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The gallery, which opened Oct. 17, and an upcoming café aim to make North Avenue a new cultural corridor for West Side creatives
WBy MICHAEL ROMAIN The Culture
est Side artists have a new space to showcase their creativity with the opening of Third City Studio, a contemporary gallery inside the restored commercial building at 5538 W. North Ave. The block-long structure, distinguished by its early-20th-century brick façade and tall display windows, has been rehabilitated as part of a broader effort to transform North Avenue into a destination for art, design, and community-gathering.
The studio celebrated its grand opening on Oct. 17, featuring works by nine Chicago artists: Prisma Andrade, Maude Atlas, William Baker III, Maya Bentley, Gennavieve Marion, Juan Ramon, Jeff Rivers, Nina Sun, and Caroline Suttlehan. The gallery opening marked the public debut of the North Austin Arts District, an initiative led by developer Jon Womack of Third City Properties.
Third City Studio, a nonprofit organization, will serve as an art gallery, classroom, and event space, with plans for artist residencies and youth programs. Next door, Third City Café, under construction and expected to open next year, will offer coffee, tea, ice cream, and live performances.
“The café is all about having a place where people can come, sit, talk to each other, hang out, and be welcomed
inside,” Womack said. “In the summer, kids can get ice cream from a takeout window. In the winter, people can come in for coffee and hot chocolate. We want this to be a gathering place.”
Womack said he and his partners control three large buildings along the block — roughly eight to 10 commercial spaces and nearly 100 apartments — which they hope to fill with creative tenants.
“We’re trying to attract artists and art organizations to take those spaces,” he said. “It’s a loose definition of art — a tattoo parlor, a dance troupe, a DJ, a recording studio, visual arts — but the goal is to make this a home for artists.”
The city has invested heavily in the project, with Third City Studio securing a $250,000 Community Development Grant to help cover the $365,000 gallery build-out. Third City secured a $250,000 TIF Purchase-Rehab Granto and a $215,000 Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grant to help offset the $500,000 cafe build-out, Block Club Chicago reported.
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) said the effort reflects her vision for a more vibrant, inclusive North Avenue corridor.
The Madison Street Corridor Study is seeking public input via an online survey launched in October as part of a planning initiative for a three-mile stretch of Madison Street from Hoyne Avenue to Kenton Avenue on Chicago’s West Side.
Residents, business owners and commuters are invited to weigh in on the future of the corridor, which runs through the Near West Side, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park neighborhoods.
The survey is part of a broader effort led by the Chicago Department of Planning & Development to revitalize the commercial district and address issues such as economic opportunity, land use and community amenities. The survey is open through Nov. 9.
You can take the survey at chicago.gov/city/en/sites/ madison-corridor-study/home.html
opment joined community leaders for the opening.
“This is what DCASE is about,” said DCASE First Deputy Commissioner Kim Grigsby. “In this time and space, with everything going on in the world, if we don’t pour into our community, nobody is going to do it.”
“They worked really hard to revitalize this space,” said Hannah Jones, director of the city’s Bond Better and Small Business Development programs. “It’s a beautiful building — and there are so many beautiful buildings in this neighborhood.”
25th District Commander Federico Andaverde III added that the new development signals positive momentum for public safety and community pride.
“What we are doing here now is diversifying North Avenue like the city should be,” Mitts said. “It’s no longer just an area where we see folks who aren’t thriving, buildings that are run down, stores that are closed up, and vacancies everywhere. This is an opportunity to revitalize North Avenue.”
City officials from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and the Department of Planning and Devel-
“The more places we open up, the better our community is,” he said. “Our crime is going down, and we’re looking good.”
Among those attending the opening were David Chase and Kimberly Rachal, the co-founders of the Epiphany Center for the Arts. The married couple transformed the former Church of the Epiphany at 201 S. Ashland Ave. on the Near West Side into one of Chicago’s most ambitious multipurpose arts venues. The historic building hosts six art galleries and four live music venues.
“For years, it was known as the People’s Church because of its outreach to women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community,” Chase said. “The Black Panthers used it to organize and help people.”
Among the artists featured in the inaugural show was William Baker III, whose piece “The Mental Passage” reimagines the African continent as a decorative rug with red streaks represent-
ing the Middle Passage. The face of Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey dominates the southern edge of the work.
“We took a bunch of items from a home and created narratives through rugs and furniture,” Baker said. “This piece is about Marcus Garvey saying we have to go back to Africa because America ain’t for us.”
Community leader Malcolm Crawford, the executive director of the African-American Business Networking Association (AAABNA) who helped brand the West Side’s business corridor as Soul City, said the addition of Third City Studio represents the district’s continued evolution.
“Soul City went from being a corridor to the Soul City District, from North Avenue to Madison and Austin to Cicero,” Crawford said. “There’s starting to be a change happening in our community — and it starts with all of us.”
Learn More about Third City Studio at thirdcitystudio.org
ABy MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
rtist Theaster Gates has long been preoccupied with the city, not just as a built environment but as moral and imaginative terrain. In his latest exhibition, OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY, now on view at GRAY Chicago — 2044 W. Carroll Ave. in East Garfield Park — through Dec. 20, Gates turns that fixation inward, transforming tar, stone, and clay into a meditation on memory and renewal.
The show takes its title and inspiration from “City Promenade,” a song by North Lawndale native and poet/musician/singer-songwriter Marvin Tate, who performed the piece during the exhibition’s opening on Oct. 16. His performance — part lament, part incantation — was as much séance as concert. At one point, Tate broke into a spontaneous dance with a member of the audience, blurring performer and participant, art and life.
“It’s an old song I did years ago that Theaster dug up,” Tate said. “It’s about asking someone to come back to the city, whatever that means collectively or individually. A ghost perhaps, longing for you to come back — a seduction, an apparition reaching to the past and beckoning you to return.”
Tate’s lyrics — “Oh, you’ve got to come back to the city, the place where you belong … the city of dreams” — echo through the gallery like a civic hymn. They become a framework for Gates’s exploration of what it means to dwell amid the remnants of urban life.
“In some ways,” Gates said during the opening, “this work, this question of the city, has everything to do with the things I saw growing up on the West Side — the removal of buildings, the complexity of a city that has a lot of love and a lot of challenges at the same time.”
Born and raised on Chicago Avenue and Pulaski, an area that straddles the border between Humboldt Park and West Garfield Park, Gates is perhaps the city’s most sophisticated mythologist.
For two decades, he has transformed abandoned buildings into spaces of culture and commerce — the Stony Island Arts Bank, the Dorchester Projects — and has turned the very materials of Black life into high art.
His practice, as GRAY’s exhibition text notes, “contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise — one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the
In
a symbolic homecoming, Gates partners with fellow West Sider Marvin Tate at GRAY Chicago to reimagine urban decay as a site of memory
Visitors explore
tactics of a pragmatist.”
In OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO
THE CITY, Gates assembles a new family of materials from his “stone repository” — marble, granite, scholars’ rocks, concrete — into a grid-like installation that evokes both the rational logic of city planning and the quiet,
somber order of memorials.
On each stone rests a ceramic vessel or sculptural form — relics that evoke the tools, vessels, and fragments left behind by a city’s former inhabitants, artifacts of lives once lived and now forgotten. The installation’s solemn geometry recalls a graveyard — a metaphor
Tate himself invoked.
