Urban renaissance: Auburn-Gresham residents take back their community block by block

The corner of West 79th and South Carpenter is quiet.

Gang members no longer loiter in front of Max Newsome’s dentist office.

Cars don’t fly down South Carpenter Street on drug runs.

And an abandoned apartment building that once housed prostitutes, squatters and drug dealers is now a parking lot.

But the South Side community of Auburn-Gresham wasn’t always this peaceful.

In 1998, CrimeWatch labeled the block of West 79th and Carpenter one of the worst in Chicago. The entire neighborhood, located south of Englewood, was inundated with drugs, gangs and violence.

“We felt like we were in a war zone,” said Patricia Meyers, co-owner of Eyas Developmental Institute, a pre-school and kindergarten on West 79th Street.

Meyers, whose business was near the dividing line between two gang territories, said she could only hold classes in the back of her building because the front windows were shot out.

Meyers held recess inside because the nearest park was a few blocks away. She didn’t take the kids anywhere unless they were in a vehicle, she said.

After a parent was shot picking up a child from the institute, two police officers showed up every day to walk parents and guardians to the bus stop.

Crime began trickling into Auburn-Gresham during the mid-1970s, according to Max Newsome, who has owned a dentist office on West 79th Street since 1967.

The neighborhood began to change.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church located at 1210 W. 78th Place explains:

“When the community went from a primarily white community to a primarily African-American community in the 1960s, not only did ‘white flight’ take place, businesses and economic stability left the neighborhood,” he said.

African-Americans started moving out of Chicago’s overly cramped Black Belt and into Auburn-Gresham after the Civil Rights movement formally ended segregation.

Only 0.2 percent of Auburn-Gresham’s residents were African-American in 1960. But by 1970, 69 percent of its residents were African-American, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

The transition had a tremendous effect on the neighborhood.

Racist anxieties caused many whites to leave the community. Strong establishments such as department stores, bakeries, funeral homes and theaters left with them, Pfleger said.

Property values dropped.

“People invest[ed] their whole life savings into houses and apartment buildings that were suddenly worth less overnight,” Pfleger said. “All of the sudden, schools became less quality, city services became less quality – economic base was evaporated literally overnight.”

The community was deserted; crime increased.

The increase in crime caused many young residents to flee the neighborhood. Few residents, who refused to leave their homes, were left behind.

“When that starts to happen, you don’t see consistent growth,” Pfleger said. “And the community starts to die.”

Auburn-Gresham’s former Ald. Terry Peterson (17th), who went to high school in Englewood, remembers how the neighborhood began to change.

“When I saw the community really go down was when McDonald’s moved out,” Peterson said. “79th Street was a street to be avoided. You just didn’t want to take 79th Street east or west because of the amount of violence.”

The number of young people who died from violence during the mid-1990s shocked Peterson, who became alderman in 1996.

One incident has stayed with Peterson ever since.

According to the Chicago Tribune, 8-year-old Pauline Peake went into Pat’s Food and Liquor at the corner of West 79th and South Sangamon streets to buy candy around 9 p.m. on August 2, 1999.

Four or five shots were fired outside as she stood at the counter inside the store. One of the bullets came through the store’s window and hit Peake in the chest.

Peake, an honor roll student at Kohn Elementary School, was pronounced dead at Christ Hospital and Medical Center one hour later.

“That little girl getting killed in that store at 79th and Sangamon, for me, that was probably one of the lowest points, that I can recall,” Peterson said.

Her death solidified the need for change in Auburn-Gresham.

“We just made a decision that we had to fight back,” Peterson said.

Peterson envisioned a community where residents could eat, shop, work and play, without the fear of violence, gangs or drugs.

Jasmine McCalphin, who has lived in the community since 1991, said she had her doubts about Peterson and his goals.

“I thought he was just another politician,” she said. “But when I saw the change that started occurring in Auburn-Gresham, it made me proud.”

Residents, such as MacCalphin, had a hard time believing in Peterson’s idealistic vision for Auburn-Gresham.

“When Terry started making changes here [Auburn-Gresham] you had people that would say to us, ‘Don’t lie to us, it can’t happen.’” Pfleger said.

