Building Opportunity
Deeply Rooted and Rising High: African American Experiences in Lake Forest
Since its beginnings, Lake Forest has benefited economically from its deeply rooted African American community. The town’s system of landed estates depended upon the expertise of a skilled service staff who knew how to manage an extensive property, as butlers and housekeepers, chauffeurs and chefs. African American migrants from the South built new lives for their families with the very trades they had been forced into adopting during enslavement or in the postwar Jim Crow era.
Thomas Porter’s restaurant stood on Western Avenue opposite the railroad depot in the early 1900s. Image source: Tony Porter
The entrepreneurial spirit of early Black residents - who established liveries and restaurants, blacksmith shops and ice cream shops - helped build Lake Forest’s commercial district from the ground up in the 1800s.
By the 1920s, some of these storefronts were uprooted in the name of progress, with Market Square and commercial development south of Deerpath. Relocating to the neighborhoods, Black-owned businesses persevered. Some, like Casselberry, Inc. waste removal, became major concerns by the 1950s.
After migrating from Tennessee in 1910, Washington Jordan worked as a chauffeur for Lake Forest mayor Keene Addington and built the family home on Spruce in 1925. Image source: Sue Lawson
African American service employees, craftspeople and entrepreneurs alike grasped opportunities for an upward trajectory for their families and the creation of generational wealth, passing down property and businesses. They secured access for their descendants to a high-quality, integrated public education; to the expectation of attendance at a university; and to the chance to pursue a career in line with their dreams and goals.
Yet in a society beset by structural racism, education alone could not bridge the gaps – it was decades before Black educators were hired to teach at the schools that had afforded opportunities to so many.
Donna Jean Casselberry (LFHS 1961) graduated from Colorado Women’s College in 1966 and went on to a career with Pan American Airways. Image source: Forest Trails yearbook, 1961