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Chapter 5

Using IAF Principles to Work with Others to Achieve Common Ends

Learning to work with others to achieve common ends was, in one form or another, the objective of the largest category of our grantees. It is true that this was a major purpose in virtually all of our projects, but this category differs from the preceding one in that the citizens involved were not arbitrarily prevented from participation in the political process. There was, for example, no arbitrary denial of the right to register to vote, as with the blacks in South Carolina or Mexican-Americans in California or Texas. Nor were these citizens effectively unable to take part in such a process because of factors indigenous to their culture as was the case with Indians. Rather, the solution of the problems of their communities was dependent on various combinations of other factors. Citizens may have lacked information about what could be done. The vision and understanding of existing leadership may have been inadequate to deal effectively with the wider community. Community residents may have come to believe that it was futile to try to change conditions or to "fight city hall." The possibility that the citizens of a community could, by joining together, make a difference may never have occurred to them as a realistic possibility.

In the fifties, however, new initiatives were beginning to emerge. Some were grounded in rising expectations after World War II. Some were stimulated by legislation having a major impact on neighborhoods--such as that concerned with urban renewal and the requirement of "maximum feasible participation." Some arose more or less spontaneously from the concerns of community residents or of local institutions about deterioration of their neighborhood as, for example, in Hyde Park-Kenwood. Others were initiated by a professional in a local agency, as in the case of Colony House; or by a group of professionals, as in the Woodlawn area of South Chicago. And in other instances, the initiative came from outside the community, vide the attempts by Monsignor John O'Grady of the National Conference of Catholic Charities to promote citizen organizations in Lackawanna, New York, and in Butte, Montana. To Monsignor O'Grady, citizen organization was a way to promote social justice. To directors and boards of neighborhood houses, organizing the community seemed a way to be of service on a broader scale and in a more relevant way.

Certain groups in colleges and universities, too, began to respond to the arguments of such persons as Baker Brownell, Richard Poston, Howard McCluskey, Royce S. Pitkin, Frank Anderson, William Biddle, Jess Ogden and others who underscored the importance of the community as the locus for dealing with public problems. They stressed also the responsibility of colleges and universities, because they were social institutions, to help communities realize their potential. Although differing from each other in many ways, it can fairly be said that one typical element was a perceived need to develop within a community the know-how of participation in public affairs. Having said this, it is necessary to acknowledge a major qualification. The Industrial Areas Foundation project in Woodlawn (on Chicago's South Side involved much more emphasis on developing the motivation to organize, and, as for know-how, there was less emphasis on civic structure and procedures than on the tactics of organizing to force city hall and social agencies to listen and act. As it turned out, nearly one-third of the total number of grants made by the ESF and nearly one-third of the funds granted involved efforts described in this chapter and the nex-efforts to help the citizens of communities learn how to solve problems which such citizens held in common.

We have then some nineteen projects, so grouped because presumably the citizens of a community could, with some stimulus from the outside or arising within the community, organize to secure some agreed-upon benefit. But the Foundation was also interested in discovering whether certain kinds of sponsors were better adapted to helping communities realize common goals than others, as well as in knowing whether agencies wanting to apply IAF principles to the organizing of citizens would succeed in doing so.

In retrospect, the Foundation's experience can shed some light on these matters. I will, therefore, classify the treatments of these projects to reflect such concerns, realizing, of course, that groupings based on these principles need not be mutually exclusive. In any case, the classifications are as follows: (1) a national level, professional organization (Industrial Areas Foundation) whose principal reason for being was to help people learn how to organize their community so as to gain the power to achieve the objectives they had identified; (2) agencies specifically expressing their desire to try to apply IAF organizing principles; (3) neighborhood houses using principles drawn primarily from the social work field; (4) voluntary associations, usually professionally staffed, either at a metropolitan or community level; and (5) college and university programs with a community focus. It is not my intention to review all nineteen projects in detail. Rather, certain projects for which significant results can be claimed (whether positive or negative) will be considered. Data relating to other projects will be discussed only insofar as they help to affirm or modify conclusions having some general character or will be treated to the extent of accounting for their dismissal. On this basis, the following projects are reviewed in some detail: (1) the IAF project in Woodlawn; (2) the grants to the National Conference of Catholic Charities and Hudson Guild, made in part to learn whether they could successfully apply IAF principles to the formation of a community organization in selected communities; (3) South Chicago Community Center as an instance of successful organization by a neighborhood house; (4) Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, which, alongside others, built a successful community organization on a voluntary citizen basis rather than an institutional basis, and (5) Earlham College, which achieved a modicum of success in one of the two areas in which it worked.

Because of the special interest which the Foundation had as to the effectiveness of IAF principles of organization as compared with those employed by various kinds of social agencies, community or metropolitan associations and colleges, the IAF-inspired projects will be discussed separately in this chapter and the other projects in Chapter 6. It is my hope that these two chapters will provide some understanding of the effects of using power-oriented versus social work or process or consensus-oriented approaches to community organization. Let us begin then with one of the least expected success stories in the ESF project list--the attempt by the IAF to organize a deteriorated, black slum in South Chicago. (I refer to this as an ESF project, but it should be understood that the Foundation's financial contribution to get the project started was only half of the initial funding."

Industrial Areas Foundation: The Woodlawn Organization

The Woodlawn project was an effort to build an effective citizen organization in an urban black ghetto, the Woodlawn area, which lies immediately to the south of the University of Chicago campus. The grant was made in November 1960, in the amount of $69,996, with an equal amount to come from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago (subsequently reduced to $50,000) and $21,000 to be supplied jointly by the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions and the Presbytery of Chicago through the First Presbyterian Church (in Woodlawn). The total budget was $219,996 to support the organizing effort for a three-year period. The proposed project was noteworthy for at least two reasons: because it involved close, public collaboration of Catholic and Protestant churches in a major city and because no substantial demonstration of citizen organization among blacks in cities had yet been achieved.

Unfortunately, there is not as much information available on the details of the organizing effort and its outcomes as we might like. It is paradoxical that this lack of information is, in part, due to the very success of the project, if it is seen as an achievement of black self-determination and, consequently, to some degree a closing off of the community from scrutiny by whites. There were, of course, other reasons for reticence, such as suspicion of the intentions of outsiders including police investigators. Hence, our hope of getting information through the visit by a Foundation consultant in 1967 to the Woodlawn area Alinsky was "too busy" to see him and to the offices of The Woodlawn Organization (TWO) was not fully realized. The failure of Saul Alinsky to provide reports that he had agreed to make was also a factor. Enough information is available, however, to support Charles Silberman's assertion that TWO was "the first successful attempt anywhere in the United States to mobilize the residents of a Negro slum into a large and effective organization."1 (We do not have evidence on whether it was indeed first, but it does appear to have been successful.)

