You may never have heard of Brooklyn, Illinois. You might not be aware it’s one of the country’s first Black settlements, or that it’s thought to be the first majority-Black town in America to incorporate and the oldest such town still in existence today.
You also probably don’t know that it’s dying.
Established in the early 1830s as a refuge for free and enslaved Black people and incorporated in 1873, Brooklyn is nestled on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis. It was once a key outpost on the Underground Railroad and, later, a welcoming beacon for those fleeing the Jim Crow South.
It was a thriving, close-knit community where, at its peak, more than 2,500 lived under the town motto: “Founded by Chance, Sustained by Courage.”
In the last 70 years, though, Brooklyn has spiraled toward extinction. Nearby factories that once employed Brooklynites have long since vanished. Railroad companies whose tracks encircle Brooklyn have, in previous decades, gobbled up swaths of land, displacing residents and shrinking the usable footprint of a village that has about a dozen streets, none with stoplights.