THE COMMUNITY RENEWAL SOCIETY
The 1960s were a turbulent time throughout much of America as demonstrations and violence erupted in response to racial tensions and the war in Viet Nam. In 1954, the Supreme Court had declared that educational segregation was “inherently unequal” and had outlawed segregation in the public schools through the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. Two years later, seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This incident triggered the bus boycott organized by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. These attempts to address the issue of racism in America provoked significant political, economic, and social conflict in the 1960s as growing numbers of black, brown, and white people joined together in the struggle to overcome racial segregation and discrimination.
The Society, in its commitment to work among the poor and “neglected classes,” would become deeply immersed in this struggle for human dignity and racial equality in Chicago.
The Society had always admired the East Harlem Protestant Parish project in New York City and was proud of its own West Side Christian Parish, modeled after it. There had been much contact with both the East Harlem and the Cleveland Inner City Protestant parishes, as they pioneered many of the kinds of projects that now engrossed the Society. Aware of the Society’s need for strong leadership, especially in view of its focus on the inner city, the board, in 1960, appointed as director the man who had initiated both the East Harlem and the Cleveland projects, the Reverend Donald L. Benedict.
Benedict was committed to both the church and the inner city. He wanted the Society to have a strong relationship to the established churches and their structures, but he also wanted independence so that risks could be taken in the pursuit of new and unproven ministries in the urban environment.
Benedict, who had grown up in the Methodist church, had been a pacifist during his years at Union Theological Seminary and had spent several months in jail for refusing to register for the draft during World War II. But, while in prison, Benedict was profoundly impressed by Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man, and decided to accept parole. Later he joined the Army and served in the Pacific area. After the war Benedict found himself drawn into the Congregational Christian denomination as well as into ghetto ministry.
In 1948 Benedict and William Webber began the East Harlem Protestant Parish, a Christian ministry dealing with all aspects of people’s lives in that depressed area. They were soon joined by Archie Hargraves, who would organize the West Side Christian Parish in Chicago under the Society’s auspices in 1951. After Benedict had assisted Hargraves in establishing the West Side Parish in Chicago, he returned to Harlem, then, in 1954, moved to Cleveland. Here he founded the Cleveland Inner City Protestant Parish, another project with ecumenical and church relationships that focused on ministry to the poor in depressed urban neighborhoods.
When the Chicago City Missionary Society began to search for a successor to Hansen, the Board was divided as to the direction the Society should take in its relationship to the church. Some wanted the strong independent position established by Hansen to be continued, but others wanted a renewed and stronger relationship to the churches and the denomination. Benedict was sufficiently church-oriented and yet independent enough to satisfy both sides.
Since Hansen had been very vocal in his opposition to the merger of the Congregational Christian and the Evangelical and Reformed denominations, and since the churches’ grant mortgage arrangements with the Society proved burdensome, some of them had come to resent the Society and its work. For the last seven years of Hansen’s tenure, the Society’s relationship and dialogue with the churches had become increasingly strained. Benedict would later characterize this period as an “open break” and would express his pleasure that it had been transformed into a “creative tension.”
At this time James R. Smucker became the new Associate Conference Minister for the Northeast Association (now the Chicago Metropolitan Association) and Clarence F. McCall, Jr., the new Conference Minister for the Illinois Conference. Benedict quickly established a good relationship with these two churchmen as all three were unencumbered by past conflicts. Gradually, as these leaders began to work together, the Society and the churches re-established stronger ties.
In an attempt to heal the friction over the form of the Society’s financial aid to the churches, Benedict convinced the board to give the Conference the $120,000 revolving loan fund that had been designated for new church development. The board agreed, with the stipulation that priority be given to work in the metropolitan area. In addition, it was agreed that the budget aid portion ($1.1 of the $1.3 million) of the grant mortgages held against the 65 churches would be “forgiven” and the “debt” canceled.
In 1962 the Conference approved apportionment credit for certain church giving to specified programs under Society sponsorship. In the next year the bonds with the United Church of Christ were strengthened further when Benedict became the interim director of the Urban Mission of the Church Assistance Committee, Illinois Conference. Twelve inner-city churches were under the care of this Conference urban mission program, and Benedict and the Society became involved in counseling them as well as in providing the opportunity for dialogue and mutual support. In 1966 a covenant agreement between the Association and the Society was adopted. A modification of the Society’s constitution provided that 51 percent of the board membership was to be affiliated with UCC churches and that half of the nominating committee was to be selected by the Association. Historically, the membership of the board had been drawn entirely from the Congregational churches, although a particular percentage had never before been specified. Benedict also encouraged the appointment of women, minorities, and persons from other denominations and faiths, but the UCC membership of the board has never dropped below 80 percent. The covenant agreement, which established the Society as the mission arm of the Association, has been renewed every three years.
