Symposium

Self-Conscious Publics

By Mark Hopwood

 

Every day each of us confronts the question of what politics is for as we interact with our neighbors. I live in the neighborhood of Hyde Park, which occupies roughly one and a half square miles on the South Side of Chicago. It is home to a diverse population of middle-class families, students, professionals and the 44th President of the United States. The southwest quarter is dominated by the neo-Gothic campus of the University of Chicago, which employs much of the local workforce.

Like many South Side neighborhoods, Hyde Park saw considerable changes midway through the twentieth century, when restrictions that had previously kept blacks and whites segregated began to be lifted. Between 1950 and 1956, the African-American population of Hyde Park rose from six to thirty-six percent. As in other parts of urban America, this development was accompanied by fears of rising crime rates among many of the existing white residents. There is no evidence that crime actually rose in Hyde Park, but the widespread perception of a threat was enough to prompt the university, with the support of local community organizations, to form the South East Chicago Commission (SECC) to “fight crime … and begin a long-term project of neighborhood planning and improvement.”

That project was to become known as “urban renewal.” At the time, any three residents of Illinois could exercise the right of “eminent domain” to expand their property in an area where they already owned sixty percent and the remainder was deemed “dilapidated.” The SECC made aggressive use of these laws: by 1958, a plan had been approved to demolish 5,941 units, displacing large numbers of working-class African-American residents. The effects of urban renewal were not limited to neighborhood development: in 1955, the SECC hired two policemen to patrol the streets around campus. Today, the University of Chicago Police Department is one of the largest private forces in the world. Its distinctive blue emergency phones are one of the most recognizable features of Hyde Park.

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