Background of Woodlawn

Prior to World War II there were almost no black residents in Woodlawn, an area extending from 60th to 67th Streets, and between Stony Island and Cottage Grove Avenues. Separating Woodlawn from the main University of Chicago campus was the Chicago Midway.² By 1950, 17 percent of the Woodlawn population was black. By 1960, the percentage had risen to 89 percent. The social indicators showed a rapid trend toward social disorganization in terms of lowered educational level (dropping from 11.6 years in 1950 to 9.8 years in 1960), number of persons per household, proportion of children under eighteen not living with both parents, higher fertility ratio, unemployment, shift from white-collar to unskilled occupations, deteriorating housing and decreasing average incomes. The population was much more transient than the population of Chicago as a whole. About 87 percent of the residents in March 1960 had moved into their homes in the preceding six years and over half in the preceding two years.³ Elinor Richey summarized the situation succinctly: An unemployment rate of 25 percent, the highest crime rate in the city, a population density four times the city average, a birth rate one-fourth higher, 80 percent of the housing available as furnished rooms and "kitchenettes," buildings badly deteriorated and rents as high as those on Lake Shore Drive.⁴

In spite of the drop in average years of schooling, we can assume that the great majority of the adult participants in TWO had at least a basic literacy level. Average family income was low. An important membership group consisted of welfare clients. But beyond this, people felt themselves to be victimized by city hall and the politicians, by the board of education, by landlords, by merchants and, at a critical juncture, by the University of Chicago. The goal of bringing these feelings into focus was initiated by the clergy in Woodlawn and not least among the TWO accomplishments was the continuing ecumenical collaboration which ensued.

Contributing to the deterioration of the quality of life in Woodlawn was the growth of powerful street gangs as a consequence of the alienation of young blacks.⁵ The IAF Annual Report for 1959-1960 called attention to the weakness of the few social organizations in Woodlawn, controlled as they were by middle-class leaders. The Reverend Ulysses B. Blakeley, copastor of the First Presbyterian Church, saw the problems as follows: "We were watching a community dying for lack of leaders, a community that had lost hope in the decency of things and people. Outsiders consider a place like this a kind of zoo or jungle. Such people may mean well, but they choke us. It seemed any effort would be futile unless our own people could direct it, choose their own goals and work for them, grow in the process and have a sense again of the rightness of things."⁶ Thus, as Saul Alinsky put it, the former leaders with their organizations and institutions had fled, and "the new people do not have the roots nor the ties to the community to be concerned, and so there is no organization of the new. ...^"7 The community consisted of bedrooms for transients who were trying to get out. According to Ed Chambers, an IAF organizer in Woodlawn, only a third were church members.⁸

This, then, was the background. How did organizing get started? In 1959, four local pastors of Woodlawn churches met to explore what might be done to help the community. They were Reverend Ulysses Blakeley and his copastor Charles Leber; Father Martin Farrell, pastor of Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Woodlawn; and Reverend C. Kenneth Proefrock of the Woodlawn Emmanuel Lutheran Church (who later withdrew). I met with Blakeley, Leber and Farrell on October 21 and 22, 1960, to discuss their analysis of Woodlawn's situation and the results of their inquiry into the appropriateness of attempting to create a community organization with the assistance of the Industrial Areas Foundation. Following these conversations, the Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation agreed, in November 1960, to make a grant to the project which, with the funds contributed by the Chicago Archdiocese and the Chicago Presbytery and the Urban Church Department of the Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church, enabled the organizing effort to proceed.⁹

The organization of the Woodlawn community assumed significance for several reasons. The Protestant churches were beginning to ask whether their role should not be greater in assisting blacks to achieve their rightful place in society. The Woodlawn location would necessarily lead to confrontation with the most powerful city political machine in the country and with the University of Chicago. These factors resulted in a high level of visibility for the organizing effort--not least with respect to the principles upon which it was based. These principles were particularly difficult for Establishment-minded churchmen to accept without a good deal of soul searching, and, of course, some were unable to accept them. A strongly condemnatory editorial in The Christian Century attested to this.¹⁰

Principles of the Organizing Effort

The basic principles were not new, They had been expounded by Alinsky in Reveille for Radicals, which documents the story of the Back-of-the-Yards Council, and later in Rules for Radicals. ¹¹ He outlined the principles of a rationale for organizing as follows: (1) Some measure of self-determination for all citizens is essential in a democratic society. (2) Self-determination depends upon having some modicum of power to control one's situation and to have access to the benefits which are supposed to be available to the members of a society by virtue of such membership. (3) Power is not immoral per se although some uses may be immoral. (4) Power is not normally shared willingly by those who have it with those who do not. Hence, efforts to broaden the distribution of power necessarily involve controversy and confrontation. Consensus as an aim is relevant when participants meet as equals. And (5) given the opportunity, people living in a community can work out their own problems. Meeting with members of the Greater Woodlawn Pastors' Alliance on February 17, 1959, Alinsky pointed out:

The Woodlawn community has within it representative issues that affect every community in the city of Chicago. What happens in Woodlawn would be significant for urban redevelopment in the rest of the city. This city needs a strong representative group of Negroes as a power block in order to meet their own needs. The term "power" as it is used in most circles carries with it evil connotations. Power is life impulses; anything without power is death. This is the reason for community organization--that they have an instrument for negotiation.¹²

For Alinsky, the enemy of urban democracy was apathy with its concomitant dependency; apathy was the enemy because an essential element in democracy is participation. To him, the other side of apathy was suppressed resentment over a sense of impotence. To change this, it was necessary to arouse resentment (to end the suppression of resentment, as it were) in the interest of mobilizing community pride and the impulse to self-help. But, in addition, it was essential to convert the resentment into a statement of a problem. It would then have something about which something could be done. Only then could a mass organization be created as an instrument for changing bad conditions. Alinsky rejected the notion that he was introducing polarization and destroying a metropolitan consensus. In his view, the blacks of Woodlawn were never part of any consensus; they were just apathetic. Reverend Brazier does not accept the idea that apathy was the problem in Woodlawn. Rather, inactivity was the result of a sense of powerlessness. ¹³

How, then, can one deal with inaction. Neither the problem nor concern about it is new. But conventional appeals to ghetto residents to get together fail. As Silberman pointed out, there are several reasons for this failure: agencies have been concerned primarily with their jurisdictional rivalries; preserving property interests has little appeal to renters; and civil rights is too abstract a foundation. ¹⁴ What Alinsky showed to be effective in Woodlawn was mass organization based on an appeal to self-interest to get something they wanted. His ideas as to the essential characteristics of an effective community organization were summarized by Stephen Rose as follows: (1) The organization must recognize self-interest as its basic raison d'etre, but to be effective it must aim at a multiplicity of goals. It should attract and involve most of the groups in the community. (2) In order to create self-respect through success, the program must be specific, immediate and feasible. (3) The organization must see power for what it is and use it. (4) The organization must choose its means on the basis of what means are available and likely to be most effective. And (5) it must recognize and accept the fact that controversy has always been the "seed of creation" and that it is inevitable that resentment will focus on the "prevailing dominant interest of the status quo.^"15 And finally, although Rose did not include it in his list, Alinsky continually underscored the principle that the organization must be controlled by its members.

 Goals of the Organizing Effort

The group concerned with trying to do something about Woodlawn did not move at once to make an agreement with the IAF. There were extended discussions. And at one point, the Woodlawn pastors propounded a set of sixteen questions to which Alinsky responded.¹⁶ Listed therein were four goals for the organizing effort: (1) that the local religious institutions should become strong and effective forces in a movement to correct many of the inequities and negative factors in the life of the community; (2) that the community organization should gain strength to insure that Woodlawn obtained the public services to which it was entitled; (3) that the community organization should provide local residents proper representation in the development of various programs designed to fight blight and deterioration and that, furthermore, the organization should have the power to implement their desired programs; and (4) that through successful participation, local residents would develop a healthy, positive climate of hope for the present and future.

