Session Summary: Politics
It all begins with an idea.
On March 12, Arts + Public Life’s Cultural Stewardship team launched the Washington Park In Our Time discussion series, bringing together a cohort of eight artists, scholars, entrepreneurs, and community members. This first gathering explored the political life of the area in the 1980s and 1990s. Dr. Adrienne Brown opened the discussion with gratitude for the group’s presence and emphasized Arts + Public Life’s commitment to recognizing memory holders from this era as vital to understanding cultural expression today. Joining us in conversation, the group welcomed two guests for the evening: political historian Dr. Charles Branham and prolific journalist Salim Muwakkil. We began our conversation by reflecting on the temporal and geographic boundaries of Washington Park, exceeding the limits of the park itself to trace the connections to specific heritages, ecologies, and symbolisms. Grounded in the constancy of ‘summetime Chi,’ cohort members brought us back to the cover of Rose Blouin’s To Washington Park, With Love – an image of makeshift picnics, generations of family, and people coming together all the way to the tree line. The routine of deviled eggs “every Sunday,” passing out water bottles “every year like clockwork,” at the park became a consistent space to share in culture and community. In that shared geography, Washington Park also became a space to get beyond the typical, to find an environment for adventure and curiosity whether by skipping school or starting one.
Through the figure of the monk parakeet, Salim reminded us of all those paths that cross through Washington Park, political and otherwise. There seemed to exist a kind of serendipity in which the park felt as though it had almost been named for Harold a century too soon, in which the nature of the park itself felt inherited from Southern landscapes. The civil rights movement, grassroots organizing, Harold Washington’s mayoral election, and larger-than-life political showmanship, all fit together in the neighborhood and community of the park. Washington Park became a space for distance from the machine politics that defined Chicago, even as it was considered a ‘fluke’ by dominant figures in the media and politics. The coalitions for Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign emerged out of a genuine interest, a new “realm of possibility,” in reshaping Black politics in Chicago. These coalitions were embedded in a long history of local entrepreneurship, based in the arts, that stood apart from national politics to forge new kinds of alliances: artists for Harold, lawyers for Harold, Young Democrats for Harold. Even amidst the political maintenance of racial segregation, boundaries were being redrawn at every level, wards remapped, and new social and geographical networks were formed through Washington Park.
This political energy came springing out from the infrastructures of the neighborhood: the jitnies, buses, cars, phone lines, radio waves, and beyond. Whether kids were hanging out of the window – “Vote for Harold!” – or riding down King Drive in the jump seat to “Come Alive October Five,” the collectivities forged through infrastructure became part of a visual and auditory culture of Black political subjectivity. It is these infrastructures that feel missing in the contemporary moment, in which festivals can no longer maintain the same crowds and the park goes quiet and dark in what would have been busy summer nights – an absence of Black sounds and festival drums. As we located a collective desire to understand disinvestment in Washington Park, the cohort came together to think about what we all still wanted to explore in future sessions: the impact of national politics on the neighborhood, ways to redefine community spaces for organizing and leisure, and everyday life beyond the park.
Session Summary: Property
It all begins with an idea.
For the second session of the Washington Park In Our Time discussion series, the group welcomed guests Amanda Williams and Ghian Foreman to consider the role and meaning of property in Washington Park, particularly through the 1980’s and 90’s. Building on the work shared by Amanda and Ghian and memories of neighborhood life, the group came to focus on underlying questions including: how does property function in Washington Park and the broader South Side? Who has been able to own property? What does it mean to restore property, and who gets to restore it? Property – understood in different moments as a home, a lot, a block, a sense of ownership, and a connection across space– was often experienced as care and a responsibility to one’s community. The neighborhood itself was a function of the people on the block, a set of neighbors that checked in on one another, a sense of “where I live” and “where I stay.” Whether it was one block or across several blocks where neighborhoods functioned, property served as a shared connection to the everyday politics and rules of the street. Along with the care shown through “nosy neighbors”, our conversation led us to the lineage that property represents, the connection passed through inheritance from one generation to another, a way of building collective staying power amidst transience.