“It’s like a graveyard,” he said. “At the start of the song, I’m ringing the bells as the town crier — to wake the town up. The words were: ‘Lock all your windows, shut all your doors, hide all your art!’ Whatever that means to you, I’m here to seduce you.”
Around the central installation, a suite of new tar paintings extends Gates’s ongoing experiment with “patching and bonding” — a technique that reimagines the repair work of roofing and road maintenance as a painterly gesture. Thick, black surfaces ripple with light and texture, alternately evoking asphalt and skin, city and body. The effect is both formal and visceral — a meditation on endurance.
If Gates’s earlier work sometimes risked over-aestheticizing ruin, here the tone is more elegiac than heroic. The show’s emotional key is set not by grand transformation but by quiet persistence — the endurance of form, material, and memory amid inevitable
decline. Gates seems less interested in saving the city than in listening to what its ruins have to say.
The collaboration with Tate deepens that inquiry. The two artists — both sons of the West Side, both fluent in the poetics of reclamation — mirror each other’s sensibilities.
Tate, who grew up at 18th and Homan and now works with Theater Y, 3611 W. Cermak Rd. in South Lawndale, described the song as “a
black-and-white movie, but with a Black man in it.” His Oct. 16 performance collapsed nostalgia and critique, centering on an imaginative urban space that grapples with the concrete social realities of gentrification—realities that, like dreams, remain steeped in abstraction. The interplay between Gates’s monumental restraint and Tate’s improvisational vulnerability gave the public reception its pulse. Gates’s stones stood as silent witnesses to the histories
Tate animated through voice and gesture. Together they construct a theater of longing — a place where the ghosts of a city still call its people home.
In the end, OH, YOU’VE GOT TO COME BACK TO THE CITY feels like a duet between two artists who understand the seductions and sorrows of belonging. The city they summon is not simply Chicago but every city that has tried, and failed, to love its people enough.
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
After a widely shared video showed a Black man being choked by federal agents on Chicago’s West Side earlier this month — an incident that prompted outrage and calls for transparency — members of the Westside Branch NAACP took to the streets of West Garfield Park to check in with their neighbors.
Their goal was to listen, educate, and remind residents that civil rights are defended not only in courtrooms, but on city blocks.
On Oct. 16, roughly a dozen volunteers gathered at the Garfield Park Gold Dome Fieldhouse, 100 N. Central Park Ave., before splitting into teams to canvass the neighborhood.
“We split up roughly a dozen people into two teams to gauge community members about how they feel about the recent federal law-enforcement presence here,” said Janeicia Williams, a member of the branch.
“We’re gauging, not arguing — and letting people know some U.S. citizens have been taken. … If folks don’t see that this affects all of us, we have to help them see that. We’re not just out here protesting; we’re building awareness, one door at a time.”
Canvassers distributed flyers outlining residents’ rights if detained by federal agents and connected households with legal-aid contacts from the Westside Justice Center and the Freedom Defense Center of Austin. A mobile app helped track which homes had been reached.
The NAACP’s campaign follows a string of reports about increased federal law-enforcement activity across parts of the West Side
Residents are being urged to learn their legal rights in any encounter with federal agents. According to the NAACP’s Know Your Rights guidance:
• You have the right to remain silent and may say, “I’m exercising my right to remain silent.”
• Stay calm and do not run away.
• You can demand a warrant signed by a judge before allowing anyone into your home; an administrative warrant is not enough.
• You have the right to speak with a lawyer and should not sign anything without legal advice.
• You may record interactions with federal agents so long as you do not interfere with an arrest.
• U.S. citizens are not required to present ID except when driving.
• Non-citizens still have the right to remain silent and to respectful treatment under the law
— activity that has unsettled many residents and community leaders.
Princess Shaw, founder of Light Up Lawndale, said the experience revealed both anxiety and determination.
“When we went out door-knocking in an earlier canvassing event, it was enlightening what people thought about the National Guard,” she said. “For me, it’s how do we tap into this potential of people who want to help?”
For those looking to engage further, the Westside Branch NAACP meets the first Saturday of each month at 1 p.m. at the Sankofa Cultural Center, 5820 W. Chicago Ave. To learn more or get involved, visit cwbnaacp.org
On the West Side, Congressmen Jonathan Jackson and Danny K. Davis warn Supreme Court case could erase hard-won Black representation
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
Culture
During separate appearances on the West Side this month, U.S. Reps. Jonathan Jackson and Danny K. Davis urged residents to pay close attention to a Supreme Court case they say could roll back decades of progress in Black political representation.
The justices heard oral arguments on Oct. 15 in Louisiana v. Callais, a dispute testing whether the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana — ordered by lower courts to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — is itself unconstitutional.
If the court sides with Louisiana, civil rights advocates warn, it could strike a further blow to the law’s already-fragile protections. The court effectively gutted Section 5 in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, ending the requirement that states with histories of discrimination seek federal approval before changing voting laws. Since then, Section 2 has been the main tool left to challenge racial vote dilution — and Callais could sharply limit it.
Speaking at the Leaders Network’s monthly meeting Oct. 14 at the Columbus Park Refectory, 5701 W. Jackson Blvd. in Austin, the South Side congressman delivered a strong warning about the case and the grim reality of today’s civil and voting rights landscape.
“It has everything to do with your voice — your vote,” Jackson said. “The Democrats are running a campaign. The Republicans are running a crusade. I’m 59, born in 1966. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. I’m the first generation of African Americans born with
equal rights. I’m trying not to tear up, because my daughter has fewer rights today than I did growing up in my lifetime.”
A week later, after appearing at the grand opening of the Avenue Apartments in Austin, West Side Rep. Danny K. Davis echoed Jackson’s concerns but expressed cautious optimism about the judicial process.
“I’ve got faith in the judiciary,” Davis said. “I maintain it. I put my faith in their analysis of the situation and that the outcome will be fair.”
A joint report by the Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action estimates that curtailing Section 2 could cost the Congressional Black Caucus up to 30 percent of its seats and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus roughly 11 percent, as states redraw maps without federal guardrails. At least 19 U.S. House seats currently protected by Section 2 could flip under new maps.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in June 2026, just ahead of the midterm elections — timing that could immediately reshape the national political map.
For both congressmen, the warning delivered on the West Side carried the same message: Louisiana v. Callais is not only about district lines, but about whether the last meaningful safeguard of the Voting Rights Act will survive.
“It would be a seriously negative outcome,” Davis said when asked what a ruling in favor of Louisiana would mean. “I think it would dampen the spirit and meaning of our country.”
2025-2026 | At a Crossroads | In Louisiana v. Callais , the Court revisits how race be used in redistricting. According to reports, Democrats could lose 19 U.S. House seats if the Supreme Court guts Section 2. “I think there is an absolute targeted attack on Black representation. African-American representation," Rep. Davis told Politico.
2025 | Black representation spans every level of government—now under renewed legal scrutiny in Louisiana v. Callais. There are between 10,000 and 11,000 Black elected officials nationwide.
2020 | Section 2 remains central to representation; about 60 Black members serve in Congress. There are over 10,000 Black elected officials nationwide.
1986 | The Supreme Court case Thornburg v. Gingles sets the standard for proving vote dilution; wave of new districts follows. There around 4,000 Black elected officials nationwide.
1990s | Court-ordered redistricting creates hundreds of new majority-Black local and state districts. There are over 7,000 Black elected officials nationwide. West Side Congressman Danny K. Davis, pictured above and elected in 1996, is among them.