Staffing

The organizing effort began with selection of staff. The first staff member was Nicholas Von Hoffman, who had been associated with the IAF for a number of years.¹⁷ A white organizer may seem to have been inappropriate, but this was not necessarily so, at least in the beginning, because being white, he was not seen as a threat to existing or emerging leadership. Most of the organizing staff, however, were recruited from the community, receiving their training as they organized, Robert Squires being the first. At the same time, efforts were made to recruit and assist leadership in the community. The advantages of recruiting staff from the community were, of course, obvious. It showed that the organization was not to be dominated by outsiders. And it contributed to the continuing availability of a trained indigenous staff when the grant funds ended. By 1965-1966, all TWO staff members were black.

As to the role of staff in Woodlawn, according to Von Hoffman, the initial job of the organizer was to listen to what people had to say about what they wanted and did not want to happen.¹⁸ Alinsky outlined the job of the organizer in more specific terms: "He must learn the characteristics of the community from a general survey of the situation and plot the power pattern of the community. He must look for and evaluate local leaders. (They are not necessarily the titular heads of organizations). In addition, issues or problems of concern to the people must be searched out; people must be encouraged to talk about their views of the community. It is important that the people realize that the organizer does not come with a preconceived program. The organizer must be able to encourage enough trust so that people will talk about issues like political corruption. An organizer must be able to get people not only to talk but to act, rather than leaving it to somebody else so that the organizer must become an agitator: "Until the people recognize that it is they who must do something about their own problems, and that it is only THEY who can be trusted to do the right thing and until they realize that only if they organize enough power in their community that something can be done about these things, nothing will get done."¹⁹ When people realize this, they demand an organization.

At first, a temporary committee begins recruiting delegations from other organizations. When enough organizations have been recruited to be representative, a Community Congress is called to consider and adopt a constitution and to elect officers.²⁰ Up to this point, no permanent policy decisions will have been made, but it is "an organization which will decide what it wants to do."²²  The organizer has insisted on only two things: The organization must be democratic, and it must be broadly representative of the community. The staff then become "handymen" for the organization, which makes the decisions. The staff works for the officers and the committees. Finally, the staff begins to spur the organization to do something about self-support and hiring its own staff on a continuing basis. "When this is completed, the organizer's job is done.” ²²

What were the qualities looked for in a good organizer? Rose quotes Alinsky as saying that he looks for "a guy who is mad and organizing on his own...." But he needs to know whether it is neurotic anger, which could be cured by remedying a personal problem, or anger at injustice, which will stay with him. Also, will he take advice? Does he want to learn? He must not only see himself as a learner but also as a teacher; and he must "see the opposition as an integral element of the organizing strategy."²³ In his reply to the queries from the Greater Woodlawn Pastors' Alliance, Alinsky touched on other qualities of the organizer. He said that organizing is not a science but an art, and reasoning in art is illogical, paradoxical and intuitive. "The kind of person we look for must be able to deal rationally with the irrationalities of life." Organizers must be able to work long hours and function in spite of extraordinary tensions and pressures. Hence, organizers must have extraordinary psychological and moral stamina.²⁴

Having chosen organizers with such qualities, what kind of training was provided? In essence, training was done on the job. Organizers were expected to make mistakes. But at the end of the day, they were required to complete a detailed diary of their contacts and activities, not only as a record but as a basis for reflection on what they had done. A dialogue was then set up between the individual organizer's experience and the cumulative experience of the IAF. The discussion of the day's experience in relation to analogous situations elsewhere encouraged the organizer to look at his activities from other points of view: "We can make suggestions; we can point out aspects of things he has overlooked; we can broaden his horizons; but in the last analysis he must teach himself."²⁵ The method is Socratic. It is effective when the staff members feel free to speak with complete candor, not only about their own individual experiences but those of other staff members.

At first, staff meetings are held daily. One question follows another in an effort to extract principles. But the organizer is counseled to look at each situation as unique so that he will not apply a principle blindly. A typical question would be: "Assume your plan works 100 percent (which it won't), what have you got when you get it?" If the anticipated result does not seem worthwhile, the proposal is scrapped. After a time, each organizer will have developed his own plan of procedure which he has defended against the rest of the staff in meetings.²⁶

For staff in Woodlawn, the IAF had budgeted for three organizers in each of the first three years. During part of this time, two additional organizers were available from outside the project.²⁷ In 1967, Reverend Brazier informed Herman Blake that TWO had a basic staff of two to three but could use eight. While inexact, these figures are close enough for our purpose. In retrospect, it is clear that a large black ghetto community had been organized by a staff which was tiny in comparison with the number of employees in such governmental offices as the welfare department. The more important question is whether meaningful results were achieved by methods which might be replicated elsewhere. What did TWO seek to do, and how, with IAF help, did it go about doing so?

In a series of articles in the Chicago Defender, Ernestine Cofield wrote about TWO's intention to achieve self- determination. She said that to TWO, self-determination meant that "we are smart enough, that we are united enough and that we are strong enough to make the kind of lives for ourselves and our community that we want-- self-determination is the 'partnership' of equals-- to them, a right is not a right unless the people actually enjoy it." And, she went on to say, they have built this spirit out of people who "were the supposedly ignorant. illiterate, lazy, dirty transients of the city."²⁸ On January 5, 1961, the Temporary Woodlawn Organization for Community Planning and Rehabilitation was formed.

The Organizing Targets

The Square Deal Campaign. As a first step, the organizers looked for a problem which would be quickly acknowledged as such by many community residents, could readily be made into an issue, would not attract strong opposition and offered a good chance for the fledgling enterprise to score a victory. The problem of cheating by local merchants offered such an opportunity.²⁹ In 1961, TWO launched a Square Deal campaign against practices and conditions in certain Woodlawn stores: shortchanging, short-weighting, dishonest pricing, faulty credit contracts and inferior merchandise. The campaign was supported not only by residents but also by those Woodlawn merchants who preferred honest to dishonest competition.

To start off, a Square Deal parade was organized in which about a thousand residents marched (March 6, 1961). A code of ethics was drawn up and prominently displayed in cooperating stores. Violators were expelled from the Woodlawn Businessmen's Association. Serious offenders were boycotted. Disputes were heard by a board of arbitration representing consumers and businessmen.³⁰ Resentment against exploitation had been converted into a problem about which something could be done and it was done.

The campaign was still flourishing in 1967, although the dramatic tactics of the early days no longer seemed to be needed. Herman Blake learned that considerable reliance was placed on businessmen to police themselves. The Consumer Practices Committee had "two members each from the Woodlawn Businessmen's Association and the Jackson Park Businessmen's Association as standing members. These businessmen take an active part in all negotiations of the committee and usually make the first approach to a merchant who has been charged with some malpractice."³¹ The Square Deal program had provided the fledgling organization with a necessary element--a keenly felt problem about which something could be done quickly. It gave the organization visibility and credibility.

The Threat of Urban Renewal. The Square Deal campaign did much to get TWO off to a strong start, but it was not the issue which had originally sparked interest in the possibility of forming a citizens' organization in Woodlawn. The precipitating issue was the threat that once again urban renewal would turn into black removal, this time from Woodlawn. The fear was real. Having observed the disappearance of many small businesses in Hyde Park-Kenwood, businessmen became an active group in TWO.

