Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Harold Washington are all well-known black Chicagoans. But what about John Baptiste Point DuSable, Ida B. Wells or Oscar Stanton De Priest? How many know their stories?

The contributions of black Americans like these are part of what makes Chicago’s black history so important. DuSable was the first non-Indian settler in Chicago, Wells was an early Civil Rights leader, journalist and anti-lynching crusader and De Priest was the first black congressmen elected after Reconstruction.

Barbara Morris, founder and co-owner of Black CouTours, a black history and culture tour company, said she was troubled by the lack of interest in black history in Chicago and decided to make it her mission to help enlighten people about the rich black heritage in the Windy City.

A former elementary school speech therapist, Morris said she began noticing this alarming trend, particularly among young people, when she would sometimes throw some black history into her speech lessons and was told that black history should only be taught during Black History Month in February.

“Since I’ve worked with a lot of children-I’ve also been a den mother, brownie troop leader and have worked with youth programs in my church-I found that disturbing because it was a theme that ran through all my interactions with the children,” Morris said. “They just didn’t think it was of any advantage to be black unless you were a high-powered movie star or a sports star.”

That was about 17 years ago, when Morris first started giving black history tours. She said she began doing it for free and just on the weekends, but there was so much interest over time that it eventually turned into a full-time endeavor. Now, with the first black U.S. president hailing from Chicago, Barack Obama, there is even more interest. Morris said she is working on developing a separate “Obama’s Chicago” tour to satisfy the demand.

The DuSable Musuem of African-American History, the first black history museum in America, has also seen a boost in interest since Obama entered the 2008 presidential election, said Raymond Ward, a spokesperson for the museum.

But Chicago has a long tradition of black activism and political involvement, said Dominic Pacyga, Ph.D., a noted Chicago historian and professor at Columbia in the Humanities, History and Social Science Department.

“I think it’s quite fitting that Chicago’s African-American community provided the first black president, seeing that Chicago was a city that black politics thrived in as early as the beginning of the 20th century,” Pacyga said.

Pacyga recognizes the importance of Black History Month and said it helps to raise consciousness about the important role that blacks have played in America. It also raises local and racial pride, which are important factors, he said.

“One of the reasons I got involved in Chicago history was because I wondered where my family came from,” Pacyga said. “The fact that something like Black History Month encourages African-Americans to look into their past is nothing but a bonus.”

The DuSable Museum celebrates Black History Month, but Ward said that its mission is to teach the public about black history all year long.

“I don’t think there’s a need for Black History Month,” Ward said. “History is history.”

Chicago was at one time considered the capital of black America and played a crucial role in the Great Migration, in which large numbers of blacks moved from the south to northern cities, Pacyga said. In the first phase of the Great Migration, from 1915-1930, the population of blacks in Chicago grew from about 50,000 to more than 200,000 in a 15-year-period. The second phase started after World War II and lasted until about 1975.

“During this time, Chicago and Cook County were home to more African-Americans than the state of Mississippi and became the center of African-American culture and life,” Pacyga said.

Blacks were drawn to Chicago mainly because of economic opportunities. There were jobs in steel mills, meat packing plants and other industries that attracted blacks to the city.

“People say that if you make it in New York-you can make it anywhere,” Pacyga said. “But in Chicago, they said if you can’t make it in Chicago-you can’t make it anywhere, because there was so much opportunity. That’s what African-Americans truly believed during this Great Migration.”

Of course, there were problems along the way and plenty of racism in Chicago to contend with, which still persists to this day, Pacyga said.

Some of that conflict is exemplified in a race riot that broke out on Chicago’s South Side in 1919, which killed 38 people-23 blacks and 15 whites. The city had the state militia come in to separate the races because the fighting was so bad, Pacyga said.

“It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy at all,” Pacyga said. “But certainly, I think, the African-American community has made it in Chicago.”

The South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville is evidence of the vibrant culture that blacks created in Chicago and remains one of the most important neighborhoods to Chicago’s black community. Once called the “Black Metropolis,” Bronzeville was considered a city within a city.

Morris said the majority of her Chicago black history tours are spent in Bronzeville, where they visit such sites as the church where Emmett Till’s funeral was held in September 1955, and the house where boxing-great Joe Louis lived.

“Bronzeville was the social, political and economic mecca of the black community,” she said.

Even outside of Chicago’s black communities, the civil rights movement has carried on for hundreds of years and isn’t limited to issues of race.

“Since 1776 we’ve been defining in this country what it means to be free and what it means to be an American,” Pacyga said.

Periodically there have been huge breakthroughs, such as women getting the right to vote in 1920, the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But the struggle for civil rights and human rights isn’t over, he said. Although race may seem like it’s becoming less of an important issue, the question of poverty and social class is one that Americans need to face in the 21st century.

“I’ve got a lot of hope, because it seems to me that America progresses over time,” Pacyga said. “It may not seem like a lot of progress is made sometimes and it can get very frustrating … yet every once in a while the glacier moves, and every generation has to move it a little bit more until we get to the blessed community.”