The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), Chicago, IL
In the 1950s, racial discrimination greatly limited opportunities for advancement among Chicago's African-American residents. The previous decade had seen a huge influx of blacks from the South who were searching for economic opportunities in the North. While Chicago's African-American population boomed, its racial boundaries remained rigid, forcing thousands of blacks to live in segregated neighborhoods. The great demand for housing in these areas allowed slum landlords to subdivide apartments into ever smaller, more crowded rental units. As neighborhoods like Woodlawn on Chicago's South Side transformed from historically white to predominantly black, they began to experience disinvestment and rapid deterioration. Absentee landlords allowed their buildings to fall into disrepair. Local businesses sold low quality goods at inflated prices. City agencies cut back on essential public services such as education and transportation, and the physical infrastructure of the neighborhood began to collapse. Because they were systematically excluded from Chicago's firmly entrenched political machine, African Americans found it very difficult to use existing political channels to demand accountability from their local elected officials.
The Power of Collective Action
In face of the alarming physical, social and economic decay of their community, the residents of Woodlawn began to organize for change. In 1960, a group of religious and block club leaders brought together a coalition of over 100 neighborhood associations, religious institutions and civic organizations to fight against the forces of disintegration. Contrary to what many believed, Woodlawn had a number of organizational resources. As one of the group's leaders, Reverend Dr. Arthur M. Brazier points out, "The idea that black communities were disorganized was really a fallacy. They were not disorganized, they were unorganized." With the assistance of Saul Alinsky, a well-known community organizer, the Temporary Woodlawn Organization (TWO; later to become The Woodlawn Organization) began to lead a unified movement for self-determination. Its founding president was Dr. Brazier.
Throughout the early 1960s, TWO mobilized Woodlawn's residents to pressure merchants, landlords, city bureaucrats and others who were responsible for the neighborhood's blighted conditions to respond to their demands for change. By picketing and threatening boycotts against local stores, residents fought back against inflated prices and inferior products. And by demonstrating in front of the suburban homes of their absentee landlords, they forced building owners to make basic repairs. These small victories were important because they proved that low-income people could gain power through collective action. The significance of this process became apparent years later when oppressed urban neighborhoods across the country erupted into violent civil disorder during the Summer of 1967. Knowing that they had an alternative means of getting attention from those in power, the residents of Woodlawn did not feel compelled to express their frustrations through urban rebellion. As Reverend Dr. Leon Finney, TWO's second executive director, observes, "We had no riots here because we had already developed a legitimate means of redressing our grievances. The people trusted that vehicle and idea of TWO."
The Campaign against Displacement
TWO launched one of its most challenging advocacy campaigns in response to the University of Chicago's plans to expand its South campus into Woodlawn. Using Urban Renewal funds, the university wanted to clear a major strip of the neighborhood to create a new park and upper-income housing. In effect, the institution was attempting to establish a buffer zone against its surrounding low-income community. Having experienced what was termed "Negro removal" as a result of other Urban Renewal projects in the city, many of Woodlawn's residents were strongly opposed to the university's plan, especially because it did not make concessions for replacement housing. Fortunately, TWO was able to make use of the Urban Renewal program's community participation requirements to mount a battle against the university's plan. They were ultimately successful in negotiating a compromise agreement whereby the university agreed to cover the costs of relocating displaced families to new low-income housing in Woodlawn. Because it had established itself as the legitimate voice of the residents of Woodlawn, and had the power of people to back it, TWO became recognized as a major political force in Chicago.
The Fight for Equal Opportunities
To ensure that blacks had access to mainstream institutions, TWO was very active in the civil rights movement during its early years. One of its priorities was to advocate for the integration of housing and education in order to eliminate the inequities produced by segregation. As Dr. Brazier explains, "Our concern about integrating public schools was to get a piece of the pie. We felt as long as our kids were segregated, they were going to get hand-me-downs."
But TWO's leaders soon began to see the need to address another critical aspect of the problem - the economic barriers that blacks faced in their struggle for self-determination. As Dr. Brazier explains, "We recognized that no matter how much access we might have, unless people had jobs, unless people earned money, no matter what doors were opened, they would not have the opportunity to walk through them." To prepare African Americans to take advantage of the gains of the civil rights movement, TWO began to focus on employment. In partnership with its former adversary, the University of Chicago, the organization secured a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to study the racial biases of common hiring practices such as job applications and tests. By arguing that these procedures posed unnecessary obstacles to the employment of blacks, TWO was able to gain federal support for a demonstration job training and placement program in 1964.
The Transition into Service Provision
The creation of TWO's job training and placement program marked an important transition for the organization. Some of its members did not believe that TWO should begin to provide services because this new direction might compromise the organization's ability to continue conducting advocacy and organizing. But as Dr. Brazier reasoned, "just to continue advocacy and not think about the other social ills that affected the community seemed to be short sighted."
In the 1970s, TWO began to make use of federal funds to offer a range of social services, including prenatal and infant health care, Head Start early childhood development, and mental health care. Today, TWO operates a $4.2 million social service network that reaches 7,500 people daily. One of TWO's primary concerns is helping people at an early point in the life cycle in order to prevent substance abuse, teen-age pregnancy, and infant mortality. The organization offers comprehensive health care, infant day care, substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation, AIDS awareness and outreach, job counseling and placement, and black adoption services. Through its Family Life Program, TWO addresses the psycho-social problems that result from poor health in low-income neighborhoods.
