Carmen M. Ganser Illinois State University

Hirsch's text is undeniably an important one in the fields of urban and African American studies. He carefully sets up his narrative by describing the horrific housing conditions black people faced throughout the 1930s and 1940s so that his readers could more accurately understand the complexities of the challenges in developing solid housing for a seemingly unwanted population. It is terribly sad reading about the overcrowding and dangerous circumstances a large population lived under. Equally sad is the violence these people of minority status faced when they attempted to leave the ghetto and its overcrowding and inadequate housing.

Hirsch's text describes in detailed complexity also the situation in the Hyde Park community and the University of Chicago. On this front, two different factions developed two different ideologies behind their motives for making this neighborhood a model of successful integration. The Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC) viewed the move of black people into the neighborhood as an inevitability that ought to be greeted with good nature. As Hirsch writes, "the HPKCC not only embraced the principle of nondiscrimination but vigorously espoused its acceptance by the entire city" (142). However, the other faction, the South East Chicago Commission, backed by the University of Chicago, saw the move of African Americans into the neighborhood as an inevitability that needed to be halted in its tracks. Their solution was to allow a certain number of black people to move into the area, but ultimately deny the neighborhood the similar fate of those around it: black people move in, white people move out. Rents are raised while property values are lowered.

The first and second ghettos of Chicago both existed on the south side, and remain there to this day. It only got bigger, with the expansion of unaesthetically engaging architecture and housing for black populations relegated to specific parts of the city. Many of these housing projects are being torn down for upper middle class condominiums. These poor are being displaced. Teachers in smaller urban centers throughout the state see an increase in minority populations at their schools. Rather than decrying this shift in demographics, teachers can embrace this new cultural diversity, welcoming students from different socio economic and ethnic backgrounds who help to expand the limited worldviews held by so many of their middle class white students.

My worldview expanded at the colloquium. I did not realize, though it makes perfect sense to me now, that when Professor Reed recalled an anecdote about his grandfather, who, as a college student working as a Pullman porter was heckled by his co workers, he was in fact the least educated black man working on his train; the rest of the porters held MAs and Ph.Ds and had obtained the best position available to them at the time. How surprising and how utterly shameful for our nation's past.

Return to Reactions to Assigned Readings index