Media and Public Housing

Efforts To Integrate Public Housing In Chicago During The 1940's: Comparison Of Black And White Press's Coverage

Introduction

After virtually ignoring the problem of public housing in Chicago for decades, the print media in the United States sharply increased its coverage during the early to mid-1940s. This increase, and its subsequent decline and plateau, offer a view of the changing image of public housing in Chicago in America. Assuming that the media play an important role in influencing public opinion and knowledge, then certainly this shifting amount, tone, and salience of media coverage of public housing in Chicago have affected the general public's views on this issue. The media may also influence policymakers both directly and indirectly through public opinion. Indeed, all of these factors are mutually influential.

Chicago's first public lodgings tasks opened in 1937, in the midst of the large Depression. The first three projects - Trumbull Park, Julia Lathrop and Jane Addams dwellings - were established in white, working-class neighborhoods and were built to address the lodgings desires of unemployed white workers. Little vigilance had been given to the deplorable lodgings problems facing African Americans dwelling in Chicago's segregated South Side. But Elizabeth timber, the CHA's first controller, who assisted from 1934 to 1954, and her employees finally became public housing pioneers with their dream of an integrated and inclusionary public lodgings system. They were democratically progressive and clever in walking the political tightrope in Chicago's racially struggled environment.

Wood's directing principles for organizing public housing were very cautious tenant assortment, firm enforcement of directions, swift eviction of problem tenants and the promotion of community-building activities. She considered that public housing should encompass green zones and comprehensive heritage and recreation programs. Wood and her employees chartered managers who shared this vision, like OscarC. Brown, Sr., who increased up in a Mississippi sharecropping family and subsequent obtained a regulation degree from Howard University. Brown was the first supervisor of the predominately very dark IdaB. Wells convoluted when it opened in 1941. And Muriel Chadwick, who started as a clerical assistant under Elizabeth timber and worked her way up to become Deputy Comptroller, and CHA's first black executive. Of her experience, Chadwick commented, “CHA, it was a family. You didn't have administrative over here and maintenance over there…and there was a feeling amidst workers that the idea of public service actually intended something.” There was an authentic esprit de corps amidst Wood's staff and they were adept to convey it to the both very dark and white press.

A Comparison of White and Black Print Media:

Public housing in Chicago during 1940s has its roots in the urbanization of the early nineteenth century. From that time on, the theme of public housing in Chicago has received attention in popular press, spanning the decades from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, as well as in motion pictures: Charlie Chaplin in The Tramp, and more recently Dustin Hoffman and ...