Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable: The Black Founder Chicago Tried to Forget

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Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, widely recognized today as the founder of Chicago, was born in Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) in the mid-18th century. He later settled in what would become Chicago, establishing himself long before the city officially existed. DuSable married a Native American woman, Kitiwaha, and together they raised two children, building a life at the crossroads of cultures, trade, and survival.

During the American Revolutionary War, DuSable was arrested by the British in 1779 on suspicion of sympathizing with the American Patriots. By the early 1780s, he worked for the British lieutenant governor of Michilimackinac, managing an estate near present-day St. Clair, Michigan. But it was in the late 1700s that DuSable made history—becoming the first person to establish a permanent, prosperous trading settlement at the mouth of the Chicago River. Historic records confirm that his property stood exactly where Chicago would later rise.

For years, credit for Chicago’s founding was wrongly given to John Kinzie, a white trader whose family arrived later. While the Kinzies were among the first European settlers, the land they occupied was purchased from a French trader who had purchased it directly from DuSable. The paper trail is clear.

After DuSable’s death in 1818, his role in Chicago’s founding was deliberately minimized—largely because he was a Black man. But history resurfaced the truth. In 1912, a plaque was placed at the site of his former home. In 1913, historian Milo Milton Quaife formally acknowledged DuSable as Chicago’s founder. Black scholars and cultural leaders such as Carter G. Woodson and Langston Hughes later cemented his legacy, calling him “the brown-skinned pioneer who founded the Windy City.”

Today, his legacy lives on through a bronze bust unveiled in 2009 near the Magnificent Mile and through the DuSable Museum of African American History—a lasting reminder that Chicago was founded not by myth, but by a Black man whose story could not be erased.

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