One of the major programs of the Society when Benedict arrived was the Pleasant Valley Farm. Gunnar Peterson, director of Outdoor Education from 1958-1963, expanded the facilities of the farm and the Indian folklore and nature study activities, and created an outdoor education program that made good use of the property. Under James Mason, the Pleasant Valley Farm program changed dramatically. Mason, who joined the Society as a consultant in February 1961, became director of the farm in 1963, remaining in that post for the next twelve years. He believed that the focus should not be on escape from, but on engagement with the problems and realities of city life. Recognizing that urban people must return to their unchanged environment, he created a place for reflection on that environment, a place for learning about urban conditions and how to both live in and change them. While the camping and farming were continued, the focus changed from outdoor to urban education with emphasis on community organization, city planning, black history, and Puerto Rican and other ethnic cultures.
Improvements in the facilities had been undertaken periodically, but a major addition was made in 1964 with the purchase of two adjacent farms which brought the total area to 460 acres. The original North Farm continued the farming Operation, and the central Hilltop building, erected in 1953, remained the administrative and dining facility for the visitors, campers, and staff.
When the Society became active in a new area, ecology, in the 1970s, it launched an environmental education program at the farm with two objectives. The first was the development of the farm as a model of environmental quality in its land use, food service, farm operation, and waste disposal. The second was the inclusion of environmental education in each of the three basic program areas of the farm: in camping services for inner-city families, children, and youths; in cooperative educational programs with public and private schools; and in adult conference services with churches, community organizations, and social agencies.
In 1965 the farm served 4,980 people, but by 1972 this number had grown to approximately 15,000, including 1,000 summer resident campers, 500 resident participants in the fall-winter-spring programs, and 9,000 day field trips and day-camp visitors. With the three services of environmental education, camping, and retreats and conferences, the 9 full-time and 50 summer staff members dealt with a variety of people-all ages, races, backgrounds, and abilities.
In 1973 Pleasant Valley Farm had 96 institutions and organizations participating in its programs through cooperative arrangements; 62 of these were from within the city of Chicago. They included 8 colleges and universities; 28 elementary and secondary schools; 10 special schools and educational institutions; 15 churches and church-related groups; 17 social agencies; and 18 community and other organizations.
Onward Neighborhood House, South Chicago Community Center, and Bethlehem Community Center, comprising the Christian social institutions, were the institutions through which the Society sought to continue its ministry to needy children and families. Casa Central was associated with these agencies as one of the Society’s social welfare programs in 1964.
Casa Central functioned much like the other neighborhood centers, but as a new effort among the Latino immigrants, this program required particular care and support. Early in 1960 the Reverend Rafael V. Martinez became the director of Casa Central, and in the following year this community program was moved into the Carpenter Chapel building of the First Congregational Church at Washington and Ashland avenues. A year later, the Reverend Jose A. Torres joined the staff to become the minister to the Spanish congregation. Martinez, upon being asked by the National Council of Churches to write a book on his work with this community, took leave to complete his dissertation and resigned from the Casa program in 1963. In the following year the Reverend Daniel Alvarez became the director of Casa Central, a post he has held since then.
While cultural expression and educational programs predominated under Martinez’s leadership, a grant from the W. Clement Stone Foundation in 1961 made possible the purchase of medical and dental equipment and the establishment of a community health program. Alvarez successfully broadened Casa Central to encompass and serve the entire Latino community and to help all groups in their adjustment to a radically new culture. Concrete services such as emergency food, clothing, housing, money, and jobs were provided. Child and family welfare programs were expanded and efforts begun to create and maintain healthy and stable communities. In 1967 an outpost was established at 2150 W. Division, which in the following year became an independent agency called Allies for a Better Community. The following year, in 1968, Casa Central established its own board of directors, and having become fully independent, received considerably less aid from the Society. In 1970 Casa, with its staff of eight, moved to its present location in Logan Square at 2635 N. Kedzie. By 1980 Casa Central had a staff of 80 people concerned with a variety of programs ranging from individual counseling to neighborhood development.