The threat arose from the desire of the University of Chicago to acquire land in addition to what it already owned south of the Midway so that it might expand its facilities. The university's announcement of its plans, made on July 19, 1960, proposed to do this under the federal legislation providing for urban redevelopment. It spoke of an investment from its own resources of a very large sum. This investment was important to the city of Chicago because it could claim this proposed expenditure as a credit in its own application to the federal government for a grant of federal funds.³² The university needed the city's cooperation to get the land, and the city needed the university's investment to secure the needed credits for its own application. Perhaps relying on the city's need, the university may have felt that it could proceed with its own plans to expand its campus as a separate step. TWO opposed this, contending that the university's plans should be considered as part of a total overall plan. (In this connection it should be noted that TWO was not saying that the university ought not to be allowed to expand. As the TWO executive committee said in a release dated March 10, 1961, "We know that a landlocked major institution is confronted with a serious problem and that justice and common sense argues in favor of making suitable provisions for the university."³³ It was the assumption that the university could pursue its goal without reference to the needs of the community that TWO would not accept.)

The members of TWO recorded their opposition to indiscriminate demolition by adopting the following resolution:

In the past, urban renewal planning has taken place between the city planners and the builders. Citizen participation, insofar as it existed, was either to support the plan drawn up or protest what had been done. This actually meant that the people did not have a real say-so in the drawing up of the plans but were cast in the role of protesting or surrendering. Since there has been no citizen participation in the real sense of the word, the people of the affected communities have suffered. Large numbers of homeowners have been forced to sell their homes at a loss and then purchase homes in other communities at inflated prices and high interest rates. Tenants have been uprooted and relocated in already overcrowded communities, thereby creating what has become known as mobile slums. Thousands of small businesses have been destroyed and their proprietors ruined. Luxury housing projects and monopolistic shopping centers are springing up in many of these renewal areas, and very little has been done for families in the lower-middle income bracket and the small businessman.

We do not want these things to happen in our community. We want sound planning. We are very realistic; we have serious housing problems, but they are curable if we have a plan and program designed to cure them. Therefore, be it resolved that TWO use all of its power and influence to insure genuine citizen participation in the planning and rehabilitation of our community.³⁴

Actually, one of TWO's first major victories involved the urban planning and rehabilitation issue. Within three weeks of its formal establishment as the Temporary Woodlawn Organization, it succeeded (against the strong opposition of the South East Chicago Commission and the University of Chicago) in securing from the Chicago Plan Commission (CPC) the deletion from a draft ordinance drawn to allow the university to proceed with construction of a building south of the Midway, any reference to the south campus proposal. This was to eliminate any possible implication that the commission was committed to such a program. Second, it persuaded the CPC to recommend to the Chicago Land Clearance Commission that its eligibility survey be extended from the area from 60th to 61st Streets to include all of the area to 67th Street and from Stony Island to Cottage Grove. This would insure procurement of technical information basic to the development of TWO's own rehabilitation program for Woodlawn. Third, the CPC committed itself to commencing an overall planning approach in Woodlawn as TWO had been urging. These steps were eventually confirmed by action of the city council.³⁵

Fortunately for TWO, the federal legislation required "maximum feasible participation" of citizens who would support the proposed program in the affected area. This requirement could not, of course, be met if a strong, broadly based citizens organization in Woodlawn opposed the project. It became necessary, therefore, that TWO move as rapidly as possible to build its strength in two ways: by recruiting more organizations and by encouraging residents to register to vote. Both efforts were successful. On Saturday morning, August 26, 1961, forty-five rented buses left Woodlawn for city hall loaded with about 2,000 residents intent on registering to vote. The buses were decorated with signs: "Jobs," "End School Segregation" and "Stop Slumlords." These facts attest to the vitality and capability of TWO, especially when considering that buses had to be rented on very short notice after the Chicago Transit Authority repudiated its agreement to provide them. Dozens of signs had to be made and delivered throughout Woodlawn. An extensive telephone network had to be setup to make sure that the buses got to the agreed rendezvous points and that marshals got up in time to get their charges out. In an interview with Tony Gibbs, assistant director of TWO in 1967, Herman Blake was told that voter registration was a key activity and that three-fourths of the eligible voters were registered. In one election, TWO threw its support to a white candidate for alderman, who defeated the Daley machine's black candidate three to one.

But old ways tend to persist. In March 1962, the City Planning Department issued a draft proposal for a social renewal program in Woodlawn. This program was to encompass "urban renewal clearance, conservation and rehabilitation; an investigation of illiteracy, ill health, crime and unemployment; and a 'total' pilot attack on these problems to be financed by large government and foundation grants." In reply to a question about involvement of the community in preparation of the proposal, the coordinating consultant said, "There is nobody to speak for the community. A community does not exist in Woodlawn." ³⁶ This statement was made within about a week of March 23, 1962, when over a thousand delegates from over a hundred organizations were to meet in their first Community Congress in order to establish The Woodlawn Organization on a permanent basis. One of the resolutions to be adopted warned that, "We will not be planned for as though we were children." To underscore this warning, TWO hired (jointly with the Woodlawn Businessmen's Association) a planning consultant. His reactions to the planning department's plan and his proposals for the future were published in a special edition of the Woodlawn Booster to serve as the basis for discussion with more than 105 community groups.³⁷

Given the requirement of maximum feasible participation and the obvious evidence that TWO was the representative citizen's group in the community, Mayor Daley saw no alternative to informing the University of Chicago that it would have to work out an agreement with TWO before its plans could be implemented under the urban renewal program. The decision was assisted by a sit-down outside the mayor's office by 600 Woodlawn residents. On July 16, 1963, Chancellor Beadle of the University of Chicago met with Reverend Brazier and twenty-five TWO members plus Chicago's commissioner of urban renewal in Mayor Daley's office and an agreement was reached. The agreement provided that TWO was to approve the project director and have a majority on the community planning and renewal committees to supervise the program; that renewal was to be on a selective rather than a wholesale basis; that the housing should be built by a nonprofit organization so that those displaced would be re-housed at rents Woodlawn residents could afford; and that land-clearing activities were not to be begun by the university until new housing was ready for those to be displaced. Apparently, the university was not fully convinced that it must negotiate the matter because (according to the Sun-Times for September 24, 1963" it asked city hall's Planning and Housing Committee to approve a preliminary planning survey before the mayor had appointed the planning committee with TWO membership as had been agreed at the July 12 confrontation. In any case, the university's request was rejected.

On October 18, the mayor appointed a Woodlawn citizens' committee (the key community development committee) of thirteen members, of whom seven belonged to TWO membership organizations, one becoming chairman. The significance of this was stated by the Reverend Lynward Stevenson, TWO president, when he said, "What we have fought for and won is citizen participation in urban renewal. The people in this community know what they want. We will not be shut out of decision making."³⁸ But progress on the urban renewal front was excruciatingly slow. It was October 1964 before a tentative agreement was worked out, providing that TWO and the Kate Maremont Foundation would build 520 low-cost housing units. "Reservation" of $11,500,000 in federal funds for the 150-acre renewal project was not announced until November 1965. But it was June 1967 before the city council's planning committee approved the agreement. The land for the low-cost housing was not sold to TWO until July 1967.³⁹

It must have been a frustrating period for TWO members, and it is a tribute to the strength of the organization that it was able to go forward. It was able to do so, in part, because there were so many other critical problems urgently calling for attention. And, of course, TWO's planner with the volunteer help of several architects was busy developing community-based planning concepts. In 1966,one meeting on planning was attended by 1,300 persons. In the winter and spring of 1967, five meetings had been held with no fewer than 400 persons at any one of them.⁴⁰

Housing. While the struggle over urban renewal was going on, the battle continued on other fronts, particularly with respect to housing. To deal with it, a Housing Committee with 200 active members was formed. In Alinsky's terms, of course, the problem was one of slumlords. The Reverends Blakeley and Leber put it this way:

Woodlawn is plagued, like all big city "ghetto" areas, with absentee landlords who make huge amounts of money by running slums. No city has made much headway against them. In Illinois, they hide their names in secret trusts administered by respectable banking institutions. They are able to bribe building inspectors. When they are finally cited ... , they secure endless delays in court and laughable small fines.

