Questions and Thesis

1. What factors have contributed to the change of demographics in the Gage Park neighborhood from the 1900s to present?

2. How did the real estate companies blockbusting tactics change the racial tension in the Gage Park/Marquette Park neighborhood?

3. How did the Orange Line connecting Midway Airport to the Loop better the transportation system around the neighborhood, and bring more commerce to the neighborhood?


Modified Topic: What economic and social factors have contributed to the change in demographics in the Gage Park neighborhood from the 1900s to present?

Final Topic: How have the demographics of the Gage Park neighborhood changed since the late 1990s, and what social and economic factors contributed to this change?

Brainstorming Topics:

• ethnic changes
• diversity in Gage Park
• Orange Line
• Central Steel and Wire Company - World's Finest Chocolate
• racial status of Gage Park
• rascism in the 90s

Working Thesis: The ethnic diversity of Gage Park has long been changed due to economic prospers, and religious factors of its former inhabitants.

Modified Thesis:  The primarily Polish American inhabitants of the Gage Park neighborhood in the 1920s, molded an economically stable community for various other immigrants, mainly Hispanics in the 1990s.

Modified Thesis II:
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opened up doors for minorities to settle in the Gage and Marquette Park neighborhoods, the population drastically changed as African Americans, and Hispanic immigrants moved in to the neighborhood.