The Bethlehem Church moved out of its long-standing home at 1853 S. Loomis, which had increasingly been taken over by Community Center activities in the late 1950s, and eventually found itself in a storefront at 1923 S. Loomis. There, this small church, under the leadership of the Reverend Keith Torney (who worked for the Society from 1962-1966) flourished and developed into a mini-settlement house. It enjoyed the support of 30 to 40 suburban church volunteers who tutored as many as 80 children, helped senior citizens with their shopping, assisted in the organization of cooperative buying ventures, and helped the church conduct day camp and Pleasant Valley Farm camping activities.
In 1967, as part of a general move toward a consolidation of resources, Bethlehem Church was merged with Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. The Bethlehem Community Center had merged with the Presbyterians’ Howell House as early as 1962 to form the Neighborhood Services Organization, but continued to use the original Bethlehem Church building until its roof collapsed in 1965; the building was razed in 1970. Emmanuel Church and the Neighborhood Services Organization continued to work together to serve the Mexican-American community in the Pilsen area at Racine and 18th Street. In 1968 the Neighborhood Services Organization joined United Christian Community Services, which had been formed in that year by the merging of several existing agencies engaged in the same kind of work.
Among these agencies was Onward Neighborhood House, whose facilities were owned by the Society, which also gave financial support to the services rendered to the neighborhood around 600 N. Leavitt Street. With additional help from suburban churches, including volunteers and other resources, 42 groups of children and adults had been drawn into various programs and activities, although most were child centered. When Onward House joined with several other agencies to form United Christian Community Services, the Society was able to reduce substantially the amount of financial aid to this facility and to apply those resources elsewhere.
The South Chicago Community Center also had become increasingly independent of the Society, attracting financial support from various contributors. This center responded to the needs of its neighborhood with a number of programs. The Society’s aid to the South Chicago Community Center continued until 1966, when the center merged with the Baptist South Chicago Neighborhood House and the Methodist Trumbull Park Community Center (which the Society had also aided for a time) to form the South Chicago Community Services.
A program that developed out of the desire to give ghetto children a vacation away from their world of asphalt and concrete-a world in which many spent 365 days a year-was the Friendly Town Program. Begun in the summer of 1963, this program worked closely with community and neighborhood centers and inner-city churches. Working through the established churches, it asked families to invite urban youngsters, aged 6 to 11, into their homes for two weeks during the summer. Although there were many indirect benefits to the inner-city child as well as to the host family in this experience of being together, the chief purpose was to provide a vacation for inner-city children. The program grew rapidly and in 1964, 1965, and 1966 served 304,612, and 1,037 children respectively. There was some criticism from the black community on the grounds that the program inherently promoted white middle-class culture and values and diminished the value of black culture and lifestyles. The Society responded to this criticism by transferring sponsorship of Friendly Town to a neighborhood organization in 1967.
One of Benedict’s objectives was-to initiate new ventures in ministry. Although he had the financial resources to carry this out, he first had to persuade a rather conservative board to support such efforts. Having made some headway in changing the board’s attitude, Benedict launched an exploratory program. In the spring of 1961 he hired four graduating seminarians from Union Theological Seminary to develop new approaches to Christian ministry that focused on urban needs. Several interns were engaged to assist in this endeavor, which experienced both some successes and setbacks.
One of the most unusual of the new programs was the Exploratory Program in Religious Drama, initiated in 1961 by George Ralph. The West Side Drama Work-shop at the Warren Avenue Congregational Church, 2950 W. Warren, involved the local congregation in lay acting as a unique part of the social life of the church for several years. A very strong drama group, several of whose members wrote some of the plays performed, also developed at the St. James United Church of Christ, 1722 N. Park. This neighborhood-oriented group drew on a variety of participants from the Old Town area. George Ralph organized a weekly coffeehouse in the basement of the church which featured performances of comic routines written by participants and, occasionally, concerts by blues singers. These activities ceased after the departure from St. James Church of the Reverend Stanley C. Roat, who had been a strong supporter of these innovative programs.
In the winter of 1965 the drama group was moved to the Wellington Avenue Congregational Church, 615 W. Wellington, where the St. James Players became the Chicago City Players. As the dialogue between the arts and the churches grew, many churches and other locations instituted drama programs. But Ralph was dis-appointed when the drama groups turned away from experimental work and a close grass roots church/ neighborhood orientation in the direction of community theater. Ralph’s attempts to start another drama project in a storefront location donated by the Second Evangelical United Brethren Church, near the St. James Church, were defeated by urban renewal in the area. Ralph continued to direct the Chicago City Players until 1966, when Byron William Hildreth, who had been Ralph’s assistant, took charge.