They quoted Alderman Leon Despres as saying, "Court fines on slum buildings are so small they are actually a license fee to continue breaking the law."⁴¹ The attack began with a visit to a bank to ask disclosure of the name of the owner of a slum building. The suggestion that a sit-in might take place in the bank led the bank to resign the trust and disclose the name of the owner: "What years of litigation by city officials had not been able to produce, the people of Woodlawn had obtained for themselves in twenty-four hours. . . . The owner, who was afraid that his friends and neighbors would discover that he was a slum operator, agreed to make the required repairs. Not all landlords are so obliging. Often TWO members have had to charter buses and actually picket the homes of slum landlords in well-to-do, all-white sections of Chicago."⁴²

Another tactic used was the rent strike in which a committee collected the rents and put them in a special bank account until the landlord complied with what needed to be done. In one case, TWO issued a Black Paper: "Concerning 1415-21 E. 61st Place and the Forces That Made It a Slum, November 19, 1965." But, overall, the policy was to work with landlords if they would cooperate. In fact, when the Housing Committee discovered that payments on a mortgage were taking 90 percent of the rent (hence, no money was available for repairs), the committee undertook to get the mortgage refinanced.

The Housing Committee works closely with the planners and architects in determining which buildings in the community can be rehabilitated... . Also, when they receive a complaint about conditions or services in a particular building, they make a thorough investigation of the complaint.... The owner is then contacted, the complaints explained to him, and he is invited to come before the committee for a negotiating session. . . . The owner is permitted to present his case; then the people in the building present theirs. The committee then gives the owner a reasonable period of time to prepare a plan for dealing with the complaint.... If an owner refuses to meet with the committee, or refuses to make a reasonable attempt to deal with the problems in the building, the committee applies some of the sanctions available to it. One sanction is to register a complaint with the appropriate city agency.... Given the reputation of TWO, such complaints now get results.... The committee may organize a rent strike in the building or picket the home of the owner on a weekend, pointing out to his neighbors that the individual picketed can live in a nice area because he gets income from slum property.

Herman Blake called attention to another tactic:  

I should point out that when TWO begins to work with a resident of a building which needs attention, they do not work with one individual only. The resident is expected to call together the other families in the building; they are then organized into a block club, and that club becomes a member organization of TWO. The people are shown that it is their organized efforts which bring them results, and they learn that their independence, self-reliance, self-determination and success will require effort on their part in terms of participation and finance through TWO dues... . Time after time as I talked to the members of different committees and asked them how they became involved in TWO, the answer given most frequently was that they came to the organization with a complaint, that instead of resolving their problem, the organization got them involved in resolving their own problems, and they have been committed to TWO ever since.⁴³

In 1966, the Housing Committee presented a list of the major slum properties in Woodlawn to the Building Commission. Committee members then accompanied building inspectors on their visits and received information on what follow-up was needed and would be forthcoming. In another unique development, TWO won the first court case in the country in which a building owned by a recalcitrant landlord was placed in the hands of a court-appointed receiver.

These tactics were having an effect. It was, for example, asserted at the 1965 Community Congress that TWO had been responsible for the rehabilitation of a million dollars worth of property.⁴⁴ At the 1966 Congress, Reverend Stevenson stated that absentee landlords had put more than $2,000,000 back into rundown buildings over the preceding thirty months. Important as these gains were in improving the quality of housing, we should not overlook the prodigious efforts required of the 200 members of the Housing Committee. They, of course, gained enormously in many aspects of civic and personal competence in the course of their study of situations and the many negotiations with landlords and officials.

Schools. Another critical campaign involved efforts to improve the educational opportunities available to Woodlawn children.⁴⁵ Parents and teachers (the latter wearing sheets to conceal their identity) testified to gross overcrowding in Woodlawn schools with classes being held in basements, attics and corridors. A "death watch" was started at meetings of the board of education. Fifteen persons wearing black capes would occupy the first two rows; they represented the "mourning of Negro parents for the plight of their children." Some picketed the home of the president of the board of education. Other TWO members were arrested for demonstrating at schools. A "Truth Squad" of four mothers visited all-white schools and pinpointed vacant classrooms into which black children from overcrowded Woodlawn schools could be moved. Cofield noted, "According to documented reports, schools were found that had entire floors vacant...." The response of the board was to buy hundreds of trailers to be used as classrooms at black schools in Woodlawn. TWO called them "Willis Wagons" (after Benjamin Willis, who was school superintendent during that period). When school officials held a dedication ceremony for these trailers in Woodlawn, they invited an all-white high school band to play, which obliged with "Old Black Joe." The effect on the parents of Woodlawn can be imagined. This underscores the point of one of Alinsky's assertions that in organizing a poor community, you can usually count on the Establishment to do much of the organizing.

At one point, TWO organized a boycott of one of the neighborhood schools. A few days before, TWO had been enjoined from picketing the school. While publicly protesting this injunction, TWO quietly changed its plans. No parents came to the school at all. The waiting police had no one to arrest. Instead, neighborhood apartment buildings were converted into day care centers for the day. Only twelve out of 2,800 children came to the school.⁴⁶ The fact that hundreds of parents could be reached on such short notice and given new instructions which were carried out so totally testifies to the effectiveness of TWO as an organization, the commitment of its members and the responsiveness of the parents. "It was," Chambers said, "the first time that such a boycott had been successfully organized against a school board in a large city."⁴⁷

While TWO was pursuing a sequence of steps to secure administrative redress (as required by the presiding judge who acknowledged that segregation existed), TWO also issued a "Social Planning Policy Memo" outlining what must be done about the schools. The memo pointed out that 20 percent less money was spent in Woodlawn's segregated schools than elsewhere in Chicago and went on to ask for a full instructional day, increased expenditure per pupil, integration, use of parents as teacher aides, availability of study facilities after school, an academic review board to prevent falsifying test scores (as TWO alleged), more liberal arts and an adequate treatment of black history in the curriculum. Eventually, progress was made on these issues, but the most encouraging development was the negotiation of a tripartite agreement among TWO, the University of Chicago (largely through its graduate school of education) and the Chicago Board of Education to reconstruct the public school program in Woodlawn. The community's full participation was not assured until some pointed prodding accelerated a widening of Establishment views. Work on the Urban Education Developmental Project was eventually funded in early 1967 by the U.S. Office of Education.

Health. TWO's insistence on self-determination encouraged some interesting innovations in the delivery of health services. Two examples can be cited. In 1964, the Woodlawn Mental Health Center was set up by the Chicago Board of Health with an advisory group including community members. The community representatives said they were more concerned about preventive services than they were with a treatment program. They wanted an emphasis on children, beginning with first-graders, on the ground that this was a period when strain could have a damaging effect. High risk cases were to be identified and worked with. Efforts were to be made to bring parents of such children into the schools as part of the program.

