by Ben Austen
Kotlowitz, Alex. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Popkin, Susan J., et al. The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Vale, Lawrence J. Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
CHAPTER NINE: FAITH BROUGHT US THIS FAR
The account of how residents of 1230 N. Burling came to manage their own high-rise is based on my conversations with Dolores Wilson and other tenants of the building; on records and reports archived at the CHA, the Metropolitan Planning Council, and the Burt Natarus papers at the University of Illinois at Chicago; on the documentary Fired Up!; and on the coverage that appeared in the media and on David Fleming’s book listed below. For this chapter I also interviewed Rodnell Dennis, Eric Davis, James Martin, Peter Keller, and Veronica McIntosh.
Davis, Eric, et al. The Slick Boys: A Ten-point Plan to Rescue Your Community By Three Chicago Cops Who Are Making It Happen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Fleming, David. City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Gangland, “Gangster City.” History Channel, January 3, 2008.
Martin, James R. Fired-Up!: Public Housing Is My Home. Digital File. Oak Park, IL: Cineventure Inc., 1988.
CHAPTER TEN: HOW HORROR WORKS
This chapter is based in part on interviews with Annie Ricks and her family, Willie J. R. Fleming (along with his own personal video archive), Bernard Rose, Bill Tomes, Jim Fogarty, and many residents who worked with Brother Bill at Cabrini-Green.
Macek, Steve. Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic Over the City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Mann, Nicola. “The Death and Resurrection of Chicago’s Public Housing in the American Visual Imagination.” PhD dissertation: University of Rochester, 2011.
Martin, James. My Life with the Saints. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2006.
Richardson, Chris, and Hans Arthur Skott-Myhre. Habitus of the Hood. Chicago: Intellect, 2012.
Rose, Bernard, Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Philip Glass, and Clive Barker. Candyman. DVD. Directed by Bernard Rose. [United States]: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, 2004.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: DANTRELL DAVIS WAY
The killing of Dantrell Davis was the biggest news story in Chicago in 1992, and the media frenzy is both a source for and topic of this chapter. I also interviewed Dantrell’s mother, Annette Freeman, and numerous residents, reporters, and city officials who lived through the immediate aftermath. I learned more about the ensuing gang truce from Wallace “Gator” Bradley, Hal Baskin, Maurice Perkins, Prince Asiel Ben Israel, Tara and Guana Stamps, Kelvin Cannon, Eric Davis, James Martin, Patricia Hill, and Frederick “Hoggie Wolf” Watkins.
Bennett, Larry. The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Bulkeley, Kelly, et al. Among All These Dreamers: Essays on Dreaming and Modern Society. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Cohen, Adam, and Elizabeth Taylor. American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.
Coyle, Daniel. Hardball: A Season in the Projects. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993.
Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America: From the Age of the Pullman Porters to the Age of Obama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
Obama, Barack. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Random House, 1995.
Pollack, Neal. “The Gang that Could Go Straight.” The Chicago Reader. January 26, 1995.
Shafton, Anthony. Dream-Singers: The African American Way With Dreams. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 2002.
CHAPTER TWELVE: CABRINI MUSTARD AND TURNIP GREENS
I learned more about the 1230 N. Burling resident management corporation and the renovation of the high-rise from documents held in the CHA archives and from interviews with Dolores Wilson and other tenants in her building. Peter Benkendorf sent me the nearly complete run of Voices of Cabrini, and I spoke about the community newspaper with him, Mark Pratt, Pete Keller, and Jimmy Williams. The account of Cabrini-Green’s fitful redevelopment was well-documented in the local media, and for my purposes the investigative work of the Chicago Reporter proved especially helpful. I also benefited from conversations with William Wilen, Marilyn Katz, Vince Lane, Carol Steele, and Richard Wheelock, and from the research on the different development plans shared with me by Larry Bennett. It’s useful here to highlight Lawrence Vale’s Purging the Poorest, a book I cite below and elsewhere. I benefitted greatly from Vale’s account of the Cabrini-Green area as a “twice-cleared community” and particularly from his writing about its second erasure beginning in the 1990s.
Bennett, Larry, and Adolph Reed Jr. “The New Face of Urban Renewal: The Near North Redevelopment Initiative and the Cabrini-Green Neighborhood,” in Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat From Racial Equality, ed. Adolph Reed Jr. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.
———, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright. Where Are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Fleming, David. City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Keller, Pete “Esaun.” Cross the Bridge. Chicago: Self-published, 2012.
Pattillo, Mary E. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Vale, Lawrence J. Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Wilen, William P. “The Horner Model: Successfully Redeveloping Public Housing.” Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy 62 (2006).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: IF NOT HERE . . . WHERE?
This chapter is based in part on my interviews with Kelvin Cannon, Willie J. R. Fleming, Annie Ricks, and the family members and friends who knew them. I learned about specific details of redevelopment meetings held at Cabrini-Green from Matthew McGuire’s dissertation cited below and from the documentary Voices of Cabrini. Several people added to my understanding of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, including Carol Steele, Janet Smith, Regina McGraw, Bruce Orenstein, Jim Field, and Will Small.
