This part of the collection, Spaces, is dedicated to capturing the socioeconomic and political processes that imbue places with particular atmospheres, stereotypes, or sentiments. Items for collection could include:
The City of Chicago has a difficult history with racial segregation.
In 1969, activist Dorothy Gautreaux brought suit against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), claiming that the CHA discriminated against African Americans because it built the vast majority of low income housing in black neighborhoods, thus ghettoizing them. Gautreaux won the suit (more information here).
The court ordered that to fix this problem, CHA had to build smaller sites across the city, a change that took 20 years to complete. Beryl Satter's book, Family Properties, details the racist policies that allowed black homeowners to be routinely taken advantage of and discriminated against. In reviewing the book, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "In Chicago, the ghetto was intentional. Black people were pariahs whom no one wanted to live around. The FHA turned that prejudice into full-blown racism by refusing to insure loans taken out by people who live near blacks" (see more here).
More recently, Coates returned to these issues, condemning the history of disenfranchisement and appropriation endemic to Chicago's history.
Beginning in the 2000s, CHA released a plan to completely redo all of their properties.
Chicago's Plan Forward can be found here.
Yet this transition was fraught with problems. Infamous projects like "[Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes] and other high-rises have been torn down as the Chicago Housing Authority conducts a sweeping experiment in public housing. Officials promised that would mean better living conditions for thousands of residents. But for many the relocation has brought more trauma than satisfaction" (Cheryl Corley, NPR, 7/27/2007).
D. Bradford Hunt's Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago's Public Housing analyzes these shifts. To complicate the story, however, gentrification is not always a bad word. Gentrification is deeply correlated to economic class, and therefore some neighborhoods in Chicago, like Bronzeville, have experienced gentrification by black residents moving in. The fact that this phenomenon is so complex, and plays such an integral role in the history of Chicago demonstrate the merit of focusing a collection on gentrification. In addition to the Field's documentation of the World's Fair, the Calumet steel collection, and the Eastern medical practices collection, collecting gentrification here in Chicago will nuance and deepen the Field's existing local collection. By bringing these topics up in the public, the Field also serves an important role in the community and deepens its commitment to bettering its home.
I propose this portion of the collection be approximately 1/4 of the total. In terms of collecting guidelines,
- legal documents from city planning and zoning
- objects and room recreations from former residents of various neighborhoods, alongside parallel displays of current residents
- photographs of neighborhood areas
- clips from media that describe particular areas
- interviews and publications by scholars who write about Chicago's demographic change
The City of Chicago has a difficult history with racial segregation.
In 1969, activist Dorothy Gautreaux brought suit against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), claiming that the CHA discriminated against African Americans because it built the vast majority of low income housing in black neighborhoods, thus ghettoizing them. Gautreaux won the suit (more information here).
The court ordered that to fix this problem, CHA had to build smaller sites across the city, a change that took 20 years to complete. Beryl Satter's book, Family Properties, details the racist policies that allowed black homeowners to be routinely taken advantage of and discriminated against. In reviewing the book, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "In Chicago, the ghetto was intentional. Black people were pariahs whom no one wanted to live around. The FHA turned that prejudice into full-blown racism by refusing to insure loans taken out by people who live near blacks" (see more here).
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| Photo of North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago by Carlos Javier Ortiz; accompanying Ta-Nehisi Coates' May 2014 article in The Atlantic |
More recently, Coates returned to these issues, condemning the history of disenfranchisement and appropriation endemic to Chicago's history.
Beginning in the 2000s, CHA released a plan to completely redo all of their properties.
Chicago's Plan Forward can be found here.
Yet this transition was fraught with problems. Infamous projects like "[Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes] and other high-rises have been torn down as the Chicago Housing Authority conducts a sweeping experiment in public housing. Officials promised that would mean better living conditions for thousands of residents. But for many the relocation has brought more trauma than satisfaction" (Cheryl Corley, NPR, 7/27/2007).
D. Bradford Hunt's Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago's Public Housing analyzes these shifts. To complicate the story, however, gentrification is not always a bad word. Gentrification is deeply correlated to economic class, and therefore some neighborhoods in Chicago, like Bronzeville, have experienced gentrification by black residents moving in. The fact that this phenomenon is so complex, and plays such an integral role in the history of Chicago demonstrate the merit of focusing a collection on gentrification. In addition to the Field's documentation of the World's Fair, the Calumet steel collection, and the Eastern medical practices collection, collecting gentrification here in Chicago will nuance and deepen the Field's existing local collection. By bringing these topics up in the public, the Field also serves an important role in the community and deepens its commitment to bettering its home.
I propose this portion of the collection be approximately 1/4 of the total. In terms of collecting guidelines,
- legal documents from city planning and zoning (major changes only)
- objects and room recreations from former residents of various neighborhoods, alongside parallel displays of current residents (at least 4 rooms, 2 each of previous/current)
- photographs of neighborhood areas (archival and current, 10-15 images per neighborhood for selected neighborhoods; neighborhoods represented here should be determined in consultation with Chicago community members).
- clips from pop culture that describe particular areas (major films, comics, tv shows)
- interviews and publications by scholars who write about Chicago's demographic change (5-6 scholars represented; selection of scholars in consultation with community members)
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