The advisory group played a very important role. It was its responsibility to articulate community hopes and aspirations, thereby providing community sanction for a program proposal--unless, of course, the advisory group did not concur, in which case the matter would be dropped.⁴⁸ Subsequently, in 1967, the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare made a grant of $300,000 per year to fund the Woodlawn Child Health Center for a five-year period. A key principle was that children were to receive health care over a continuous period, with annual physical examinations until age eighteen. The community advisory group was expanded to include twenty-one members. Seven members were to be designated by each of the following: TWO, the University of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Health. It was agreed that no community health program would be started unless a majority of each of the three groups concurred.⁴⁹ The community had achieved through TWO a significant and responsible role in determining the character of the health programs to be made available to Woodlawn.

Social Welfare. Another important program in TWO concerned social welfare. A minority report at the TWO convention in 1966 recommended that the Social Welfare Committee be supplanted by a vigorous Social Welfare Union. This report was adopted, and by 1967, the SWU had enrolled 300 active members. The organization succeeded in getting welfare recipient budgets reviewed regularly, as well as raising money for extras, such as Christmas toys which were not provided for in welfare budgets. They arranged to buy toys at a discount from a local merchant and made a similar arrangement to purchase back-to-school clothing. "These activities give the members a sense of controlling their own destiny and a sense of freedom and independence which does not characterize most welfare recipients."⁵⁰

To try to improve the provision of social services, a new social services center was to be built with a grant by the city to the university of $1,300,000 to which the latter was to add $900,000. The Children's Bureau agreed to provide $420,000 per year for five years toward the operating expenses of $531,000 per year. Major social agencies would have offices there in order that families could be served as a unit. The emphasis would be on prevention, moving into the community under the direction of the university and the community advisory board.⁵¹

Civil Rights. Another active TWO group was the Civil Rights Committee. Following the closing down of "Baby Skid Row" in Woodlawn through a local option election, the Civil Rights Committee reached an agreement with the agency responsible for issuing liquor licenses, providing that it would not issue a license without prior approval of the committee. At the time of Herman Blake's visit to Woodlawn in 1967, the committee had just presented a list of demands to the hospitals to which Woodlawn residents came for medical services. The demands were for: (1) an across-the-board recognition of welfare recipients; (2) better emergency room treatment and care before transfer to another hospital; (3) elimination of all discrimination throughout the hospital, especially against welfare recipients; (4) recognition of the dignity of all entering the hospital; (5) recognition of a TWO committee to meet monthly with the hospitals; (6) one person, specified by TWO, to serve on the board of directors of each hospital; and (7) the development of a program to get general health services to central Woodlawn. In the meantime, the TWO Steering Committee had authorized the Civil Rights Committee to bring a civil suit under the Civil Rights Act if necessary, to have all federal funds to the hospitals cut off if there were no response to the demands.⁵²

Jobs. Much of the emphasis on jobs took the form of training grants. (See section below on youth.) But much effort also went into negotiating with retail stores. By the end of 1963, Marshall Field and Company had hired 114 blacks. Supermarkets hired blacks as assistant managers, cashiers, butchers, etc.⁵³

Youth. Another TWO jobs activity which had great significance involved gangs, especially the Blackstone Rangers and, to a lesser degree, the Eastside Disciples. These were not street corner gangs in the ordinary sense, but large, elaborate organizations. The Rangers, in fact, were incorporated in Illinois as the Blackstone P. Nation (the P. standing variously for People, Pride, Progress or Prosperity). James Alan McPherson, the poet, asserted that, at the time he wrote his article on the Blackstone Rangers, its membership numbered somewhere between 3,500 and 8,000 boys and men, including married men.⁵⁴ This suggests that it was as much a way of life as it was a club.

In any case, TWO decided to try to work with the Rangers. It did so in furtherance of its basic position that group problems can be solved only by the group and that alienation can be eliminated and human dignity restored only by working on real issues. Youth was demanding, according to Reverend Brazier, not just freedom from imposed authority but a structure within which they could change their own destiny and at the same time know that the community supported them. TWO thought it would be possible to help redirect energies into positive programs of value to themselves and the community.⁵⁵

Trying to help the gangs took courage. Some member agencies of TWO had been rejected by the gangs. Middle-class parents feared the gangs and their influence on their children. Some adults withdrew from TWO over the issue, but the organization determined to go ahead. A key decision was to concentrate on job training but only with the full participation of gang leadership in planning, design and operation of the program.⁵⁶

Beginning in 1964, a variety of job programs was started with federal funds. Some 200 trainees were served in the summer of 1964. In February 1965, arrangements were made to train several hundred on the job with three employers, including a large department store. They were screened, selected and counseled by TWO. The grant funds were used to reimburse the employers for training costs. In addition, 225 persons were being served by TWO in its own training program.⁵⁷ By the time of the TWO convention in April 1966, President Lynward Stevenson could announce that more than a thousand persons had been placed in jobs.⁵⁸

On July 20, 1966, a grant to TWO in the amount of $1,900,000 was announced. It was designed to prepare 660 jobless over a two-year period. About 560 would be given classroom training for eventual employment as dental, medical and podiatry assistants, machinists and furnace builders. They would then go into on-the-job training situations with firms which had already agreed to hire them. The remaining 100 were to go directly into on-the-job training.⁵⁹ In April 1967, the Blackstone Rangers and the Eastside Disciples agreed to "cool it" so as not to jeopardize an application to OEO for a grant to fund further training. A training grant was eventually received from OEO in the amount of $935,000.

While some of the gang members were ready to go into job training, some were not because they were functionally illiterate. The plan called for the more able gang members to go through a special training program which would enable them to become basic education teachers for the functionally illiterate. The idea was that gang members would recruit gang members, gang members would teach gang members and each individual would move at his own pace, When an individual was ready, he would move from basic education into the job-training part of the program. ⁶⁰

The basic premise of the youth program was that ghetto residents had a low tolerance for frustration. They had had much more experience with immediate ills, such as jail, than with striving for benefits to be realized in the future. "TWO believes that ghetto youth can learn to adjust to the society at large by learning how to utilize their existing life style in a more functional manner and that in so doing they can gradually learn new patterns of performance and interaction."^6l As it turned out, the project survived only from September 1967 until May 1968. Mayor Daley had succeeded in getting partial control of the project through his own poverty program office, and staff appointments critical to the TWO project were blocked. The newspapers played up the fact that a number of gang members who had been employed had criminal records. (Given the facts of ghetto life, one must wonder if the situation could have been otherwise.) The police escalated a policy of harassment. McPherson quoted Captain Edward Buckney, head of the Gang Intelligence Unit of the Chicago Police Department, as saying, "Our approach is the hard-line, police approach. We're not concerned with sociological approaches."⁶²

In January 1968, OEO issued a statement supporting TWO and its project management. The General Accounting Office audit gave TWO a good rating. These facts were not carried in the newspapers, according to Reverend Brazier. An investigation was undertaken by Senator McClellan and his subcommittee. Introduced by Senator Percy, Brazier testified to the worth of the project but to no avail. The project was not refunded.

The project ... was designed to use whatever skills and abilities we could find within the youth organizations. The social workers and youth workers all had their day. None have succeeded. We know that it is a high risk to take a youngster with a bad record and place confidence in him, but after all, repression had achieved nothing. We believe that the effort has been justified.⁶³

Reverend Brazier concluded, "The project was killed because white society refused to permit the indigenous leaders in the black ghetto to deal with problems of alienated youth--a problem that white society itself by its indifference and racism has forced on the ghetto."⁶⁴

Agreement with this conclusion was found in an article by Lois Wille. Comparing the TWO project with other projects involving gang youth, she wrote, "the TWO project had one handicap the others don't have. It drifted through its nine-month course without a director." She continued:

The OEO contract provided that Mayor Richard J. Daley was to "concur" with TWO in naming a director.