1970 | Early Section 2 cases begin reshaping local election systems, especially in the South. There are around 1,500 Black elected officials nationwide.
1965 | In 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act passed, there were six Black members of Congress (all serving in the U.S. House of Representatives). Rep. William Dawson , pictured left, who represented Chicago's 1st District, was among them. Before the Voting Rights Act, there were 300 Black elected officials nationwide, most of them in in the North. Virtually none were in the South.
By MICHAEL ROMAIN The Culture
I interviewed Ali Kleiche, the owner of Mafunzo International Fitness, at the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market on Oct. 16. Kleiche spoke about the origin of his business, his Moroccan roots, and his mission to combine food, fitness, and consciousness to heal the West Side.
Iwas born in Morocco. I came to the U.S. as a teenager. When I got here, I was just trying to find my place. I went to Harold Washington and graduated from Chicago State. Now, I’m proud to call the West Side home.
My business is called Mafunzo International Fitness. Mafunzo means “the gorilla” in Swahili — one of the main languages spoken across Africa. The gorilla represents strength and resilience, and that’s what I want to bring to our people here.
I combine high-vibrational food — real food that heals — with physical training, boxing, and self-defense to promote wellness in the community. I also mentor youth through gardening, farming, and boxing. You can build all the programs you want, but if the kids don’t eat right, their brains can’t function right. You can put all the money in the world into a community, but if people aren’t eating food that heals and raises their vibration, it won’t change much.
I’ve gone through my own challenges — alcoholism, losing family members — and I learned that the best way to get back up is to eat clean, raise your consciousness, and stay grounded. Once you start doing that, you move differently.
I’ve been running Mafunzo for about four years. I used to work for the Chicago Park District as a boxing instructor. Now I do this full-time. I’ve taken kids from the West Side to state championships in boxing — kids who never thought they’d leave their block. I even took some to Colombia. They met Black people there who looked like them, who embraced them. It changed how they saw
the world.
Business is good, but it’s not easy. Cooking healthy food takes time — sourcing ingredients, prepping, cleaning, renting kitchens. But I love it. I make kale salads, beans, cabbage, broccoli — simple food that heals. Olive oil and lemon juice, no heavy dressing.
My dream is to open a brick-and-mortar spot on Chicago Avenue — a place where we can train, eat, and learn together. A clean, positive space for the community.
What I love about the West Side is the energy — the culture, the music, the resilience. Despite all the stereotypes, this place has soul. House music came from here. Dr. King came here in the summer of 1966. The Black Panthers organized here. You can feel the spirit of the people.
I tell the people, ‘Know your history. If you don’t, others will volunteer to tell you who you are.’
From barbers and bakers to tech founders and corner-store owners, The Grind explores how West Side entrepreneurs are redefining what it means to build something lasting. Each installment profiles local innovators whose businesses strengthen the fabric of Austin, North Lawndale, Garfield Park, and beyond — creating jobs, community spaces, and new possibilities. Through their stories, The Culture chronicles not only how people work, but why they keep grinding for the neighborhoods they call home.
If you know a business or social entrepreneur you want us to profile, send us a tip at stories@ourculture.us.
By MICHAEL ROMAIN The Culture
Margaret Jefferson, is the author of “A Heart That Will Never Heal,” a book drawn from her harrowing experience of surviving a stabbing by the father of her only child, 3-year-old Javion, who was later killed by his father.
Today, Jefferson channels her pain into purpose, educating young people about domestic violence and the warning signs she once missed. She shared her story with The Culture after speaking at Chicago’s Youth Summit on Oct. 18 at Intentional Sports, 1841 N. Laramie Ave. The event was hosted by 37th Ward Ald. Emma Mitts and Latonya Mitts, a candidate for the 8th District Illinois House seat currently held by Rep. La Shawn K. Ford.
The first time he hit me, he punched me and blacked my eye.
I told myself I was done, but then I found out I was pregnant. And when you’re 20 and pregnant, you start asking yourself, ‘Do I really want to send the father of my child to jail? Can I fix this?’
I met him when I was 19, and at first, everything seemed fine. But after that first time, things started to change. People say, “Just leave,” but it’s more mental than that. It messes with your mind. You start to believe the lies. You think you can change him. And when your friends are going through their own things, it starts to feel normal. But it’s not.
We were together for five years. There’d be the honeymoon phase, the apologies, and then the violence again. I didn’t understand that abuse could take so many forms — emotional, financial, verbal, even spiritual. It wasn’t just the hitting. It was control.
In 2011, everything ended. He raped me and stabbed me five times inside an apartment in Austin. I remember crawl-
ing to the window, bleeding, trying to yell for help. I fell from the second floor into the street. I was naked, disoriented, and couldn’t get back inside because the steel door had locked behind me.
An off-duty police officer stopped to help, and I was taken to the hospital. That’s where I learned my son, Javion, was gone.
Healing has taken years — therapy, prayer, and meditation. I know now that God left me here for a reason and that’s to be a voice for others. To let people know they can get out before it’s too late. I wrote my book, “A Heart That Will Never Heal,” because I wanted to leave something behind that could make an impact. I wanted people to understand what domestic violence looks like — and that it’s not just happening to women. It happens to men, too.
Today, I educate young people about the signs I missed, about how love isn’t supposed to hurt. I tell them, ‘If something feels off, it probably is. You don’t have to wait until it’s too late.’
My son isn’t here physically, but he’s always in my heart. That’s a heart that will never fully heal — but it still beats for a purpose.
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
Ivisited the historic Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church in North Lawndale for the first time on Oct. 19 — the lone Black tourist in the church for the annual Open House Chicago architecture tour.
It was a Sunday, and service was happening, so we were only allowed to gawk from the synagogue’s old balcony. Below, a visiting preacher’s voice thundered in a moment so intense I thought it might rattle some of the white visitors tracing the gilded capitals and Hebrew inscriptions with their eyes, pausing over placards and photographs that link the space to Martin Luther King Jr., who was close to the church’s founding pastor, the Rev. J. M. Stone.
Considering the weight of all this history — the grainy monochrome photos of King and Stone now carrying the aura of the Sphinx — it’s easy to be fooled into thinking it all happened inevitably. But it takes reading, and reading certain books, to realize that, to the contrary, this history emerged from a highly contingent, accidental, and messy present.
A 40-year-old today stands as close to King’s assassination as to the election of the first Black president. That fact has been in my head since that Sunday — the realization that the movement King embodied isn’t ancient history but a living, unstable story still unfolding through people very much like us.
The journalist John A. Williams understood this well. In The King God Didn’t Save, published in 1970, he stripped away the glow of sainthood to show us the human King and the unique moment that produced him — fragile, divided, and uncertain.
Williams quotes the influential Black journalist Louis E. Lomax, a close King collaborator, who said it’s no “detraction from Martin to say that but for the news media he would have remained an unsung clergyman.” Major
white media outlets were starting to hire Black journalists for the first time and beginning to master the distracted attention economy we now take for granted. Back then, television was still a novelty, and it could be used by King and other movement leaders to great tactical effect, particularly when stories had clear heroes and villains.