Crime had been in the community for so long, residents became complacent. Many believed that the community would never change back to what it once was.

“I remember a lady telling us: ‘You ain’t gonna change anything. Leave the currency exchange there.’ Even though they were charging people a nickel to get change for a quarter,” Peterson said.

A few residents, however, believed.

One believer was 65-year-old Betty Jo Swanson, long-time resident and president of the 79th and Carpenter Block Club.

Swanson, for the most part, never wanted to leave Auburn-Gresham. It was her home. It was where she had raised two children.

So when crime began creeping into the community, Swanson fought back.

Both Swanson and Peterson recognized the need for strong local business. Many businesses had already left the community, but Swanson and Peterson pestered the ones who stayed.

Swanson and Peterson visited local businesses nearly every day, asking them to stay in the neighborhood.

Peterson even attended Eyas Development Institute’s pre-school and kindergarten graduations as a way to support local business, Meyers said.

Other senior citizens joined Swanson to form block clubs, attend community meetings and organize marches throughout the neighborhood.

Peterson recalls their courageousness:

“They were soldiers. They weren’t afraid. And that was just huge. You had a community meeting and they would come in – you felt a sense of responsibility to deliver,” he said.

Swanson also worked with Peterson and city officials to get an abandoned apartment building torn down on her block at the southwest corner of West 79th and South Carpenter, where prostitutes, drug dealers and squatters congregated.

Neighbors referred to the building as “New Jack City” because of the movie about drugs, gangs and violence.

Newsome, whose dentist office was across the street from the building, said patients were too afraid to come in because of the amount of loiterers who would hang out in front of his office.

After his business was broken into twice Newsome thought about relocating, but it would have been too expensive to move his office because of his dental equipment.

New Jack City was eventually torn down in 1998. The next year, Swanson and neighbors held their first NeighborWorks day and planted flowers in the abandoned lot.

But the residents living at 79th and Carpenter didn’t stop with New Jack City.

A barricade has been placed at the north end of the block, making it a cul-de-sac to prevent drug dealers from racing down the street to make drug runs.

The 79th and Carpenter Block Club also worked to get new streetlights on their block.

Peterson, a firm believer in the “broken windows” theory, said change has to start small. When people start noticing the small things, then anything can happen, he said.

“Some things take longer than others – to attract businesses, to build housing – but the things that we started trying to work on – the infrastructure, asking for more streets, more sidewalks.” he said. “I think if you go back during that time of 1996 to 2000, we probably tore down more abandoned buildings in the 17th Ward, more than any other part. They were used as drug havens [and] prostitution.”

Since then, Auburn-Gresham has acquired a BJ’s Market and Bakery at the corner of West 79th Street and Racine Avenue where an old vacant tire shop used to stand.

Across the street is a Walgreen’s where there once was a motel, which was used heavily for prostitution.

“It’s very refreshing when you go into a community meeting and they’re asking me to try to figure out how to get a Nordstrom’s on 79th Street. Fifteen years ago, I don’t think that they would have thought that they could have got some of the things that we got,” said current Ald. Latasha Thomas (17th).

While violence and crime has moved from her block, Swanson said she recognizes that the positive changes taking root in Auburn-Gresham won’t continue if other blocks don’t join in the fight.

“Mrs. Swanson was very instrumental in helping me start my block club at 78th and Peoria,” McCalphin said.

McCalphin, who met Swanson at a CAPS meeting, said Swanson quickly became her mentor.

Rev. Pfleger said Swanson is the poster child for community activism because of the changes that have occurred on her block.

Not everyone exudes Swanson’s strength and they have to be coaxed into thinking that change can happen, he said.

“When people on the block decide ‘we’re going to make this block different’ – that’s when the block starts to turn around,” he said.

Swanson said she tries to encourage other block clubs to take a stand, and has been very instrumental in helping others form their own block clubs.

The 79th and Carpenter Block Club is holding a super block club party July 12 to recognize the accomplishments its made over the last 10 years.

West 79th and South Carpenter is no longer considered one of the worst blocks in Chicago.