Bennet, Larry, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright. Where Are Poor People to Live? Transforming Public Housing Communities. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bezalel, Ronit, and Antonio Ferrera. Voices of Cabrini. Digital File. Directed by Ronit Bezalel. Chicago, Ill.: Facets Video, 1999.
Ehrenhalt, Alan. The Great Inversion: And the Future of the American City. New York: Knopf, 2012.
McGuire, Matthew. “Chicago Private Parts: The Relationship Between Government, Community and Violence in the Redevelopment of a Public Housing Complex in the United States.” PhD dissertation: Harvard University, 1999.
Royko, Mike. Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago. New York: Dutton, 1971.
Vale, Lawrence J. Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: TRANSFORMATIONS
In addition to relying on the sources listed below and on considerable media coverage, my reporting on the Plan for Transformation included conversations with Richard M. Daley, Julia Stasch, Joseph Shuldiner, Sudhir Venkatesh, William Wilen, Alex Polikoff, Carol Steele, Richard Wheelock, Walter Burnett, Robert Whitfield, Lewis Jordan, Marilyn Katz, and many others. Thomas Sullivan’s reports on the shortcomings of the Plan for Transformation were also useful. For the section of this chapter on Willie J. R. Fleming, I interviewed him and relied a
s well on court and police records.
Bennet, Larry, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright. Where Are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bezalel, Ronit, Catherine Crouch, Judy Hoffman, Brenda Schumacher, Marguerite Mariama, Janet L. Smith, Deidre Brewster, Mark Pratt, D. Bradford Hunt, and Duane Buford. 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green. DVD. Directed by Ronit Bezalel. 2015.
Fennell, Catherine. Last Project Standing: Civics and Sympathy in Post-Welfare Chicago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Fleming, David. City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Hunt, D. Bradford. Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Kalven, Jamie. “Kicking the Pigeon.” The View from the Ground. 2005, 2006.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.
———. Chicago Public Housing Transformation: A Research Report. New York: Center for Urban Research and Policy, Columbia University, 2004.
———, and Larry Kamerman. Dislocation. DVD. [S.l.]: Alladi Group, 2005.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: OLD TOWN, NEW TOWN
In addition to interviews with Kelvin Cannon, Dolores Wilson, and Annie Ricks, this chapter is based on documents and letters provided to me by Cannon, court records of the contested tenant council election at Cabrini-Green, and the recollections of numerous people who lived and worked at Cabrini-Green and Parkside of Old Town, including Carol Steele, Charles Price, Peter Holsten, Abu Ansari, Deirdre Brewster, Richard Sciortino, Kenneth Hammond, and Tyrone Randolph. Starting in 2010, I also started attending public meetings at Cabrini-Green and other forums held by the CHA at which the dynamic in the new mixed-income developments was always a point of contention. Ronit Bezalel’s documentary 70 Acres in Chicago was also very useful, as was talking with her as we both worked on this subject.
Bennet, Larry, Janet L. Smith, and Patricia A. Wright. Where Are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bezalel, Ronit, Catherine Crouch, Judy Hoffman, Brenda Schumacher, Marguerite Mariama, Janet L. Smith, Deidre Brewster, Mark Pratt, D. Bradford Hunt, and Duane Buford. 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green. DVD. Directed by Ronit Bezalel. 2015.
———, and Antonio Ferrera. Voices of Cabrini. Digital File. Directed by Ronit Bezalel. Chicago, Ill.: Facets Video, 1999.
Chaskin, Robert J., and Mark L. Joseph. Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-income Public Housing Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Vale, Lawrence J. Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THEY CAME FROM THE PROJECTS
I attended the vigil outside 1230 N. Burling the night before the start of its demolition. Jan Tichy provided me with the poetry included in his Project Cabrini Green and with photographs he took inside the cleared units of the high-rise. Dolores Wilson and Annie Ricks recounted their moves and showed me the public housing developments where they had been relocated. There was extensive reporting on the relocations of public housing families and the increase in violence in the neighborhoods where they ended up. I also interviewed Lewis Jordan, Eric Davis, and others about these moves.
Feldman, Roberta M., Sheila Radford-Hill, and Susan Stall. The Dignity of Resistance: Women Residents’ Activism in Chicago Public Housing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Rosin, Hanna. “American Murder Mystery,” The Atlantic, July/August 2008.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE PEOPLE’S PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY
I was present for many of the events I describe in this chapter, and I benefited as well from interviews with Willie J. R. Fleming, Toussaint Losier, Shirley Henderson, Martha Biggs, Thomas Turner, Edward Voci, Rahm Emanuel, Carol Steele, Patricia Hill, and Emma Harris.
Emanuel, Ezekiel J. Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family. New York: Random House, 2013.
