Some Pilsen Action

Lower West Side is a community area located on the west side of Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois, United States, three miles southwest of the Chicago Loop. In the late nineteenth century, Pilsen was inhabited by Czech immigrants who named the district after Plzeň, the fourth largest city in what is now the Czech Republic. They replaced the Germans and Irish who had settled there first, in the mid-nineteenth century. The population also included smaller numbers of other ethnic groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire such asSlovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Austrians, as well as immigrants of Polish and Lithuanian heritage. Many of the immigrants worked in the stockyards and surrounding factories. Like many early twentieth century American urban neighborhoods, however, Pilsen was home to wealthy professionals and the working class, with the whole area knitted together based on the ethnicities, mostly of Slavic descent, who were not readily welcome in other areas of the city.Although there was a slight increase in the Hispanic presence in the late 1950s, it was not until the early 1960s that there was a great spurt in the numbers of Latinos in Pilsen. This was due to the destruction of the neighborhood where UIC now occupies. In 1970, Latinos became the majority population in Pilsen, surpassing the population of people from Eastern European descent.Many of the new residents to the neighborhood are not Latino, and it is projected that the neighborhood will continue to become more diversified in the years ahead. Half of Pilsen's population in 1996 had turned over by 2000. from Wikipedia