In the same year, the, Society transferred the resources it had allocated for the Chicago City Players to the Community Arts Foundation, an ecumenical organization devoted to “arts and communication” established the previous year. The Society continued to support the Community Arts Foundation until 1969, when the latter founded the Body Politic theater program. This backing became all the more important when the anticipated financial aid from ecumenical sources failed to materialize. Through its support of the foundation, the Society made a significant contribution to the rise of the small theater movement in Chicago.
Equally significant was a new publishing venture initiated under Benedict’s auspices in 1963, a magazine entitled Renewal. This publication, which grew out of the Society’s internal newsletter, was edited by Steven C. Rose, who also contributed much of the substance. An exploratory journalistic venture, it spoke directly about the challenge posed to the church by conditions in the city. The articles dealt with such pressing issues as racial integration, narcotics addiction, and the problems of welfare recipients. Several issues of Renewal centered around single themes like civil rights, women in the church, urban poverty, and capital punishment. The influence of the February 1963 issue, devoted to the latter, reached all the way to San Francisco, where the warden of San Quentin Prison’ ‘carried [it] with him to every lecture he gave on capital punishment. “Another issue of the same year, a photographic essay of the city, eventually sold 100,000 copies. By 1964, the regular circulation of the publication had risen to 30,000, with much of its readership located beyond Illinois.
In 1965 the New York City Missionary Society assumed co-sponsorship of what had become a national publication, and James McGraw joined Steven Rose as co-editor. When Rose left the Society to work for the World Council of Churches the following year, McGraw became sole editor. In 1971 publication of the magazine was transferred to New York.
During the early 1960s the Society also initiated some programs designed to help churches to relate more effectively to the needs of their neighborhoods. These included an effort in the Lawndale area, where the Reverend Louis Mitchell established the Lawndale Community Services as a coordinating and referral agency. Mitchell conducted this program from May 1961 through March 1965, when it was absorbed into the ecumenically based West Side Federation. The second effort, Cragin-Plus, was directed by the Reverend Donald Keating, who, together with Robert C. Strom, was employed by the Society to explore specialized urban ministries. In 1965 Keating began a coordinating ministry, much like the Lawndale project. He used the recently closed Cragin Congregational Church building, which the Society owned, as a base. Before long, Cragin-Plus also became an ecumenical effort.
In April 1963, William H. Cohea, Jr., a Presbyterian minister from Winnetka, presented a proposal to the Society for a project in the business and industrial areas. Reverend Cohea realized that because of the significant role they played in people’s everyday lives, it was the business and industrial communities, rather than the religious and educational institutions, that often served as the prime influences in setting values for society. As a response, Cohea set up a program to help people clarify their values in relation to their work world. This program, known as the Chicago Business Industrial Project, received strong support from the Society.
An organization of men and women from business, labor, government, education, and religion, with an elected board of managers, the project pursued two objectives: first, to provide a mechanism and motivation for individuals and groups of differing backgrounds to consider the basic demands and values of our industrial system and their impact upon people; second, to develop programs to assist the business community in responding positively to the existing urban crisis.
One such program was a series of seminars concerned with the problems of employees in increasingly automated and specialized work settings. Participants examined case histories of business situations to clarify personal in relation to organizational values. In addition, Labor-Management assemblies and Student Vocational conferences were held to increase awareness of common goals. As the value of these programs became apparent, the companies, unions, and individuals participating in them began to contribute funds to the project. In 1968 the project became an independent enterprise.
Another important focus of the Society’s work in the inner city was housing. The 1960 census revealed that 133,000 of Chicago’s low and moderate income families -comprising about a half million people -lived in substandard housing. In their work in the neighborhoods, the Society’s agencies, like the West Side Christian Parish, the Christian Social Institutions, Casa Central, and the inner-city churches, were continually confronted with this problem.
In 1962 the Society had formed a Middle Income Housing Committee. Some months later the Society hired James Twomey specifically to gather information on the housing problem. The data collected by him proved very helpful to the Middle Income Housing Committee, which, with the support of several dedicated board members, proceeded to address the complex issue of urban housing. The upshot was the incorporation in 1964 of the Community Renewal Foundation as an independent non-profit agency to carry forward the work begun by the committee.
A broad-based organization sponsored by the Society, Community Renewal focused on Section 221(d)(3) of the new Federal Housing Act of 1961 , which allowed non-profit corporations to secure long-term financing (40 years) at below market interest rates (3 percent) to develop housing for families whose incomes were above the maximum allowed for public housing but not sufficient to obtain adequate living quarters on the open market.
Negotiating its way through a maze of legal complexities, the Community Renewal Foundation developed five major programs:
1. New construction: which led to the completion of seven projects that made available 394 new units of housing with a total mortgage of $6,134,100.
