[3] The South Side has a varied ethnic composition and a great variety of income levels and other demographic measures.

With its factories, steel mills and meat-packing plants, the South Side saw a sustained period of immigration which began around the 1840s and continued through World War II.

Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian and Yugoslav immigrants, in particular, settled in neighborhoods adjacent to industrial zones.

Older residents of means moved to newer suburban housing as new migrants entered the city,[27][28] driving further demographic changes.

[29] The case, which reset the limitations of res judicata, successfully challenged racial restrictions in the Washington Park Subdivision by reopening them for legal argument.

After World War II, blacks spread across the South Side; its center, east, and western portions.

[21] In the early 1960s,[30] during the tenure of then Mayor Richard J. Daley, the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway created controversy.

Street gangs have been prominent in some South Side neighborhoods for over a century, beginning with those of Irish immigrants, who established the first territories in a struggle against other European and black migrants.

By the 1960s, gangs such as the Vice Lords began to improve their public image, shifting from criminal ventures to operating social programs funded by government and private grants.

[34][35] Studio apartments, with Murphy beds and kitchenettes or Pullman kitchens, comprised a large part of the housing supply during and after the Great Depression, especially in the "Black Belt".

CHA produced a plan of citywide projects, which was rejected by the Chicago City Council's white aldermen who opposed public housing in their wards.

This led to a CHA policy of construction of family housing only in black residential areas, concentrated on the South and West Sides.

[43] Many of the CHA's massive public housing projects, which lined several miles of South State Street, have been demolished.

It has a higher ratio of single-family homes and larger sections zoned for industry than the North or West Sides.

[48] The South Side Irish Parade occurs in the Beverly neighborhood along Western Avenue each year on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day.

Stephen A. Douglas, Paul Cornell, George Pullman and various business entities developed South Chicago real estate.

The Pullman District, a former company town, Hyde Park Township, various platted communities and subdivisions were the results of such efforts.

[54] The Union Stock Yards, which were once located in the New City community area (#61), at one point employed 25,000 people and produced 82 percent of US domestic meat production.

[55] They were so synonymous with the city that for over a century they were part of the lyrics of Frank Sinatra's "My Kind of Town", in the phrase: "The Union Stock Yard, Chicago is ..." The Union Stock Yard Gate marking the old entrance to stockyards was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 24, 1972,[56] and a National Historic Landmark on May 29, 1981.

Senator, Carol Moseley Braun; and the first black presidential candidate to win a primary, Jesse Jackson.

[86] As mentioned above, segregation has been a political theme of controversy for some time on the South Side as exhibited by Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940).

[95] Other Chicago Black Renaissance artists included Willard Motley, William Attaway, Frank Marshall Davis, and Margaret Walker.

By the late 1960s the South Side had a robost art movement led by Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Karl Wirsum and others, who became known as the Chicago Imagists.

Muddy Waters and Chess Records quickly followed with Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, and Howlin' Wolf.

These include writers Upton Sinclair and James Farrell, Archibald Motley Jr. via painting, Henry Moore and Lorado Taft via sculpture and Thomas Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson via gospel music.

When the National League baseball team now known as the Chicago Cubs was founded in 1870, their first playing field was Dexter Park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

[127] In hockey, the Chicago Cougars of the WHA played in the International Amphitheatre, located next to the Union Stock Yards, from 1972 until their demise in 1975.

The Chicago Sky of the WNBA moved to Wintrust Arena, which opened in 2017 at McCormick Place on the Near South Side, in 2018.

[132][133] In NCAA Division I sports, the Chicago State Cougars represent the South Side, competing in the Western Athletic Conference.

The Olympic Village was planned in the Douglas (#35) community area across Lake Shore Drive from Burnham Park.