Had Montgomery’s leaders been a little smarter and hip to the new technology’s power to persuade, we might be as oblivious to King and the famous boycott as we are to
its Louisiana predecessor. Two years before King and Rosa Parks became the face of U.S. civil rights, the Rev. T. J. Jemison — like King, a “charismatic minister and newcomer to the city” — led a Baton Rouge bus boycott that resulted in the city agreeing to “provide Black patrons with better — yet still segregated — seating arrangements.”
In Montgomery, the boycott leaders’ demands were just as conservative. Black riders were just asking not to have their heads knocked off by indignant drivers. They also wanted Black drivers hired on routes through all-Black neighborhoods and first-come, firstserved seating within the segregated section
of buses, Glenn Eskew writes in his 1997 study But for Birmingham.
In effect, boycott leaders were asking “for what they had been getting all along, with minor modifications,” Williams writes. But “the stupidity and short-sightedness of the Montgomery city officials forced the MIA [the Montgomery Improvement Association] to take its case to higher courts, and on Nov. 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of the U.S. District Court that Alabama’s state and local laws, which embodied racial segregation throughout public accommodations, were unconstitutional.
“So, ironically, the segregationists helped to create Martin King, the public man.”
After King’s success in Montgomery, activists like Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker urged him and his fellow ministers to pivot from the MIA to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The successor group was formed in 1957 to support other local civil rights groups across the nation that were engaging in direct-action protests.
For the next few years, however, the SCLC floundered. There weren’t many direct-action protests happening nationwide. What’s more, the group of preachers was feuding with the NAACP, the granddaddy of the civil-rights organizations, whose leader, Roy Wilkins, was more than a little jealous of King. And, as Williams observes, King was a poor organizer whose ego couldn’t accommodate equals who might outshine him. It was all a hot mess. Across the country, the “Black masses” — those not part of the elite or middle class — ignored both the NAACP and the SCLC (not unlike today).
And then Birmingham called. Despite being on the cover of Time magazine, the SCLC’s failures had caused King’s reputation to take a serious hit. When Birmingham activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth called asking the SCLC to help them fight for equal rights in public accommodations in the
The Quiet Before is a column about attention, thought, and the demystification of history and everyday life — and about the slow, communal work of reading and writing, the necessary and sufficient conditions for meaningful social change. It lingers in the spaces where reflection still matters — where taking time to think is its own quiet form of resistance.
small city, King felt he had no choice but to go and attempt to restore his name. Once again, King and the movement encountered the heroic villainy of stupid racists.
This time, the cruelty took the form of Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, whose stupidity and zealotry led him to unleash dogs and fire hoses on women and children. It proved spectacular political theater and softened the ground for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Had Connor been half as smart or as slick as Old Man Daley — who outmaneuvered King during his Chicago campaign, now largely deemed a failure by historians — we might not know King’s name today.
President John F. Kennedy once quipped that Connor “has done more for civil rights than almost anybody else.” That may, indeed, be the case.
Kennedy may have meant it as a joke, but it lands closer to a prophecy. So much of what we call progress has depended on the arrogance, the blindness, or the sheer stupidity of men like Bull Connor — men too small-minded to imagine the scale of the change they were helping to bring about. History keeps stumbling forward on such accidents of character.
I thought about that as I stood in Stone Temple’s balcony, looking down at the congregation swaying to the preacher’s voice, the same way they must have swayed when King preached there nearly 60 years ago. The tourists beside me were still snapping photos of the gold-leaf capitals and Hebrew inscriptions, but below them, the sound of praise was shaking the floorboards — the living city humming alongside the story we think we already know.
That’s the danger of history told too neatly: it hardens into architecture, into plaques and bullet points, when in truth it’s still breathing, still accidental, still waiting for someone, however imperfect, to answer the next call.
After $2M remodeling effort, the building at 5246 W. Chicago Ave., once known disparagingly as ‘The Carter,’ now houses 20 affordable, modernized units
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
Community leaders, residents, and elected officials gathered Oct. 20 at 5246 W. Chicago Ave. to celebrate the grand opening of the Avenue Apartments — a once-blighted property that has become a symbol of transformation on the West Side.
For years, the building was notorious in the neighborhood, known derisively as “The Carter,” a reference to the drug-ridden apartment complex in the 1991 film New Jack City. On Monday, the crowd outside the restored brick structure
cheered as speakers described the redevelopment as a hardwon victory for Austin.
“This is not ‘The Carter’ anymore,” said Rosie Dawson, property director for the Westside Health Authority (WHA), the Austin nonprofit behind the redevelopment. “This is the Avenue Apartments — and all we ask is that Austin take care of it.”
Dawson, who led the nine-year, $2 million rehabilitation effort, said the project cost less than demolition and represents a promise kept to the neighborhood. The building features 20 one- and two-bedroom units renting between $1,400 and $1,600 a month — far below market rates for comparable apartments.
WHA, which also owns the site of Forty Acres Fresh Market and the adjacent PNC Bank branch a few blocks west, has positioned the Avenue Apartments as part of a broader campaign to stabilize Chicago Avenue’s “Soul City Corridor.”
Malcolm Crawford, executive director of the Austin African American Business Networking Association and the lead advocate for the Soul City Corridor, said the Avenue Apartments are the latest sign of progress along the state-designated cultural district.
The corridor — which traditionally spanned Chicago Avenue from Cicero Avenue to Austin Boulevard — recently expanded its boundaries to span Madison to Division streets between Cicero Avenue and Austin Boulevard.
Now an official state cultural district, which makes it eligible for state funding and other opportunities, the corridor has seen a wave of new investment and infrastructure upgrades — from city-funded streetscape improvements to the recent opening of Third City Studio, an arts hub on North Avenue that anchors a planned creative district.
“This isn’t just about a building,” said Vanessa Stokes, who owns VS Creative Consulting, is part of the Third City Studio development team, and whose planning to open Outwest Cafe & Art Gallery across the street from the apartments next year. “It’s about transformation and community. We’re seeing the impact of vision and investment come to life.”
Justin Hill, WHA’s research and policy analyst and the manag-
er of Special Service Area 72, where the building is located, said the building is an example of the nonprofit’s history of development on the West Side.
“This is beautiful and a testament to what the Westside Health Authority has been doing for 37 years,” Hill said. “And I hope this is a testament to what we can build together in this neighborhood in the future.”
Morris Reed, WHA’s CEO, said the organization was determined to save the structure for the community despite pressure to demolish it.
“To quote the famous Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘We are each other’s business; we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s magnitude, and bond,’ Reed said. “When you invest in people, people invest back.”
The project’s general contractor, Kareem Broughton, who owns Structure Re-Right, emphasized that the construction process itself became a source of pride, employing local Black tradesmen and apprentices.
“We had Black men working on every part of this building — from carpenters to plumbers to electricians,” Broad said. “They
saw what it means to rebuild something for your own neighborhood.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson called the project a model of community-driven revitalization and tied it to his administration’s broader housing and economic development agenda. His administration has launched a $1.25 billion Housing & Economic Development Bond over five years — touted as among the largest such investments in Chicago’s history.
“This project reflects Austin’s history of organizing and resilience,” Johnson said. “Affordable housing is about more than shelter — it’s about dignity and stability. Downtown investments are finally making their way to the West Side.”
The mayor said the redevelopment project received over $950,000 in funding through the city’s TIF Purchase-Rehab Program, a $93,000 Small Business Improvement Fund grant through the Department of Planning and Development, and another $250,000 through an Equitable Transit-Oriented Development grant.
