Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Within the academy, modern African American history is nearly synonymous with Civil Rights Era history. Both the Movement’s transforming impact on American society and historian’s material connections with progressive activism has focused scholarly interest on African American political involvement in the fifties and sixties. Even as some historians call for geographical expansion of Civil Rights Era narratives to include activism in the north and the unique racial politics of urban areas like Chicago, work remains focused on struggles surrounding housing desegregation and electoral politics. The unfortunate by product of this political focus is that moments of community organization and cultural development unrelated to the integrationist battles of the Civil Rights Era remain obscured. This paper is about the struggle of the Chicago Urban League to inspire community organization around the cause of home grown urban renewal as a reaction to the city’s attempts to stigmatize and geographically isolate the black belt within “urban redevelopment.” By creating a contest called “Block Beautiful” in the mid-forties, the Urban League was able to inspire every day Black Chicagoans to organize themselves into mini-political groups focused on beautifying their homes, porches and apartments as well as lobbying city government for street and neighborhood maintenance. In an era when white Chicago’s anxieties over the deleterious effect of urban blight on the individual were directly linked to the perceived threat of an increasing African American population, the League’s Block Beautiful contest should be interpreted as a brilliantly discrete political project that directly involved more African Americans than the work of the NAACP and other more radical northern groups. In addition, the popularity of the contest indicates that these kinds of seemingly apolitical community activities within Black urban neighborhoods should move to the center of African American historiography rather than existing on the periphery because they produce rich source material that deals with unique class and gender issues within the community. The majority of primary sources are from the Chicago Urban League’s archives which contain pages of minute meetings on the contest, contest entry forms from nearly every year, Urban League and Chicago Planning Commission correspondence as well as contest material including flyers and pamphlets. Along with urban league material I work with Planning Commisison documents including neighborhood evaluations and maps from the late forties and fifties.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My paper compares the Chicago Tribune’s reporting of rituals surrounding executions in two periods: 1850-1900 and 1950-2000. I focus on the role of the condemned in establishing or contesting the meaning of the execution. I argue that both periods witness a struggle over the meaning of the execution. While the depiction of the condemned is always at the heart of those struggles, the condemned himself plays a different role in the two periods. In the first period the accounts of the execution ritual focused on the spiritual transformation the condemned was said to undergo in the days leading up to the execution. In contrast, the later accounts fail to present one coherent meaning for the execution. Rather, the struggle over the meaning of the execution intensified in this period and the condemned himself was given much greater latitude by the papers to present his own interpretation of this meaning. Moreover, instead of having a religious focus, the Tribune’s portrayals of the ritual during the second period emphasize the legal struggles that occurred prior to the execution. This shift in focus indicates the changing meanings of and justifications for capital punishment in the two periods studied.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Several years ago the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) announced a “Plan for Transformation” which included the relocation of all public housing residents over a ten-year period. The MacArthur Foundation is funding research to help the CHA improve the relocation process; NORC is collecting data from public housing residents to inform relocation improvements.

During the planning phase of the project various groups interested in the improvement process talked about both the benefits and drawbacks of using public housing residents to collect these data. Those in-favor of using public housing residents to collect the data argued that public housing residents are more comfortable talking to other public housing residents and more likely to honestly disclose their experiences. Those not-in-favor of using public housing residents as interviewers argued that public housing residents are angry with the CHA and may influence respondents’ answers.

NORC recruited and hired half of the interviewing staff for this project from within the CHA developments. NORC randomly assigned half of the addresses in each building to CHA resident interviewers and the other half to non-CHA resident interviewers. The paper will describe the interviewer recruiting and hiring process, the interviewer training, and the operational strategies employed during data collection. The paper will also examine and compare the data collected by CHA resident interviewers and non-CHA resident interviewers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research seeks to explain, from an organizational standpoint, the causes and mechanisms that have led to different types and levels of political mobilization of Mexican immigrant communities in Houston and Chicago. How and why is political mobilization of Mexican immigrants different in Chicago and Houston? To answer this question I develop an analytical framework that assesses the role of both local and transnational structures in the process of migrant political mobilization. The preliminary results of this research point out that a complete understanding of immigrant political mobilization must simultaneously focus on the relations of Mexican immigrants with relevant political institutions and processes in their 'home' (in this case, Mexico) and 'host' societies (the United States). Moreover, this research suggests that home state engagement with political mobilization in the host country has led to more, and not less political mobilization in the host country. This mobilization will vary significantly based on the context of reception, including the local and state level political institutions. Most scholars of immigrant political mobilization think that it is necessary and sufficient to explain ethnic political mobilization through the analysis of one group, or the interaction among relatively similar ethnic groups, within a specific local context. As a result of my work, I hope they will consider new ways of studying ethnic political mobilization through the inclusion of comparative intra-group perspectives, and through the analysis of simultaneous influence of local-urban and transnational political structures on different groups in their process of non-electoral political mobilization in the American democratic system.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Exposure to violence (ETV) is an important public health concern due to the adverse developmental impacts it can have on children and adolescents. Although many studies have made attempts to identify risk factors that increase the odds of ETV, few to date have simultaneously considered neighborhood context, family, and individual risk factors in one model. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), we assess multiple types of ETV among 9, 12, and 15 year olds residing in approximately 80 neighborhoods in Chicago. A series of hierarchical linear models (HLM) indicate that while violence and community characteristics should be targeted for prevention and intervention, individual level risks are also important. Specifically, after controlling for neighborhood risk, children/ adolescents’ with low self-control were highly likely to witness and experience violence. In addition, blacks, males, and older children from lower SES families were also at increased risk for exposure. We discuss implications of our findings and future research needs on ETV.