Rose pointed us back to the timeline of Washington Park, highlighting the structural transformation of development in the neighborhood and questioning the University of Chicago’s role in this story. While in some ways the role of the University as a real estate giant has been “taken for granted” on the South Side, as Rose mentioned, the community area boundaries invented by sociologists at the University in the 1920’s and land use agreements of the mid-twentieth century continue to play a significant role in the geography of development in the neighborhood. In recognizing these historical geographies, Ghian encouraged us to think about how we might also be better able to map out investment strategies for Black land ownership that build on existing knowledge of Washington Park – where infrastructure exists, where the University might try to move next. The strategies could become a way of redefining a place on its own terms, and as Sheila reflected, of bringing out the best parts of the neighborhood.
The question of restoration also lingered at the edges of our conversation, particularly regarding who has agency to claim the act of ‘restoration’ on the South Side. Even as the University of Chicago has suggested that their work serves this purpose, as Harold pointed out early in the conversation, there remains a larger suspicion that today’s policies still look a lot like old plans – of urban renewal and induced blight. Large questions remain about what actions can be taken to work towards a sense of Black Space - place that genuinely reflects the specific feeling of neighborhoods on the South Side, neighborhoods that don’t look like any other neighborhood in Chicago.
Turning back to Amanda and Ghian’s experience with “Redefining Redlining,” an installation highlighting the footprint of vacancy through 100,000 red tulips, our conversation focused on building symbols of investment into the community beyond the affordable housing projects that find the hard-to-get Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). By developing a new generation of caretakers, working towards a broader “property intelligence” or a set of “vantage points,” in Amanda’s view we could generate a vision for young people to emphasize their own agency in the future of the neighborhood. The new vision is as grounded and practical as it is ambitious. It’s just as focused on bringing “a little more economy” to the neighborhood through entrepreneurial and traditional investment, as it is on exploring creative models of collective land ownership and mutual reliance. Here, property reemerges not just as an asset but as lineage: a forward-looking commitment to the kind of community we want to belong to and the built environment we aspire to create.
Session Summary: Culture
It all begins with an idea.
For the third gathering of the Washington Park In Our Time discussion series, the conversation turned to the vibrant history of arts and culture in Washington Park during the 1980s and ‘90s. Duane Powell, an icon and steward of Chicago music and music history, joined the conversation as our featured guest. Arts and culture are defined very broadly in this context, encompassing music, fashion, theater, visual arts, and craft – all deeply rooted in the unique fabric of Chicago’s South Side. Given Duane’s expertise, the discussion focused on house music as a defining soundtrack to growing up in the neighborhood. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the grassroots origins and entrepreneurial spirit at the heart of cultural events and performances meant that everyone in the community was welcomed. A profound sense of care, nurturing, and even mentorship defined every house party or informal gathering, many taking place at homes or local schools. The rhythm of these recurring events built a community-wide commitment to caring for and showing up for one another.
The majority of the conversation focused on local cultural institutions and historical changes in the consistency of these events and gatherings. Educational spaces were key pillars supporting the arts on the South Side at this time, serving as hubs for parties, nurturing Afro-centric learning, and offering platforms for theatre and performance. As the center for arts in the neighborhood shifted to annual festivals, people found ways to continue knitting together their cultural fabrics. Candace shared that her bench at the DuSable Museum Arts & Crafts Festival became a meeting space for intergenerational conversation, with folks stopping by every year to talk about the festival and check in with one another. Today, many of these spaces have faded or vanished entirely. Festivals have relocated or stopped altogether, and places that are present may not be reaching everyone. The group noted that arts initiatives risk feeling disconnected from the neighborhood when they lack consistent engagement with the communities they intend to serve. This underscores the urgent need for arts-based placemaking efforts with staying power and a consistent community presence.
In closing reflections, the group emphasized the critical importance of bringing this cultural stewardship to younger generations. While the necessity of defining the historical context of these place-based changes was clear, there was a palpable concern about the potential loss of this culture in future generations, particularly given a current lack of public space for young people, in particular. Drawing on the language of transmission and reactivation, participants encouraged future rounds of similar discussions to engage young people in Washington Park, inviting them to explore and carry forward legacies of arts and culture.