How Did the University of Chicago Survive the Black Undertow in the South Side of Chicago? By Taking Tom Buchanan's Advice...

How did the University of Chicago survive the Manifest Destruction of black migrants to the south side of Chicago?

Only through the creation of a private security force – some say the second largest private police in the world to only that of the one found in Vatican City to guard the Papacy – was the U of Chicago able to keep the school in the south side of the city.

Yeah, Tom Buchanan was right about the 'rising tide of color' stuff

Well, that and some nifty zoning planes to ensure the rising tide of color (black migrants from the south) didn’t overwhelm the area and drive away a white middle-class with the crime they imported to the city [A brief history of the UCPD: "There are no firm records, it may surprise you, on the history of the Department.", Chicago Maroon, 5-25-12]:

A greater culture of safety and protection can be traced to the University’s role in urban renewal in Hyde Park and Kenwood and the creation of the South East Chicago Commission (SECC) in 1952. The 1950s saw a greater concern in safety in the area, as neighborhood residents grew increasingly concerned with the state of dilapidated buildings and unsavory businesses. “In February of ‘52, there was a faculty wife assaulted and robbed on the Midway,” said Mason, who also served as the executive director of the SECC from 1982 to 2009. “That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Numerous faculty members and senior staff members went in to see the Chancellor…and de- manded that something be done. Either move the University out of this horrible area or do something to clean [it] up.”

The institution of force was the primary mechanism to save the university; this same mechanism was instituted in Detroit (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets – STRESS), but it failed because the city had already been abandoned by too many of the people whose blood had helped build it.

White people.

White flight.

Robert Beauregard’s Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities includes a powerful quote about why cities shouldn’t be abandoned. William Zeckendorf, president of the real estate firm of Webb & Knapp believed “too much had been invested in the cities to abandon them.”

Lecturing in 1951 at the Harvard School Design, he said: “How can we keep cities that represent the toil and sweat and invested labor and capital of generations from becoming ghost towns.”
 He would close his talk by saying, “I don’t believe that cities are lost unless we are prepared to abandon them.” (p. 118)

Detroit was lost, because the people whose ancestors had toiled, sweated and invested their labor - and the capital of generations - to build, abandoned it.

But back to the University of Chicago.

In Jon C. Teaford’s “The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985,” we learn the demise of the south side of Chicago predated the institution of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” – meaning the blame for the dysfunction blacks brought to Chicago can’t be placed upon social/welfare programs.

In a short period of time, Teaford makes clear the leaders of the U of Chicago would have to enact decisions to save their university from the coming of the Black Undertow:

 At first the area’s dominant institution, the University of Chicago, refused to cooperate with the conference, but by 1952 worsening neighborhood conditions were causing a loss of faculty and students, thus requiring the university to intervene. A community activist reported that the trustees and administrators were “forced to admit that if they didn’t engage in community action, they might end up with a $200,000,000 investment in a slum, without anybody to do research or any students to educate.” Responding to the problem, the university was instrumental in organizing and funding the South East Chicago Commission headed by the university’s president. The commission stepped up pressure on the city to halt illegal conversions [illegal conversions of single-family dwellings into apartments and the threat of white flight as blacks moved into the area was the catalyst for the creation of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference], and the university’s private police force patrolled Hyde Park, supplementing the inadequate municipal protection. (p. 118)

From “The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America” we get an even clearer picture of how the University of Chicago was saved from the very threat F. Scott Fitzgerald’s supercilious character, Tom Buchanan from “The Great Gatsby,” warned about when he quoted ‘Goddard’:

Meanwhile, the University of Chicago was embarking on an even more ambitious program dedicated to saving its neighborhood for the middle class. Located in the Hyde Park district of Chicago’s South Side adjacent to Bronzeville, the university was in the path of the expanding African American community; by the late 1940s, an invasion of poor blacks seemed imminent. Responding to this threat, in 1952 the university established the South East Chicago Commission, which drafted a plan for spot clearance of the area’s most blighted structures and rehabilitation or conservation of the remaining buildings. The idea was to eliminate dilapidated housing with rents affordable to low-income blacks and upgrade or preserve the remaining dwelling units for middle-class occupants.
 In 1955 demolition began, and the following year the commission secured approval for $26 million in federal urban renewal funds. The neighborhood was not to be lily-white; middle-class blacks were not to be excluded. But Hyde Park was to remain a bastion against lower-class invaders. One comedian joked: “This is Hyde Park, whites and blacks shoulder to shoulder against the lower class.”

The measures to keep the University of Chicago safe from the black underclass – only attracted to Chicago, as they were Detroit, for the economic opportunities white people created – predate the introduction of the “Great Society” of the 1960s by a decade.

But that doesn’t compute.

Weren’t black people on the verge of becoming the model minority in America before then? Then why did the University of Chicago have to take such drastic steps to remain in the south side of Chicago as the entire community went black?

What seems like a throw-away line in Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” has lasting permanence when you consider the culture blacks brought to the south side of Chicago that the University of Chicago effectively fought against:

“The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” “We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

The Vatican has the largest private police in the world, with the task of protecting the Pope, Vatican City, and the Cardinals of the Catholic Church; the second largest private police force in the world, found in the south side of Chicago, is still tasked with protecting the students, administrators, and faculty from… the rising tide of color that gave it its birth.

All of which was prior to the institution of the Great Society…

Tom Buchanan was right, and the University of Chicago took his advice in fortifying the school from the rising tide of color that utterly submerged most of the south side of Chicago in a cocoon of violence, misery, and vice.

All of which was prior to the institution of the Great Society…