Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Robbins Robbins, IL

Robbins is a village in southern Cook County, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago about 20 miles from downtown.

Robbins was incorporated on December 14, 1917, and named for Eugene S. Robbins, a real estate developer who laid out the village's early subdivisions and marketed lots to Black working-class families seeking land of their own.

The village's founder and first mayor was Thomas J. Kellar, a clerk for the Cook County Board of Assessors who researched how to incorporate the community.

Robbins is the second-oldest African American incorporated town in the North, after Brooklyn, Illinois, and it was the only municipality in the North entirely governed by African Americans.

In 1931 Cornelius Coffey and John C. Robinson opened Robbins Airport, the first Black-owned and -operated airport in the United States.

Robbins Airport became a cradle of Black aviation, and ten of the famed Tuskegee Airmen called Robbins their home.

Pan-African leader Marcus Garvey chose Robbins as the site for his Chicago-area rallies because of its thriving all-Black community.

Robbins' population surged after World War II and peaked at 9,641 residents in 1970.

Robbins' population was 4,629 at the 2020 census.

Census Bureau survey estimates put Robbins at roughly 1,600 households, and about 65% of its homes are owner-occupied - a point of pride in a village founded on Black land ownership.