State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford (8th), who represents the area, praised the project as a turning point for a corridor long plagued by disinvestment.
“If you’re from the West Side, you know what was going on in this corridor,” Ford said. “Today is a different day. The cameras are here not because someone was killed or overdosed, but because someone was intentional about making life better.”
Ford also highlighted Dawson’s persistence and called for continued state support to expand affordability.
“We have to make sure landlords can make it work,” he said. “Projects like this show what happens when responsible landlords and public investment come together.”
The building’s first floor houses The Avenue Q and Kitchen, a new restaurant opened this summer by local entrepreneur Obidise Smith, who credited WHA for helping him secure the location.
“I watched them tear a building down, A group of men in a busy town. With a heave and a ho and a lusty yell, They swung a beam, and a side wall fell.
I asked the foreman, ‘Are these men skilled? The kind you’d hire if you wanted to build?’ He gave a laugh and said, ‘No, indeed— Unskilled labor is all that I need. I can wreck in a day or two What builders have taken a lifetime to do.’
And I thought to myself as I went my way, Which of these roles am I prepared to play? Am I a builder who works with care, Measuring life by the rule and square?
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town, Content with the task of tearing down?”
— A poem recited by Congressman Danny K. Davis during the Oct. 20 grand opening of The Avenue apartments in Austin.
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) called the project proof that neighborhood investment and faith can coexist.
“I just get excited to see change,” Mitts said. “I get excited to take down old things and put in new stuff. In everything we do, we have to give honor and praise to God. That’s what allows us to see not with the natural eye, but with the inner eye … Seeing that we can have Black contractors working on projects in our neighborhood. Seeing that we can have a mayor who is from the neighborhood, investing in our neighborhood.”
After the ribbon was cut, residents toured the bright, newly finished apartments, each outfitted with stainless-steel appliances, in-unit laundry, and modern security systems, among other amenities.
The ceremony ended with a prayer from the Rev. Robbie Wilkerson, owner of Spill the Beans Café, located down the block at 5300 W. Chicago Ave.
“Today we gather here in Austin on the West Side of Chicago, standing on what we claim to be holy ground,” Wilkerson said.
“To celebrate the grand opening of this affordable housing facility, a beacon of stability, health, and dignity for our community. May this facility not only provide shelter, but also peace, healing, and opportunity to all who dwell within its walls.”
Westside Health Authority is taking applications from potential tenants in person at the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation, 5500 W. Madison St., or by phone at (312) 224-4672.
shares holiday-ready techniques for juicy turkey, perfect stuffing, and foolproof barbecue
By MICHAEL ROMAIN The Culture
Several weeks before Thanksgiving, South Side Pitmaster Daniel Hammond made a trip to the West Side during the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market at Austin Town Hall Park, 5610 W. Lake St., on Oct. 16, to school community members on the science — and soul — behind cooking the perfect bird.
Between jokes and bursts of flame, he shared techniques for keeping turkey moist and flavorful — and offered broader lessons for anyone tending a grill.
“Turkey isn’t naturally dry,” Hammond told the crowd. “People are just overcooking it. You want a moist turkey? Don’t overcook it. That’s it.”
Hammond said the most common mistake home cooks make is roasting turkeys at low temperatures for too long. “I always say, do not cook your turkey low and slow — go hot and fast,” he said.
He starts his bird at 400 to 450 degrees to achieve color and crispness, then lowers the temperature once the breast hits 165 degrees Fahrenheit. He covers the breast with a foil triangle brushed in olive oil, drops the grill to 300 degrees, and lets the rest of the bird — the legs, thighs, wings, etc. — catch up.
“The breast tends to cook faster than the rest of the turkey,” he said. “That’s why people end up with dry white meat and underdone dark meat. You’ve got to start hot, get your color, and then protect the breast so the rest can finish.”
He said the same principle applies to chicken breast, which dries out quickly if left too long on the heat.
“Chicken breast and turkey breast both tend to dry out faster than the rest,” he said. “So you want to watch your temps — 165 degrees and you’re done.”
For a 15-pound turkey, Hammond said the process takes roughly three hours.
Hammond’s commentary drew laughter as he reflected on traditional Thanksgiving tables.
“You know why gravy is a thing now?” he said, smiling. “Gravy wasn’t for no reason — it’s to cover up something, just like barbecue sauce. Folks were drying out their turkey, and gravy came to the rescue.”
He cautioned against stuffing too early, too.
“A lot of people put the stuffing in at the same time they start the turkey,” he said. “Then everything dries out — your bird and your bread. That’s where the problems start.”
Hammond’s solution? Wait until midway through the cook. Once the breast is covered with foil and the temperature has been lowered to around 300 degrees, that’s when he stuffs the cavity.
“By then, the bird has gotten its color and the breast is protected,” he said. “Now the dressing can cook slowly and evenly without drying out.”
He told the crowd to think of the timing as a two-part process — a high-heat sear followed by a gentle roast. The first stage locks in moisture; the second brings the turkey and stuffing to a tender finish.
“You want that juicy turkey, moist stuffing, and that perfect blend where the two kind of melt together,” he said.
While he spoke about cooking the perfect holiday birds, Hammond used the demo to teach the fundamentals of grilling other meats — in this case, a batch of chuck eye steaks and chuck roast.
“These are chuck eyes and chuck roast,” he said, holding one up to the crowd. “I’m cooking them like a steak.”
He checked the internal temperature with his digital thermometer, noting that his grill had reached about 400 degrees.
“That’s a sweet spot,” he said. “You want that color, that sizzle.”
The key, Hammond explained, was knowing when to sear and when to rest. He placed a pat of butter on each steak and let it melt down toward the coals before pressing the meat briefly over the center grate — a searing insert built into his 26-inch Weber kettle.
“The butter’s on this side, so if I want to sear
About the Pitmaster
A Chicago native, Hammond blends artistry, education, and deep respect for barbecue history. Before launching Smoky Soul Barbecue in 2013, he worked as a special-education teacher. In 2021, he won the Kingsford Preserve the Pit grant, recognizing African Americans making their mark in barbecue.
Make your holiday table unforgettable with Smoky Soul Barbecue — from signature smoked turkeys and brisket to capon, Cornish hens, and classic sides that feed the whole family.
Pre-order today to lock in your spot before they sell out, and ask about the special discount for the first five Thanksgiving orders placed.
Visit smokysoulbbq.com to order and view the full holiday menu.
it real good, I need that butter hitting the fire,” he said. “You only need about a minute, maybe a minute and a half on each side. Let the fire do the work.”
He then demonstrated how to test doneness by touch — pressing the meat and comparing it to the soft base of the thumb.
“That’s how you know you’re close to medium,” he said. “That little spot right there — that’s what you’re looking for.”
But that’s only if you’re cooking without what he called a griller’s best friend—a meat thermometer.
“Somebody says they want medium?” he said. “Don’t just guess — make sure.”
When the steaks were finished, Hammond told the crowd to resist the urge to cut into them immediately.
“Let the meat rest,” he said. “You’ve got to give the juices time to settle. Don’t rush it.”
As flames leapt from the coals, he reminded the crowd that flavor often comes from fat and fire interacting.
“See that flare-up?” he said, grinning. “That’s just the fat talking back to you. That’s flavor.”
He shrugged off the obsession with grill marks, too.
