Most of you probably don't know the fascinating story of urban renewal in Hyde Park. While I certainly don't do justice to the whole story, it's one that every person interested in city and community living should know, and is an important part of the intellectual, social and religious culture of Hyde Park. I share my summary and thoughts below.
In the Beginning
In the 1850s, successful Chicago businessman Paul Cornell purchased a block of land on the South side of Chicago, with the hopes of attracting other businessmen and their families to the area. It worked. Famous men such as Marshall Field (yes, of the department store Marshall Fields), Cornell and John D Rockefeller built massive homes in the area (many still there today), bringing with them their wealth, society, and power, and setting up what would become a fashionable place for high-society vacations and summer getaways. By 1891, Rockefeller had founded the University of Chicago in what had become known as the Hyde Park area; as the University grew in international stature, so did Hyde Park. Not surprisingly, the population boasted 4 times more businessmen per capita than the rest of Chicago, and a per capita income rivaled by few other areas in the city, let alone the country. Also not surprisingly, Hyde Park was nearly completely white.
The Great Migration
By the 1940s, what has become known as the Great Migration- a mass exodus (estimated somewhere around one and a quarter million) of African-Americans from Southern states into Northern States- was beginning to change the landscape of many of the North’s largest cities, Chicago (and Hyde Park) included. Promised cheap living for their cheap labor in many of the South Side’s war industry jobs, many of the turn of the century hotels on the outskirts of Hyde Park were turned into little better than tenement housing for the bulging black population.
Seeing the change in tide before them, the white residents of Hyde Park responded in two ways: violence (ranging from protests to riots to physical violence) and restrictive covenants, a legally-enforceable agreement through which landlords promised that they would not sell or rent their properties to “people of color.”
Progress
In 1948, though, things began to change. Possibly encouraged by a Supreme Court ruling (Shelly v Kramer) which made restrictive covenants illegal, a local group of progressive (white) businessmen in the Hyde Park community began to gather together to see if they might come up with a way to stop what so many believed was inevitable: deterioration, crime and white flight. By December 1949, these men had founded the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference with 300 charter members who hoped to create an “interracial community of high standards” where the formation of block clubs worked to negate false neighborhood gossip, provide up-to-date notices of building renewals and construction projects and serve as an outlet for multi-racial discussion, fellowship and community. At its height, the clubs covered about 150 blocks of the Hyde Park area. The Community Conference and clubs tracked all of the zoning (and re-zoning) laws of the area, followed- and prevented- the illegal restructuring of apartments into smaller, structurally unsound smaller tenements, and other building and zoning violations. Additionally, the clubs championed “WhistleStop” programs, in which residents were given whistles and then educated that the sound of a whistle was to be responded to as a cry for help.
But where was the University, the largest real estate owner and, arguably, the most powerful force in Hyde Park? After a rebuffing by the Chancellor in 1949, but supported by many of the progressive faculty and staff, the Community Congress functioned without the official support of the University until 1951, when the new Chancellor (Lawrence Kimpton) took control of the University and began plans to start the South East Chicago Commission. Within months, the Commission was churning out crime statistics, working with local police departments and researching urban and government planning of neighborhoods.
By 1952, Julian Levi, a successful businessman and lawyer, had been appointed Executive Director of the Commission, where he served until 1980. It was Levi who took the Commission from a law enforcement type of agency to an urban renewal agency, using (and creating) government grants, funds and support to continue the process of making Hyde Park a community where ethnically- and religiously- diverse people could co-exist and thrive.
So what happened?
In reality, the story continues today. Hyde Park (and neighboring Kenwood) continues to be a place of contradiction, and there is no doubt that there has been a certain amount of back-sliding over the last twenty years. The South East Chicago Commission continues to work, albeit in a very different way, to promote and implement urban renewal in the area, but with much less influence and with less influential financial, political and social support.
The question now becomes whether or not the community of Hyde Park (let alone the rest of the city and country) will once again desire that thing that the original commission hoped to produce: an inter-racial community of high standards. Organized residents, responsive and interactive community living and responsible (local, state and national) government made a very real difference in Hyde Park before, and may be able to again pursue that higher ideal of community living. But that requires that residents desire to live in such a way that they openly share their lives with those around them: those that may or may not look like them and may or may not subscribe to the same beliefs as them.
In 1948, though, things began to change. Possibly encouraged by a Supreme Court ruling (Shelly v Kramer) which made restrictive covenants illegal, a local group of progressive (white) businessmen in the Hyde Park community began to gather together to see if they might come up with a way to stop what so many believed was inevitable: deterioration, crime and white flight. By December 1949, these men had founded the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference with 300 charter members who hoped to create an “interracial community of high standards” where the formation of block clubs worked to negate false neighborhood gossip, provide up-to-date notices of building renewals and construction projects and serve as an outlet for multi-racial discussion, fellowship and community. At its height, the clubs covered about 150 blocks of the Hyde Park area. The Community Conference and clubs tracked all of the zoning (and re-zoning) laws of the area, followed- and prevented- the illegal restructuring of apartments into smaller, structurally unsound smaller tenements, and other building and zoning violations. Additionally, the clubs championed “WhistleStop” programs, in which residents were given whistles and then educated that the sound of a whistle was to be responded to as a cry for help.
But where was the University, the largest real estate owner and, arguably, the most powerful force in Hyde Park? After a rebuffing by the Chancellor in 1949, but supported by many of the progressive faculty and staff, the Community Congress functioned without the official support of the University until 1951, when the new Chancellor (Lawrence Kimpton) took control of the University and began plans to start the South East Chicago Commission. Within months, the Commission was churning out crime statistics, working with local police departments and researching urban and government planning of neighborhoods.
By 1952, Julian Levi, a successful businessman and lawyer, had been appointed Executive Director of the Commission, where he served until 1980. It was Levi who took the Commission from a law enforcement type of agency to an urban renewal agency, using (and creating) government grants, funds and support to continue the process of making Hyde Park a community where ethnically- and religiously- diverse people could co-exist and thrive.
So what happened?
In reality, the story continues today. Hyde Park (and neighboring Kenwood) continues to be a place of contradiction, and there is no doubt that there has been a certain amount of back-sliding over the last twenty years. The South East Chicago Commission continues to work, albeit in a very different way, to promote and implement urban renewal in the area, but with much less influence and with less influential financial, political and social support.
The question now becomes whether or not the community of Hyde Park (let alone the rest of the city and country) will once again desire that thing that the original commission hoped to produce: an inter-racial community of high standards. Organized residents, responsive and interactive community living and responsible (local, state and national) government made a very real difference in Hyde Park before, and may be able to again pursue that higher ideal of community living. But that requires that residents desire to live in such a way that they openly share their lives with those around them: those that may or may not look like them and may or may not subscribe to the same beliefs as them.
In many ways, Hyde Park continues to be a "bastion" of progressive thinking, where new concepts on race, education, identity and culture are continually produced and discussed. And yet...thoughts and discussion don't always lead to action: sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. The jury is still out on what will happen, both in Hyde Park and elsewhere.
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