Gottesdiener, Laura. A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home. Westfield, N.J.: Zuccotti Park Press, 2013.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE FUTURE
I witnessed firsthand many of the changes to the Cabrini-Green neighborhood in the past decade. (I happened to attend the East Bank Club luncheon titled “From Cabrini-Green to NoCa.”) Since 2012 I’ve been going intermittently to the Near North Unity Program monthly meetings, and I was present for a number of the public forums to discuss the merger between Cabrini-Green’s Jenner Elementary and the Gold Coast’s Ogden International School. I have visited both schools as well and spoken to parents and teachers from both communities. Jesse White let me sit in as he met with constituents during a weekly ward committeeman night, an evening when Kelvin Cannon was dutifully present. I also spent time with Annie Ricks and her family as they tried to move out of Wentworth Gardens. I visited Ricks in the hospital; I was there when she passed away, and I attended her funeral. Likewise, I was on the boat ride with J. R. Fleming, Raymond Richard, and Brother Jim that I describe in the book’s final pages. Although I’m born and raised in Chicago, and I live on the city’s South Side, it was my first time on the river.
Index
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abernathy, Ralph, 65
affordable housing, 12, 18, 259, 317–18
African Americans, in Chicago
Black Belt, 6–7, 13, 38, 72–73
critique of social programs, 137–39
Great Migration, 72–73
home ownership and mortgage system, 36–37, 222
integration of public housing, 30–34, 37–40, 79–80
police abuse, 18–19, 70, 131–32, 204, 242, 306
police relations, 70, 73–75, 131–32, 134
population, 6, 32, 59, 132, 305
race riot of 1919, 72–73, 314
segregated housing, 6–7, 29–34, 38–40, 53–54, 79–80
urban renewal programs, 36, 46, 71, 181–82
Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, 134
After Hours (movie), 182
Airport Homes race riots, 37–39
Alabama State University, 65
Alexander City, Alabama, 173–74
Algren, Nelson, 45, 76–77
Alinsky, Saul, 42
All in the Family (TV show), 77
All of Mankind, Unity of the Human Race (mural), 330–31
Altgeld Gardens, 21, 38, 79, 198–99
Ambassadors of Cabrini (documentary), 121–22
American Civil Liberties Union, 150
American Federation of Labor (AFL), 46–47
American Housing Act of 1949, 35–36, 234
“American Millstone, The,” 136–37
Amstadter, Lawrence, 22, 24–25, 208
Amstadter, Marc, 208
Ansari, Abu, 279–80, 281, 283–84, 332–33
Anti-Eviction Campaign, 314–17, 319–20, 323–29, 343–44
Apollo Theater (New York), 34
Apple Store, 331
Archer Courts, 337
Arthur Young and Company, 97
Asian flu, 20
Atrium Village, 136
Audy Home, 92
Barbara’s Bookstore, 55
Barker, Clive, 179
Barksdale, David, 71, 203
Bassett, Angela, 247
Bauer, Catherine, 36, 222
Becker, Gary, 209
Bell Biv DeVoe, 147
Benkendorf, Peter, 227–28
Bernardin, Joseph, 186, 198
Bertinelli, Valerie, 227
Better Cabrini Organization, A, 42
Bey, Godfrey, 228
Biggs, Martha, 324–27, 328–29
Big “O” Movers, 295
Bilandic, Michael, 96, 101
Black Belt, 6–7, 13, 38, 72–73
Black Disciples, 69, 71, 203–4
Black Gangster Disciples Nation, 71, 203–4
Black Hand, 16, 31
Blackmon, Reginald, 63, 67, 89–90, 289
Blackmon, Richard, 63, 89–90
Blackmon, William, 63, 67, 89–90, 140–41, 289
Black Panthers, 62, 73, 142
Black Pearls, 87
Blackstone Rangers, 69, 71–72, 73, 84–86, 87–88, 129, 203–4
blight, 4, 8, 60, 166–67, 323
blockbusting, 37, 314
Bohemian National Cemetery, 44
Bo John (Cedric Maltbia), 87–88, 89, 98–99, 128, 141, 238
Bolingbrook, Illinois, 210
Box, The (TV show), 147
Boy Scouts of America, 64, 66, 89
Boyz n the Hood (movie), 191
Bozo’s Circus (TV show), 64
Bradley, Wallace “Gator,” 213–17
Bridgeport, 43–44, 70, 200
Bronzeville, 21, 306, 319–20
Brooke, Edward, 57–58
Brooke Amendment of 1969, 58
Brother Bill (Bill Tomes), 183–87, 189–91, 244, 261, 333, 343
Brother Jim (Jim Fogarty), 189, 190–91, 244, 261, 343, 345
Brothers and Sisters of Love, 343
Brothers Standing Together, 344
Browley, Perry, 67
Bryant, Ernest Roger, 117–18, 123–24, 252
Brzeczek, Richard, 101, 104
Bud Billiken Parade, 19
Burge, Jon, 204, 287
Burke, Ed, 135
Burnett, Walter, 241, 278, 298–99
Burnham, Daniel, 254
Bush, George H. W., 172, 188, 222, 244, 321
Bush, George W., 208, 321
Bush v. Gore, 267
Butler, Jerry “Iceman,” 28–29, 33–34, 99, 213–14
Byrd Elementary School, 100–101
Byrne, Jane, 96–97, 132, 200
move into Cabrini-Green, 99–108, 129–30, 182
Cabrini, Frances, 17, 332