“Grill marks are cute,” he said. “They look nice in a photo. But as long as it tastes good and it’s cooked right, that’s all that matters.” He told the audience that indirect heat — cooking meat off the fire — is the hallmark of the best barbecue.
“Ribs deserve to be cooked indirectly and slowly,” he said. “You want the best product? Go indirect. Let the fire kiss it at the end for a little crisp.”
Domestic violence rates have spiked since the pandemic — just as funding for victim services has fallen
By MICHAEL LIPTROT Block Club Chicago
A new community center for survivors of domestic violence and other gender-based abuse has opened on the West Side — just as funding to address such violence continues to decline.
The Chicago Advocacy Network for Hope, or CAN Hope, opened Oct. 14 at 3410 W. Van Buren St. in East Garfield Park. Billed as Chicago’s first “family justice center,” the facility offers a single location where families affected by domestic and sexual violence can access counseling, legal advocacy, housing support, and other essential services.
Staff and local leaders — including Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke — praised the center’s launch, saying it will help address rising domestic violence rates citywide.
“CAN Hope is more than just a program; it’s a promise that adult survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking have one safe place to turn to for care,” said Char Rivette, CEO of the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center, which operates the new facility.
“It’s a promise to the children in our care that we’re working to break cycles of violence in their homes and communities,” she said.
The center occupies the former Fresenius Kidney Care Dialysis Center building and features case management offices, survivor support rooms, and suites for partner organizations such as Sinai Health, Connections for Abused Women and Their Children, and Inellas Restoration Center. Each partner orga-
nization will hold regular office hours on site.
Currently, services are available by appointment only and focus on domestic violence cases. The center plans to expand offerings for sexual violence survivors early next year, with services for stalking and human trafficking victims to follow. The Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center continues to provide similar support for children and families at its main campus at 1240 S. Damen Ave. on the Near West Side.
While gun violence is down nearly 40 percent citywide this year, incidents of domestic violence have climbed steadily since the
pandemic. As of Oct. 11, domestic violence homicides were up 30 percent compared to last year, according to the city’s violence reduction dashboard. Fatal domestic shootings have increased 53 percent during the same period. Domestic violence now accounts for 26 percent of all violent crime in Chicago, according to a September CBS2 analysis. The rise comes as funding for victim services falls sharply.
This year, the city budgeted $21 million
for gender-based violence services — covering community-based legal aid, counseling, advocacy, and rapid rehousing programs. That investment is expected to drop by half as COVID-era federal funds expire and as revenues from the city’s short-term rental tax decline, Block Club Chicago previously reported.
The reductions follow a 40 percent cut in the federal Victims of Crime Act program in 2024, further straining local service providers.
O’Neill Burke applauded CAN Hope’s collaborative, survivor-centered model and said she expects it will strengthen her office’s ability to prosecute domestic violence cases.
“It will take innovative, victim-centric and collaborative solutions,” O’Neill Burke said. “The CAN Hope Center represents the best of all those approaches. Family justice centers like CAN Hope strengthen relationships between survivors and law enforcement and improve victim engagement with prosecutors.”
For more information about the Chicago Advocacy Network for Hope or the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center, visit the organization’s website at chicagocac.org/ can-hope-chicago
Read More
Read more Block Club Chicago stories at blockclubchicago.org
Contact reporter Michael Liptrot at michael@blockclubchi.org.
The first phase of the historic landmark’s renovation will restore the pergola and is expected to be completed this spring
By MICHAEL LIPTROT Block Club Chicago
A once-dazzling part of North Lawndale is on its way back to its former beauty.
Renovations began Oct. 15 on the historic Sears Sunken Garden, 3330 W. Arthington St., to restore the garden’s pergola, make the area fully ADA-accessible, and add new lighting. The effort is led by Friends of the Sears Sunken Garden with support from local partners and donors.
The garden opened in 1907 as a leisure space for employees of Sears, Roebuck and Co., whose 40-acre headquarters and industrial complex once dominated Lawndale. Over the years, the garden served a variety of community uses.
“It’s such a community anchor, and we’re proud to be part of this whole restoration. Just think of all the people who have celebrated special occasions here — weddings, picnics, family events. This has always been an anchor for the community,” said Lynn Osmond, co-president and CEO of the Driehaus Foundation, which donated $1 million to the restoration in 2023.
After Sears relocated Downtown in the 1970s, the garden fell into disrepair. Restoration discussions began in 2021, when the GROWSS Committee — a neighborhood group focused on urban agriculture and beautification, affiliated with the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council — started exploring ways to revive the space. The project is part of the neighborhood’s 2018
In 2023, residents began planting new garden plots, marking the first steps toward revitalization.
Phase 1 of the renovation — focused on restoring the pergola — is expected to be completed this spring.
Phase 2 will include installing stormwater runoff storage and an irrigation system, adding seating, improving ADA accessibility, adding lighting, and planting new gardens. The second phase is expected to take 18 months, according to the Trust for Public Land.
In addition to the Driehaus Foundation, the project has received support from the Trust for Public Land, The Builders Initiative, and
Bank.
The total project cost is estimated at $5 million, including $700,000 for Phase 1. So far, $1.35 million has been raised, and fundraising continues.
For more information, visit searssunkengarden.org
Read More
Read more Block Club Chicago stories at blockclubchicago.org. Contact reporter Michael Liptrot at michael@blockclubchi.org.
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
Workers and labor organizers gathered Oct. 23 at the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation, 5500 W. Madison St. in Austin, to demand that JTM Foods LLC, the new owner of the former Hostess plant at 2035 N. Narragansett Ave. in Austin’s Galewood neighborhood, honor promises to hire directly from the surrounding community rather than rely on temporary staffing agencies.
The meeting — billed as a community solidarity hearing — was hosted by Westside Workers United, Get to Work Inc., the Northwest Austin Coalition, and Working Family Solidarity. It followed months of outreach to JTM Foods that
organizers say have gone unanswered since a March “speak-out” outside the bakery.
“We fought very hard to win back local hiring,” said Edie Jacobs, founder of Get to Work Inc. “When JTM bought the bakery this year, we reached out and could not get a hold of them. We met once in April, and since then, nothing. JTM has been AWOL.”
The Galewood facility, known locally as Cloverhill Bakery, produces cinnamon rolls, honey buns, danishes, and other packaged pastries that supply major retailers across the country.
JTM Foods — a Pennsylvania-based company best known for its JJ’s Bakery snack pies and other sweet baked goods — purchased the plant in March from The J.M. Smucker Company as part of a $40 million acquisition.
Jacobs and others said community advo-
positions at the bakery without any explanation for why she hasn’t been called back.
“I moved to Chicago two years ago because it seemed like there were more job opportunities, but the experience has been horrible,” Smith said. “My Indeed account shows I’ve applied for 244 jobs. I can do the work at JTM, but they don’t hire many people from the neighborhood.”
Anthony Carr read a statement on behalf of his cousin Cassandra Ellis, a former bakery worker who left in August after six years on the job.
“They care more about honey buns than people,” Ellis wrote, saying job stress worsened her health conditions and that two relatives who applied this summer never heard back.
Veronica Vaca, an organizer with Working Family Solidarity in Little Village, said her group joined the Austin campaign because “direct hire jobs are the best jobs for working families.”
“They usually offer more stability, more workplace rights, and help strengthen local economies,” Vaca said.
