A GIF image file that animates nearly a century of racial demographics in Chicago's community area lent a visual, historical context for the changing racial makeup of the United States' third-largest city.
Posted Monday by a Reddit user, the map -- created by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Chicago Area Geographic Information Study -- shows the city's racial demographics shifting gradually from overwhelmingly white-majority in 1910 to a city that, as of 2000, largely white on the North Side and African-American on much of the South Side.
In 1980, two majority-Latino community areas emerge -- in South Lawndale and the Lower West Side areas -- and that number, 20 years later, is increased to nine, based on U.S. Census data.
The map does not include 2010 Census data, but if it had, it would have continued that trend: between 2000 and 2010, Chicago's Hispanic population increased by over 25,000. Meanwhile, the city's black population decreased by over 181,000 -- a whopping 17 percent -- and its white population decreased by about 52,000. Overall, the city's population dropped by 200,000 between 2000 and 2010.
(View the Tribune's interactive map comparing the city's racial demographics in 2000 to 2010.)
Chicago, though arguably racially diverse overall, is considered by researchers to be the nation's most racially segregated city. According to 2009 American Community Survey data, of Chicago's 77 community areas, 68 are home to a population of which at least 50 percent identify with a single racial group.