In 1969, under the leadership of Dr. Finney, the organization decided that its broadened programmatic direction required a change in structure. From its inception, TWO had operated as a federation of civic and neighborhood associations. The members of this federation comprised the organization's community base, and were represented on delegate committees that made policy recommendations on housing, crime, education and other neighborhood issues. As TWO entered the 1970s, the challenge was to create a new structure that would continue to hold the organization accountable to its community-based constituency, but would also address the concerns of its funders, who believed that advocacy needed to be kept distinct from other program areas such as social service delivery and development. TWO's solution was to create a separate entity, the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation (WCDC), for its physical and economic development activities. This development corporation would have its own board of directors, but was to remain accountable to The Woodlawn Organization's community base.
Development as a Means of Creating Viable Communities
TWO was faced with a great challenge when the development corporation was formed in 1972. Woodlawn had lost nearly half of its population between 1960 and 1970. One of the ironies of the civil rights movement was that as the barriers to integration were removed, the social and economic infrastructure of African-American urban neighborhoods began to erode. Out of necessity, black communities had once been home to people with a broad range of social and economic backgrounds. Doctors and lawyers lived next door to housekeepers and welfare recipients. But once moderate and middle-income residents gained opportunities to escape the deteriorated conditions of inner city neighborhoods, many of them moved out. Increasingly, communities like Woodlawn became ghettos of the poor. Because of its great concern about these demographic trends, TWO/WCDC's leadership decided that its redevelopment strategy needed to focus on attracting middle class families back into the neighborhood. To achieve this goal, the organization began to search for ways to improve Woodlawn's physical and socioeconomic conditions. TWO/WCDC's ultimate aim was to make Woodlawn a viable, mixed-income community.
This redevelopment strategy proved controversial at times. By concentrating on bringing moderate and middle-income families into the neighborhood, TWO/WCDC could not always ensure that its programs had a direct benefit to Woodlawn's poorest and most desperate residents. In fact, some of its programs required the displacement of existing residents. Nevertheless, quite a few neighborhood residents felt that the drawbacks of this development approach were outweighed by its benefits.
Since 1968, TWO/WCDC has rehabilitated or constructed over 1,500 apartment units and homes for low and moderate-income families and individuals, senior citizens and physically and mentally disabled residents of Woodlawn. It pioneered the first mixed-income homeownership project in the country, proving that it was possible to create communities in which middle, moderate and low-income families choose to live next door to each other. Moreover, the CDC has helped dispel the myth that whites are unwilling to live in predominantly black neighborhoods. Over the years, TWO/WCDC has built a strong reputation for being an efficient and effective manager of low-income housing. Recently, it was hired by the Chicago Housing Authority to manage and provide social services to two of the city's most troubled public housing projects.
Another aspect of TWO's redevelopment strategy has focused on economic revitalization. One of WCDC's first efforts was a small-business support program that provided technical assistance and access to outside financing for local enterprises. By the mid-1970s, however, the limits of this economic development approach in Woodlawn compelled WCDC to begin large-scale commercial real estate development, including a shopping plaza, movie theater and supermarket to spur economic growth and create jobs for neighborhood residents.
A Commitment to Quality of Life Issues
Over the years, TWO has continued to serve as an advocate for quality of life issues in Woodlawn. In the 1970s, it conducted a series of studies on the Board of Education's budget, revealing vast inequities in the distribution of resources throughout Chicago's school districts. Drawing upon the organizing capabilities it developed in its early advocacy campaigns, TWO was able to create a partnership of teachers, students, parents and the Board of Education to improve public schools in Woodlawn. In 1976, it launched a major effort to revamp Woodlawn's Hyde Park High School, which had become a battle ground for local street gangs. Renamed the Hyde Park Career Academy, the school was transformed from one of the lowest-performing to one of the top eight in the city in just over a decade.
Catalyzing Reinvestment
TWO has always believed that an integral aspect of its mission is to increase confidence in the economic and social viability of its community. It has long been concerned about the consequences of disinvestment, which were evidenced when Woodlawn's only remaining financial institution, the Southeast National Bank, left the neighborhood in 1971. TWO has therefore made a conscious effort to transform the psychological perceptions of Woodlawn. The CDC's idea is to create enough positive change to instill confidence in the community by major institutions. As Dr. Finney explains, "At best TWO is a catalytic agent. If we catalyze reinvestment in the community, we don't have to do it all. The point is let others take it up after we've been on the point. And we're beginning to see that."
The success of TWO's revitalization strategy was illustrated by the building of a regional YMCA in Woodlawn in 1990. Despite intense competition from other, more affluent neighborhoods, TWO was able to convince the Metropolitan Y that Woodlawn was a viable site for its new facility. The Woodlawn Y greatly exceeded membership projections within the first few years of its operation. TWO also recently assisted a massive effort to overhaul Woodlawn's decaying public transit system. Through a partnership with the city, it helped create a $56 million investment in transportation and related infrastructure in the neighborhood. Over the years, TWO has catalyzed a total of over $113 million in public and private investments in Woodlawn.
The Road to Renewal
As TWO/WCDC looks to the future, it has reason to be optimistic about Woodlawn's economic, social and physical viability. Though it continues to face challenges inherent to low-income urban communities, the neighborhood has realized some breakthroughs in renewed growth and investment. After twenty years without a neighborhood bank, Woodlawn proudly observed a significant milestone on the road to renewal - the opening of the Cole Taylor Bank in 1993. Under the direction of Carole Millison, TWO's current executive director, TWO continues to build partnerships with the public and private sectors to improve the quality of life in Woodlawn.
The Woodlawn Organization (TWO)
6040 South Harper Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
(312) 288-5840