Michelle Samluk, senior human resources director for JTM Foods, and Joe Amboyer, vice president of operations, met briefly with Jacobs and other organizers after the March 31 speak out and said at the time the company was committed to community hiring. In an interview then, Samluk told The Culture that JTM had “two jobs posted right now and … only hire[s] community members,” adding, “We’re more about direct hires.”
cates helped increase local and Black hiring at the bakery after years of campaigning that began in 2017. But since JTM Foods took over from The J.M. Smucker Company in March, advocates argue those gains have eroded.
According to figures tracked by Westside Workers United, the share of Black employees has fallen from roughly 24 percent to 15 percent in six months. Organizers attribute the decline to renewed reliance on JobSquad Family of Workforce Solutions, a Downers Grovebased temp agency, rather than direct hiring.
“Temp agency hiring is bad — local direct hiring is good,” Jacobs said. “Qualified people from this area keep applying and keep getting rejected.”
Victoria Smith, 26, a single mother from Austin, said she has applied repeatedly for
Jacobs said that commitment hasn’t materialized. She noted that JTM held a job fair on July 31 without notifying Get to Work or other community organizations that had previously partnered with bakery management to recruit local candidates. Organizers learned about the event independently and brought a van of neighborhood jobseekers, but only one person was hired — and not on the spot, as promised.
After the hearing at the Aspire Center, the workers traveled to the Galewood bakery to deliver a statement expressing their demands to JTM Foods executives, who were unavailable to meet. Samluk could not be reached for comment on Oct. 24 about the most recent complaints.
Jacobs said workers will continue pressing JTM to reinstate community hiring commitments and to meet publicly with neighborhood organizations before the year’s end.
“Everybody in, nobody out!” she said. “We’re not going backward on fair jobs in our own community.”
The Austin Senior Satellite Center she helped start hosted a birthday party for the well-known activist on Oct. 14
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
The Culture
When Lillian Drummond turned 104, the Austin Senior Satellite Center she helped bring into existence filled with laughter, memories, and music (her grandson, Brian Drummond, said her favorite song is Ray Charles’ “Night Time Is the Right Time” is her favorite song).
The senior center hosted a birthday party for Drummond on Oct. 14. The event wasn’t just about candles and cake — it was a living testament to a woman who has spent decades making sure West Side seniors live with dignity, comfort, and community.
Drummond, a founder of the South Austin Coalition Community Council, has been a fixture of neighborhood life since the 1970s and a tireless advocate for fair utility rates, senior benefits, and housing justice. Her activism helped lay the groundwork for the senior satellite center at 5071 W. Congress Pkwy. — the same street that the City of Chicago renamed Honorary Lillian Drummond Parkway in her honor in 2015.
Even now, Drummond still lives across the stree from the center and is still relatively active. But after more than a century of service, the people she helped say they’re the ones trying to look after her.
One of those people is Katie Lowe, a 75-yearold community organizer with local nonprofit Brothers Standing Together, who has long considered Drummond a role model. Last year, Lowe received a call that Drummond needed a new mattress.
“I didn’t think twice,” Lowe recalled. “I wrote a letter to Jim Draper, the store manager at Value City Furniture, explaining who she is and what she’s meant to this neighborhood. He called me right away.”
Lowe arranged for the donation — a low-profile, full-sized mattress — so Drummond could get in and out of bed more easily. For Lowe, it was more than a gesture of com-
fort; it was a way of paying back a woman who had inspired her for decades.
“When I was a wannabe senior, I’d visit the senior center just to see what they were doing,” Lowe said. “Ms. Drummond had an office up front, and I would sneak in just to talk to her because I heard all the great things she did for this neighborhood — and that she was responsible for this senior center being here. I wanted to be her.”
Drummond’s activism has spanned generations. Through the South Austin Coalition, she pushed for fair gas and light bills, coordinated outreach for seniors, and helped secure city resources for low-income families. Her persistence earned her a reputation for getting results — whether she was lobbying aldermen or showing up at City Hall unannounced to demand attention to neighborhood problems. She also became a symbol of the federal
“Even now, she teaches us that service never really ends — it just changes shape.”
safety net she fought to protect. When she was 101, Congressman Danny K. Davis named her a State of the Union guest to highlight the importance of Social Security and Medicare — a recognition that underscored the national significance of her local work.
At 104, Drummond remains the spiritual center of the Austin Senior Satellite Center, where generations of residents still refer to her affectionately as “Miss Lillian.” For people like Katie Lowe, her influence continues to ripple outward — a daily reminder that advocacy begins with small, personal acts of care.
“She set the standard for what it means to serve your community,” Lowe said. “Even now, she teaches us that service never really ends — it just changes shape.”
Young people gather at the Chicago Youth Summit on Oct. 18 at 1841 N. Laramie Ave. in Austin. The event — hosted by 37th Ward Ald. Emma Mitts and LaTonya Mitts, candidate for Illinois state representative in the 8th District — featured performances by Chicago artist Zion Ali, remarks from local author and advocate Margaret Jefferson on domestic violence awareness, and tables from community vendors offering job, school, and voter registration resources. The summit aimed to empower teens and young adults to get involved, connect with mentors, and explore career and educational opportunities. | OFFICE OF 37TH WARD ALD. EMMA MITTS/TSG MEDIA.
Attendees at the monthly meeting of the Austin African American Business Networking Association (AAABNA) at Sankofa Cultural Arts and Business Center in Austin on Oct. 24. AAABNA staffers honored Malcolm Crawford, the group's executive director and Sankofa's owner (seen in the front row holding the red plaque) for his years of dedication to Austin and, specifically, to the Soul City District. | MICHAEL ROMAIN
Attendees at the Oct. 25 storytelling and archiving event at Alt Space Chicago remembered Austin’s past and imagined its future
By MICHAEL ROMAIN
Culture
Community members gathered at Alt Space Chicago, 645 W. Corcoran Pl. in Austin, on Oct. 25 to share stories, scan family photos, and help shape the future of one of Austin’s most anticipated developments.
The Austin United Alliance Arts & Culture Committee hosted the event — part of a series designed to preserve neighborhood memory and ensure community voices guide the redevelopment of the historic Laramie State Bank and the surrounding Soul City Corridor. Alt Space is also housed in a former bank building that’s been turned into a gallery and artistic hub.
Residents were invited to bring family photographs and documents from the old bank and the corridor to be digitized, with the possibility of inclusion in the new mixed-use complex. They also offered ideas for naming floors of the residential community after local luminaries, ancestors, and longtime residents.
“Can you picture your family legacy on the Soul City Corridor?” the event flyer asked — a fitting prompt for an afternoon of storytelling, archiving, and celebration. Inside the gallery, participants shared memories, viewed renderings of the redevelopment, and sat for portraits as part of Alt Space Chicago’s Project Stamp initiative. Guests also watched a screening of Westside Classic, a short film produced by Front Porch Arts Center
Ambrose-VanLee also shared memories of growing up in Cabrini-Green, where, as she recalled, the “Candy Lady” was a neighborhood fixture — a woman who sold sweets from her apartment and watched over local children. Those memories became the inspiration for her self-published book, Damn Candyman: He Ain’t All That, a tribute to the unsung caretakers of Chicago’s public-housing communities.
Pollack said. “A lot of the RFPs for some of the design elements of the bank will be adjudicated through community panels. We’re really looking to highlight and elevate the legacies of Austin residents who have made an impact.”
in collaboration with the Chicago Sinfonietta. The film, part of the “Residents Orchestrate Project,” captures the creative energy and lived experiences of West Side residents.
