Entry · catalog no. 3313
the Stroll
/ ðə stroʊl /thuh STROHL
noun · Chicago · 1910s
✓ Verified
1.
The stretch of State Street on Chicago's South Side — around 31st to 35th — that was the heart of Black nightlife and business in the Great Migration era, thick with theaters, clubs, and cabarets where early jazz took hold.
“Everybody who was anybody passed through the Stroll on a Saturday night.”
Origin & Attribution
Chicago's Bronzeville — the "Black Belt" — in the 1910s and 1920s, as Black Southerners arriving in the Great Migration built a cultural capital along State Street. Jazz musicians up from New Orleans, among them King Oliver and a young Louis Armstrong, played its venues. The Chicago Defender was calling the Stroll a Black cultural mecca as early as 1914. By the late 1920s the center of gravity moved south toward 47th Street.
1914
State Street named a Black cultural mecca by the Chicago Defender
1920s
New Orleans jazz takes root in its clubs
late 1920s
Scene shifts south toward 47th Street
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago · 1910s
Spoken by
Black Chicagoans
$THESTRThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady112 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
45/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1914
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@chitown
Chicago, IL
@detlex
Detroit, MI
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceChicago Defender coverage of "the Stroll" as a Black cultural center — newspaper
1914
See also