Editing Posen, Illinois (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed section|date=April 2012}}
The area that is now Posen was settled by farmers, mainly of [[Dutch people|Dutch]] and [[Germans|German]] origin, in the second half of the 19th century. In 1893 a [[Chicago]]-based real estate firm hired 75 agents in the Polish-speaking areas of Germany to sell land to [[Polish people|Poles]] seeking to emigrate to the United States. Over the next few years the village emerged as a place largely inhabited by factory workers, mainly employed at nearby [[Harvey, Illinois|Harvey]], who also had room on their lots for gardens. In 1894 the [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago]] established a mission to serve the Polish residents of Posen, which was elevated to [[parish (Catholic Church)|parish]] status as St. Stanislaus the Martyr in 1898 (the church permanently closed in 2022).

In the 1930s the population of Posen was 98% of Polish origin, and in 1960 only 0.1% of the population was identified in the census as being not white, or 4 of the 4,513 inhabitants. In 1963 there were 7% black students that attended the Posen School. In 1990 Posen, having fallen to 4,226 inhabitants, was still 94.5% white, a large portion of this population being Polish. About 4% of the population identified as being both white and Hispanic, for an overall 7.3% or 310 people identifying as being Hispanic. In 2010 3,171 residents of Posen identified as [[Hispanic and Latino Americans|Hispanic]],<ref name="Census 2010 DP">{{cite web| url=http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_DP/DPDP1/1600000US1761314| archive-url=https://archive.today/20200212143247/http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_DP/DPDP1/1600000US1761314| url-status=dead| archive-date=February 12, 2020| title=Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (DP-1): Posen village, Illinois| publisher=U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder| access-date=March 19, 2013}}</ref> representing the expansion of the Hispanic population to 10 times what it had been 20 years before (or an increase of more than 900% over 10 years). In the same time period the number of African American residents of the village increased from 60 (or 1.4% of the population) to 1,035. This means that the percentage rate of growth of the African American population of Posen over the last 20 years has been greater than that of the Hispanic population. While as late as 2004 the ''Encyclopedia of Chicago'' still referred to Posen as "predominantly Polish American"<ref>Larry A. McClellan, "Posen" in ''Encyclopedia of Chicago'' (Chicago: The Newberry Library, 2004) accessed at http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/998.html on January 7, 2012</ref> even then an actual examination of the 2000 census ancestry report would have shown that only a quarter of the population claimed to have Polish ancestry.