2. Rehabilitation: which made available 90 refurbished rental units with a total mortgage of $1,101,419.
Each of these seven completed projects was beset by financial problems, for although rents were regulated and controlled by FHA under the 221(d)(3) program, the myriad expenses entailed in maintenance of the housing were not. The FHA Project Income Analysis and Appraisal projected taxes to be 17 percent of gross income, when, in fact, the 1970 taxes as a percent of gross income were, for the seven projects: 41 percent, 37 percent, 42 percent, 35 percent, 21 percent, 30 percent, and 31 percent. Small wonder that some slum owners did not pay their taxes, especially when tax delinquent cases were not prosecuted until after ten years of nonpayment! Although this was later reduced to five years, the “tax problem” for slum housing remained a serious difficulty. In 1972, after all the projects had been in operation from 18 months to 5 years, Community Renewal concluded that the control and regulation of rental income in the face of rising expenses provided an “almost automatic push toward default.”
And default they did, all over the city. The local real estate tax was felt to be the single most oppressive problem for owners of subsidized housing. The public housing authorities paid a flat 10 percent of gross income to the city in lieu of taxes, but the non-profit corporations, like Community Renewal, which built thousands of federally subsidized apartment units, found taxes rising to 30 percent, 40 percent, and in some cases, over 50 percent of gross income. The Community Renewal Foundation experience was typical of this city-wide problem and like many other projects with thousands of units, its seven projects defaulted and were foreclosed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
3. Receivership: The Foundation successfully obtained a $209,000 two-year grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to conduct a receivership program. As a result, three buildings under receivership were rehabilitated, providing 21 units of housing; three buildings were demolished; and seven buildings were rehabilitated by their owners or the mortgagee because of the pressure brought by the courts due to threat of receivership. Two buildings were not carried through to conclusion. The receivership program gave rise to two Constitutional questions, which were subsequently adjudicated by the Supreme Court of Illinois in a decision of January 28, 1970, on a case initiated by the Community Renewal Foundation. The court established that (a) a Court of Equity has the power to appoint a receiver to bring buildings into conformity with the building code and (b) receiver certificates, which the receiver can issue, can be made liens over all existing liens on the property. These two rulings were important in getting slum owners to fix up their buildings.
4. Legal assistance: This program was designed to insure that low-income families would have adequate legal representation on tenant/landlord problems resulting from the existence of substandard housing conditions. Although a $69,000 grant for this program was approved by the Office of Economic Opportunity in September 1966, the Corporation Council for the City of Chicago objected and the Chicago Council on Urban Opportunity failed to release the grant to the Community Renewal Foundation. The city objected to one of the provisions in the program whereby the foundation would initiate private suits against non-complying landlords to enforce the city’s building code--as an encroachment upon the jurisdiction of the city. Because the federal grant was withheld by the city, the full Legal Assistance Program did not develop, but the Taconic Foundation gave a grant of $30,248 to this effort, making a modified program possible.
At this time tenants in Chicago had no means of compelling landlords to comply with the city’s building codes. Their only recourse was to complain to the city, which would determine what action, if any, was to be taken against the landlord or building owner. This left the tenant subject to retaliation and eviction by the landlord, even though such action was illegal. To help protect exploited tenants, the Community Renewal Foundation circulated a housing complaint form through the local churches as a way of collecting anonymous complaints of specific code violations and forwarded them to the city’s Building Department. Acting in conjunction with the University of Chicago and two other organizations, Community Renewal then filed a suit to permit tenants to initiate code violation suits in equity courts.
5. Consultation: In the course of organizing and managing these housing projects, Community Renewal staff members became expert at the various complex administrative tasks connected with such undertakings. Occasionally the foundation was drawn into legal conflicts, as in 1968, when, with only one project completed, six under construction, and several in various stages of planning, Community Renewal found itself involved in three suits. In the course of dealing with these problems, Edward Billingsley, who had become executive director of the Community Renewal Foundation in 1967, and his staff of seven had developed significant expertise in the areas of urban housing, government regulations and programs, and building construction. They therefore instituted a Consultation Program through which they shared their expertise and technical knowledge with various non-profit organizations interested in housing problems. In collaboration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, and other groups, the Community Renewal Foundation continued to co-sponsor numerous housing efforts.
Community Renewal Foundation: A History in Review, published in 1972, pointed out that in pioneering this urban housing experiment the Society had done much more than create 505 units of housing; it had assisted and encouraged many other organizations to address the housing needs of urban Chicagoans.