West Side, Chicago's ‘Other Ghetto,’ Ranks Among the Worst in Nation (Published 1975) (2024)

CHICAGO Nov. 30—At the corner of Madison Street and Central Park Avenue, a section of pool halls, taverns and onestory walk‐up apartments on the city's West Side, a young man in an ankle‐length fake‐fur coat slapped hands with three comrades as they passed around a bottle in a brown paper bag.

It was a little before noon, and they explained that they were on the block because they had nothing else to do. None had held a steady job in months, they said, and none had ever had a good‐paying one.

“In the 1960's, a lot of poverty money was poured into this area, millions of dollars that were supposed to help change all that,” said Nancy B. J. Jefferson, executive director of the Midwest Community Council. “But I see the same people standing on the same corners that I saw 10, years ago. Things are much worse now.”

The West Side is Chicago's “other” ghetto. It is not as well known as the South Side, outside Chicago but many consider it among the worst slum areas in the nation.

Hard Times Typified

Its problems typify the hard times experienced by such poor sections even under the best economic conditions. Thus, as the nation comes out of a recession, the problems in the west sides across the country continue to mount. On Chicago's West Side, the despair grows daily as residents dream of the day they can pack and get out.

“People leave the West Side ghetto and go to the South Side ghetto in an upward mobility move,” said Lucy Jean Lewis, a former antipoverty worker who was an unsuccessful candidate for the City Council. She lives in the MadisonKedzie Street area.

Farther west on Madison, which separates Chicago's north and south, Maeomia Oden lives with her five children in a small apartment in a onestory walkup. Her apartment is immaculate, her children, aged 2 to 17, are neatly dressed.

Only the television prevents the sound from the tavern below front penetrating the thin walls of the apartment. The closed windows keep out the smell from a chop suey house nearby.

Mrs. Oden, an articulate woman of 35, remembers better days on the West Side, where she moved from Alabama at the age of 7. She remembers when the West Side “was the best section of town.”

Deterioration Agonizing

Now she agonizes over the deterioration that she said occurred gradually. She hopes to move to the suburbs as soon as she gets enough money. She wants to be a beautician. She has not worked in three years and supports her family with public assistance. She is divorced.

The West Side is west of the Loop across the Chicago River between Cermak Road on the south and Kinzie Street on the north. It is much smaller than the South Side and the North Side. Its residents are much poorer. It does not possess the middle income inhabitants and influence of the other sections,

The West Side harbors all the problems of other pockets of extreme poverty that burden most big cities. Its inhabitants are depressed economically, socially and psychologically. They are politically impotent. The neighborhoods are decaying, schools are in a condition that would not be tolerated by other sections, crime is rampant, and the section suffers from neglect by governmental. and private institutions.

There have been attempts to bring change to the West Side.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tried in 1967 when he selected the section as his base of operations whence he hoped to take the civil rights movement north. He failed utterly, and the despair of West Siders infected his aides at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King's failure was due to the special character of the West Side ghetto.

“The West Side has always been a port of entry for poor, black people who came here from the South,” explained Mrs. Jefferson, who is from Paris, Tenn.

‘Southern Attitudes’

“Unfortunately, we brought a lot of those Southern attitudes in relation to whites with us. Dependency upon whites for basic needs, for example. The white political machine provides that and gets the support of blacks. Too, Southern blacks are satisfied with having very little because we never had much, so it's difficult to get much change.”

Mrs. Lewis, 45, who came to Chicago 28 years ago from Huntsville, Ala., said there was a class problem.

“Blacks on the West Side, for the most part, came from the rural areas of the South and brought few skills with them,” she said “They were very poor and used to a rural life‐style.

“Those who want to the South Side were in many cases from the cities of the South. Many of those who came to the West Side were not ready for urban living, didn't know how to live in a city.”

Blacks and other minorities make up more than 90 percent of the 180,000 residents on the West Side.

“The West Side is one of the oldest sections of the city and has been the home for several other ethnic groups. Until now it is dilapidated and rundown and just can't hold up any longer,” said one man who works on the West Side but lives on the South Side. “It is a hand‐me‐down section that blacks had to live in longer than any other ethnic group because the escape hatch to the suburbs was denied them.”

The West Side was also the stronghold of underworld bosses and shady politics and politicians. Remnants of both are still here.

Large Sections Burn

In the aftermath of Dr. King's assassination in 1968, large sections of the West Side went up in smoke. The rioting resulted in 162 buildings being destroyed by fire, 11 deaths, $9 million in property losses and an order by Mayor Richard J. Daley to the police to “shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim looters.”

“The West Side has a bad reputation from both white mafia and black militants,” said H. Sam McGrier, deputy director of the Chicago Economic Development Corporation, which is attempting to bring in new business to the West Side.

Mr. McGrier is one of the few optimists on the West Side. He feels that the section, so close to the Loop and other Near West Side developments such as the Sears Towers, University of Illinois Circle Campus and several medical instituLions, has tremendous potential. He believes there are positive signs. For example, the first black bank on the West Side in nearly 10 years is scheduled to open in February.

Hamilton H. Jenkins, who heads a job training project for the Chicago Urban League on the West. Side, said unemploy ment there was 40 percent. There are relatively few industries on the. West Side and therefore few jobs for residents.

Dropout Rate High

A report prepared last year for the Chicago Economic Development Corporation showed high dropout rates in public schools, three‐quarters of the residents failing to finish high school, large numbers of public aid recipients and a majoirty of residents making below poverty income levels.

There is fear among West Skiers that minorities will slowly be pushed out of the area to make way for public and private institutions and luxury housing for middle and upper income persons, mostly white, moving back to the city from the suburbs.

Mrs. Jefferson, whose community council is made up of 200 block clubs, said she was trying to mobilize ministers on the West Side to help save the area.

“Our main problem, though, is we don't have the organizational abilities and the sophistication to do it by ourselves,” she said. “We need the help of others.”