“We’re really looking to highlight and elevate the legacies of Austin residents who have made an impact.”
Among those who took part was Doreen Ambrose-VanLee, 56, a mother of three who has lived in Austin since 1983. Ambrose-VanLee recommended naming a residential floor after the late Brad Cummings, longtime editor of the Austin Voice, the popular West Side newspaper that ceased publication earlier this year. Cummings, who died in a June 2025 apartment fire that killed four people, is widely remembered for his decades of community journalism.
“Brad gave so many of us a way to see ourselves in print,” Ambrose-VanLee said. “Now that the paper’s gone, there’s a need for that kind of voice again. We need everything we
She also recalled hearing stories about the Candyman legend and said some believed it came from a real event involving a woman who was attacked through a bathroom wall in another apartment building. “But it didn’t come from Cabrini,” she said, explaining that myths like that often attached themselves to wellknown housing projects.
The Laramie State Bank Redevelopment Project, led by the Oak Park Regional Housing Center in partnership with Pivotal Housing Partners, Latent Design, and the City of Chicago, will transform the long-vacant landmark at 5200–5226 W. Chicago Ave. into a community hub featuring 78 new affordable rental units, a rooftop terrace, fitness center, meeting rooms, and restored historic interiors.
The residential portion is expected to open in Spring 2026, followed by the bank’s reopening in Spring 2027.
Jenna Pollack, community development manager at the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, said the naming and design process will continue through a series of public sessions.
“The more we do this, I think a lot of the same names will come up again and again,”
The Austin United Alliance Arts & Culture Committee — composed of Keli Stewart (Front Porch Arts Center), Jordan Campbell (Alt Space Chicago), Kenn Cook Jr. (Westside Historical Society), and Camille Wilson-White (Oak Park Area Arts Council) — guides the artistic and cultural programming for the redevelopment.
More to Scan?
If you missed the Oct. 25 community archiving event or have more family photographs, documents, or memorabilia to share, you can still contribute to the growing Community Archives Lab at Dominican University. Email Kaitlyn Griffith at kgriffith1@dom.edu or Kenn Cook Jr. at kenn@bykenncook.com to schedule a scanning session and help preserve West Side history.
Learn More About the Laramie Project
For questions about the Laramie State Bank Redevelopment Project, email info@oprhc.org or visit oprhc.org
Wednesday, Oct. 29, 11 a.m.–3 p.m., Austin Town Hall Park, 5610 W. Lake St. | 2025 Job Readiness Fair | A one-stop resource event for youth (18+) and adults offering employment workshops, résumé support, and local job connections.
Wednesday, Oct. 29, 4–8 p.m., Harmony Community Church, 1908 S. Millard Ave. | Boxing Out Negativity – 1st Annual Trunk or Treat | Families are invited for candy, games, and music at this community Halloween celebration hosted by Boxing Out Negativity and local partners.
Thursday, Oct. 30, 6–9 p.m., Kehrein Center for the Arts, 5628 W. Washington Blvd. | Beyond Closure Film Screening | A powerful documentary exploring the aftermath of U.S. school closures and their impact on students and communities. Discussion to follow.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 1–3 p.m., 5437 W. Division St. | Steppin’ With the Seniors | The Good Neighbor Campaign hosts an afternoon of steppin’, fellowship, and fun for older adults. Sponsored by Jill Bush, 8th District state representative candidate, and Westside Health Authority. Need a ride? Call (773) 786-0249.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 2:30–5 p.m., Hope Excel Reaching the World, 4821 W. Chicago Ave. | Hope Excel R.T.W. Academy Trunk or Treat | A family-friendly event with candy, games, face painting, costume contests, and snacks. Info: hopexcel.youth@gmail.com | (773) 3621076.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 3:30–7 p.m., BUILD Chicago, 5100 W. Harrison St. | BUILD Halloween Spooky Farm | Family Halloween fun in the gym and spooky scares on the haunted farm. Free entry; last entry 6:30 p.m. Info: buildchicago.org | (773) 227-2880.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 4–8 p.m., Columbus Park, 500 S. Central Ave. | Haunted House at Columbus Park | The park’s annual Haunted House returns with a pumpkin patch, games, video games, arts & crafts, and a familyfriendly haunted walk. Last entry 7:30 p.m. Info: chicagoparkdistrict.com/halloween.
Oct. 29 - Nov. 14
Through Aug. 27, 2026, Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St., Washington Heights | Praise & Protest: Voices of the Chicago Black Renaissance | Chicago was a crucible of Black creativity, intellect, and political imagination from the 1930s through the 1950s. The artists, scholars, and activists it cultivated reshaped American culture with their work and affirmed Black identity, achievement, and
Thursday, Oct. 31, 4–8 p.m., T & C Fitness, 5906 W. Chicago Ave. | Austin Community Annual Safe Haven Halloween Party | Hosted by Roman Morrow, My Soul My Blackness LLC, ALL (Austin Law Library), and Changing Oasis in collaboration with Hope CDC. Free food, candy, games, and a magic show — first come, first served.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 5–7 p.m., Homan Square Community Center, 3559 W. Arthington St. | Dueling DJ Party at Homan Square | A teen Halloween silent party featuring dueling DJs, dancing, and giveaways.
Thursday, Oct. 31, 5–7:45 p.m., Douglass Park Cultural Center, 1401 S. Sacramento Dr. | ¡Noche de Fantasmas! at Douglass
experience. This era, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance, laid a foundation for subsequent generations of artisticintellectual vanguards who spearheaded pivotal cultural shifts, including the Black Arts Movement.
Told through the archival records preserved in the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, Praise & Protest: Voices of the Chicago Black Renaissance is an invitation to learn more about this transformative cultural movement. Praise & Protest shines a
Park | A Halloween mini-concert blending punk, rock, goth, emo, and metal — part of the Chicago Park District’s fall concert series. Info: chicagoparkdistrict.com/events
Saturdays & Sundays through Nov. 9, 3–7 p.m., Theatre Y, 3611 W. Cermak Rd. | In Good Company — | A unique immersive performance experience transforming Chicago streets into a stage for dialogue and reflection on community and belonging. Free to the public; donations welcome.
Saturday, Nov. 1, 12–1:30 p.m., Northwest Austin Council, 5730 W. Division St. | What Is a Community Land Trust? | Learn how local organizers are developing a community land trust to help
light on this distinguished yet understudied history whose seminal scholarly, literary, and artistic explorations of Black life in America are a beacon and a guide to confront injustices that echo still today. Hours: Tuesday: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Third Saturday of each month: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Learn More: Visit chipublib.org/news/ praise-and-protest for more info.
Austin residents remain in their homes. Registration encouraged but not required. Info: jennap@oprhc.org
Saturday, Nov. 1, 5–7:30 p.m., Island Oasis, 1114 S. Mason Ave. | The Annual Island Halloween Party | Make your own s’mores and candy apples, watch the movie Coco, and celebrate in costume with neighbors.
Wednesday, Nov. 5, 6–8:30 p.m., A House in Austin, 533 N. Pine Ave. | The Plot Factory | A House in Austin presents an evening of storytelling sessions, a book fair, creative workshops, fun games, and more. Info: ahouseinaustin.org/the-plot-factory | Text/call (773) 896-3582.