Last June, TWO's advisory committee, composed mainly of University of Chicago professors and welfare directors from private agencies, recommended an experienced New York gang worker and ex-probation officer. Daley rejected the recommendation.

Also, Daley has said that he disapproved of the way the project was funded. OEO awarded the grant directly to TWO, bypassing the city's antipoverty agency. The city agency had rejected a similar TWO proposal.⁶⁵

In an evaluation conducted for OEO, Dr. Irving Spergel of the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, wrote:

I have no question that the program should have been extended. Certainly, a great many young people were involved in the program. There was clear evidence of delinquent reduction, which is probably a result of the program. There was evidence of job placement.

It is difficult to come to any conclusion about the program failures; the basic failure of the program was essentially political.... The political factors primarily determined the life and particularly the death of the program. The basic political issue was who would control the program.⁶⁶

Dean Spergel affirmed the positive results of the job training project. Not only would Woodlawn youth be denied training desperately needed to secure worthwhile jobs, but this failure must have been most disillusioning for the community. Mayor Daley and his machine had won again. Yet we must allow that this may not be all of the story; the role of the youth gangs was opaque, to say the least. But let us now take a closer look at the organizing effort itself which led to the formation of TWO.

Organization and Finances

The development of TWO did not reflect a steady accretion of strength without faltering on the way. Commenting on its early history, Ed Chambers characterized TWO at that time as more of a movement than a "solid organization." According to Chambers, after the first Community Congress there was a loss of momentum. Meetings were not being held regularly. Decisions came increasingly to be made by the Steering Committee (numbering between twenty-five and thirty persons). Some leaders quit; others threatened to do so. In January 1963, Chambers was assigned to work with Reverend Brazier, Reverend Farrell and Richard Harmon, and the organizing effort was resumed. New leaders were recruited. Regular meetings were scheduled. The Steering Committee began meeting weekly. The Delegates Council met the third Monday of each month with an average attendance of 250. (The working committees on welfare, schools, etc., were an outgrowth of the Delegate Council's activity.) The year 1963 was a revitalizing, tightening-up year. At the beginning, the organization was $3,000 in debt, in spite of the grant subsidy. Chambers worked to get the organization to face up to the necessity to raise its own money to pay its bills. By the close of the Second Community Congress, TWO had a balance of $14,000.

It took more than regular meetings, of course, to strengthen the organization. The TWO version of the caucus became an essential ingredient. It became the practice for a group involved in taking some action to caucus a half-hour beforehand to review what the purpose was, what was to be done and why and who was going to do it. Immediately following the action, the group would caucus again to evaluate what had happened. Still later the same evening, it became customary for leaders and staff to meet, perhaps at some tavern, to talk again about what had occurred and what the next steps should be. This procedure meant that goals could be clarified, the value of particular tactics assessed and organizational commitments strengthened. But the movement element was not ignored. The president's report became a fixed feature of the Steering Committee meetings. It was his opportunity to explain goals, and the need for money, as well as to put impending action in focus.⁶⁷

Turning to the matter of membership, data can be found, but assessment of their significance is not easy. An article in the Chicago Defender asserted that in its second year, TWO's membership included sixty business organizations, fifty block groups and thirty churches, collectively representing some 40,000 persons out of a total population of 100,000.⁶⁸ The membership figures appear to be somewhat exaggerated, and the total figure must be applicable to a larger tract than the original project included. For example, the six census tracts which officially cover the Woodlawn area indicated a total population of about 45,000 in 1960. The data on the number of organizations are difficult to evaluate. The connection of some organizations with TWO may have been rather nominal, as Stephen Rose learned. In 1964, in an effort to get some clues as to the involvement of churches in TWO, Rose attempted to contact thirty-six churches listed as members. Of these, four had no telephone, five no longer existed and eight did not answer after repeated calling. Each of the remaining nineteen churches was asked its reaction to TWO and the extent of its participation in the organization. Eleven indicated a positive response to TWO and the active support of church members; three respondents were in opposition; two were inactive in the organization but favorable toward its aims; one minister said his church "just sits back and watches"; one was inactive but expressed awareness of what TWO "has been and can be"; and, finally, with the sound of a midweek Pentecostal service in the background, the respondent said that he had "never heard of it." Most of the favorable responses asserted the view that TWO's program was consistent with the aims of justice and that association in the ministerial alliance had been a spur to ecumenicity.⁶⁹ The impact of Rose's survey is partial at best. The positive responses are positive; the negative responses, negative. The question is, Who were the respondents? Were they entitled to represent the organization? How large were the congregations where the telephone was answered? All of which is to suggest that a mass organization is not necessarily massive.

According to the IAF Annual Report for 1962-1963, some eighty-five organizations paid dues at the Second Community Congress. (Each organization was entitled to seven delegates and five alternates.) This figure is probably more realistic than the 140 organizations reported in the Chicago Defender.⁷⁰ The convention fee for each organization was $50 with a total of $125 being due from each organization annually. According to the report, about $14,500 was raised in this way.⁷¹ Evidently, fundraising efforts were pursued more energetically after the revitalization of the organizational effort in 1963. Rose reported that by mid-1964, $27,000 had been raised within Woodlawn and, quoting Alinsky, that the 'IAF will probably withdraw by the end of 1964 and TWO will operate on a budget of $30,000 to $40,000, all of it raised within the community.⁷² President Stevenson reported to the 1966 convention that fund raising in the preceding year had been excellent, that dues had come in on time, that the January 1 Big Party was a great success and that the newspaper was profitable. Accordingly, the annual budget was being raised from $35,000 to $45,000.⁷³

Evidently the newspaper made a significant contribution to organizational support. The Woodlawn Observer had grown from a four-page sheet published semimonthly to a respected weekly. In a further development, $9,000 had been invested in additional printing equipment, and five other community papers were being printed in the Observer's shop. Unfortunately, it was not possible to learn much more about TWO finances. Brazier's book is of little assistance on this matter, being almost exclusively a statement of objectives and description of activities. There is almost no material dealing with staff operation, organization or finances. But in 1967, Brazier confirmed to Herman Blake that about $15,000 per year accrued through fundraising events and organizational dues. This would indicate that the number of organizations paying the full dues of $125 per year must have been something less than the figure of eighty-five organizations reported by the IAF in 1963. Nevertheless, TWO was able to maintain a staff and continue to expand its program significantly.

The organizational structure was itself interesting.

The officers include a president, executive vice-president, secretary, treasurer and a host of vice-presidents representing the clergy, business groups, the Spanish-speaking people and eleven geographical areas within Woodlawn. Each member organization is permitted to send seven delegates and five alternates to the annual convention.

The large number of vice-presidents gives official representation to the various segments of the community. The actual day-to-day business of the organization is carried out by the president, the paid staff and the standing committees. The Delegates Committee, which has the major responsibility of the organization, consists of four delegates from each member organization. This committee meets monthly to hear reports from all the other committees and implements the policies of the annual convention. The Steering Committee, made up of chairmen of the standing committees, meets weekly. The standing committees, which also meet weekly, consist of social, welfare, housing, civil rights, community maintenance, schools and consumer practices. ⁷⁴

The structure may seem cumbersome, but Blake's observations indicate that at least the committee structure was functioning actively and well. This is a solid measure of the effectiveness of the organization. In fact, the organization was even more elaborate than is indicated by the above description. Georgie Anne Geyer pointed out, for example, that TWO had a network of telephone callers. "Even a TWO group of 200 appears orderly because it is really twenty groups of ten people each. Each group of ten has a leader."⁷⁵ Although TWO, like all human organizations, has been subject to ups and downs, in general it appears that it has had vigorous leadership which addressed its tasks with competence.

