area featured a vibrant mix of professions, from entrepreneurs to estate staff to factory workers to educators, as well as a combination of old-time families and newer Great Migration-era arrivals. Julian Matthews ran his cab company from his large corner lot; also located on his 635 Illinois property was the lively Green Lounge where Black Lake Foresters socialized and enjoyed musical performances. Down the street on Washington was Bebb Jones’s store, where you could buy everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to fireworks, as well as be fitted for custom undergarments by his wife Viola, a registered corsetier.
Illinois and Bank Lane: Home and Business
In the first few decades of the 1900s, this bustling section of Lake Forest was home to homes and businesses owned by local Black families. On Bank Lane, Clifford Sloan ran a blacksmith shop, which in the 1910s he presciently transformed into an auto repair business as cars began to outpace buggies.
Along Illinois, one of Lake Forest’s earlier Black residents, Smith Hayes, owned the block where the Deer Path Inn is now located. Hayes was a Civil War veteran who had made his way north with the Union Army. One of the founders of Lake Forest’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870, Hayes attempted to offer the church a new home on his property in 1920, as the original site on Maplewood had fallen into disrepair. But fellow residents voted against the AME Church’s building permit, and soon new development sprouted up in the area instead.
Spruce and Edgewood: Neighborhood on the Rise
With the Great Migration bringing African American families to Lake Forest from the South in the 1910s and 1920s, a new neighborhood took root on the north side of town. At Spruce Avenue and Edgewood Road, families like the Casselberrys, Hairstons, Jordans, Jileses, Lenoirs, Davises, and Colemans built homes that would be passed down through generations.
For decades, Spruce Avenue functioned as a social and cultural center of the local Black community. The quiet, tree-lined street doubled as playground and baseball field. “Grandma Ida” Warren, who was retired, would watch the neighborhood children while their parents were working. Alfonso and Josephine Williams, a childless couple who owned a large Tudor-style bungalow, offered up their basement to host all the neighborhood parties.
For more on Lake Forest’s African-American history, stop by the History Center or check out online exhibits at www.lflbhistory.org.