Results

Many of the results achieved by TWO have already been mentioned. But what can we say about the significance of what has happened in Woodlawn?

1. First, we can take note again of Silberman's statement that TWO was "the first successful attempt anywhere in the United States to mobilize the residents of a Negro slum into a large and effective organization."⁷⁶ There can be no question that the organization became solid, perhaps, too much so. TWO is now a business corporation with a well-paid executive. It controls in the neighborhood of a thousand housing units and other enterprises representing a total investment of about $35,000,000. It also controls vacant land on which it is expected more housing will be built.⁷⁷

2. TWO succeeded in building a power base sufficient to achieve a considerable measure of control over the conditions of daily life in the Woodlawn ghetto. Its achievements by the late sixties had been substantial in the fields of housing, employment, consumer protection, health, welfare and other fields. By 1975, further progress had occurred. In spite of many empty, boarded-up stores, there was evidence of new construction or rehabilitation of older buildings, according to an article in the New York Times.⁷⁸ Gang warfare and the plague of fires were said to have all but disappeared. Jackson Park Terrace, consisting of 322 units (townhouses and a high rise), contained a mixture of low and middle-income black and white tenants. The Woodlawn Gardens project of about 500 units had become stabilized after suffering earlier the effects of inadequate financing, mismanagement and other difficulties. About 100 units in old structures were being rehabilitated. The supermarket and theater, TWO-owned, were returning a profit. Other TWO activities included: a community health center, job training program, adoption referral agency and a neighborhood "crime watch." On the other hand, a shopping center did poorly. According to Leon Finney, most of the black population could not afford to buy in small shops. Their needs had to be met by high-volume, low price operations which may explain the persistence of so many vacant stores.

In contrast to the emphasis on black self-determination in the sixties and the rather closed situation encountered by Herman Blake, Finney stated, "The aim of TWO is to draw to the area not only white residents but white businesses as well. Integration is the byword. . . . A lot of our black friends have criticized us for this, but we know now there is no way Woodlawn is going to make it as an all-black community. We are not going to gild the ghetto, and we're not going to create a poor man's reservation." Furthermore, "we got to have middle-class blacks and whites if Woodlawn is to survive.^"79 This view was not very different from the principle espoused by the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, that is, that its goal was an integrated community of high standards. That these changes could have occurred in the absence of TWO is scarcely to be credited.

3. TWO demanded that it be informed about and have input into the urban renewal plan from the beginning and not face a fait accompli before the Community Conservation Board. It succeeded in this because it had demonstrated its right to be consulted and had organized the power to make good its demand.

4. The interdenominational character of the TWO effort was a noteworthy achievement.

5. Silberman called attention to another major achievement: "For the first time in the history of urban renewal in the United States, people displaced by demolition will have new homes waiting for them in the new neighborhood."⁸⁰

6. There was a further result not commonly thought of in connection with community organizations. Silberman pointed out that one of the problems in organizing anything is the personal disorganization which characterizes many ghetto residents. It proved very difficult at the beginning, for example, to organize distribution of leaflets because the individuals who were to assist would not show up at the same time or perhaps not at all. They would lose the leaflets, or they would simply stop distributing them.

Bit by bit, however, the members learned how to accept orders, how to carry out a simple task and follow through on it; then they began to learn how to give orders, how to handle a meeting, how to talk on their feet and debate an issue, how to handle opposition. The result, for those who have been actively involved in the organization, has been to transform their existence, for the discipline of the organization gradually imposes itself on their own lives. And as the individual learns to organize his own life, he learns how to relate to others.⁸¹

Silberman's conclusion on this point is supported by Chambers, who said that in his view the significance of TWO was, "It became the teacher of how one functions in society."⁸² The TWO member learned to function as a member of society by functioning. It was not learned didactically from a social worker. It was learned by doing.

7. Finally, Silberman brings up a critical point: If there is no community base, help offered from the outside is resisted and resented as "welfare colonialism." "TWO's greatest contribution, therefore, is its most subtle: it gives Woodlawn residents the sense of dignity that makes it possible for them to accept help."⁸³ "What is crucial . . . is not what the Woodlawn residents win but the fact that they are winning it."⁸⁴ They come to see themselves as people of worth, and their militancy becomes matched with a sense of responsibility.

Many hundreds of persons shared the task of carrying on TWO activities. The Housing Committee alone had 200 active members. Many others were involved in voter registration, monitoring welfare and health programs, etc. They had to learn many facts, to find out how things happened or why they did not and to learn the skills of community organization. But most important they learned that they could do it. It is difficult to believe that there would be many white neighborhoods in Chicago that could muster more effective leadership than that which TWO developed in Woodlawn.

In conclusion, it seems appropriate to end this review of results by quoting from Blake's report which takes note of remarks made in the State of the Community address delivered before TWO's 1966 annual convention by the president, the Reverend Lynward Stevenson:

I cannot describe to you what it means to negotiate with people like Sargent Shriver and Richard Daley and not be alone. For, when the president of the Woodlawn Organization goes anywhere to bargain, he has a collective leadership beside him and huge numbers of people behind him. He goes into battle with a real weapon, the weapon of the poor--their numbers. What does it mean to a man to have that kind of support? It means that he and those that support him are free men in every sense of the word.

We have paid heavily over the past five years for our self-determination. We in TWO believe that dignity is more important than money. And if city hall, or Washington, thinks that they can rob us of our self-determination by simply ignoring us, then they picked a bad year to do it.

At the close of my two years as your president, I come to say this: You have made me proud to be a part of The Woodlawn Organization. You have made me proud to be a member of the greater Woodlawn community. You have made me proud--more than I can say--to be a Negro. And finally, you have made me proud to be a man.⁸⁵

Comments

TWO represents the most significant project in this category of citizen education programs to which the ESF contributed financial support. The IAF organizing effort was successful to a degree quite unique on the American scene. It showed a black, disorganized, apathetic urban ghetto population that it could, by working together, mobilize sufficient strength to affect the conditions of community life in significant ways despite the opposition of powerful interests. The community through TWO decided what it wanted, devised the tactics to achieve it and achieved the courage and determination to carry through. A key principle was that programs were not to be conceived elsewhere and then made available for the community. Community residents were to be part of the decision process. The community refused to rubber-stamp plans and programs prepared by others for community residents. And, as time went on, the organization achieved self-support and, indeed, became a significant developer of housing and related investments in the community.

Through TWO, the residents of Woodlawn gained an enormous amount of information about and an understanding of problems, about alternative courses of action, about the roles of various agencies and organizations whose work would be relevant to community needs, about the tactics which would assist TWO to meet its goals and the conviction that organizing made a difference. Perhaps most important was the growth in their sense of self-worth. We must certainly acknowledge that TWO was serving the purpose, successfully, of helping its citizen members in a significant way to work with others toward common ends. Nearly two decades after TWO started, it remains an effective, viable organization. We cannot say how widely its example has been emulated, if indeed it has a close parallel anywhere, yet the principles of its founding are not esoteric. Commenting on the relevance of the TWO approach to other situations, Reverend Stevenson said:

Because of what we have accomplished so far, leaders from Rochester and Kansas City, from Buffalo and Detroit and Oakland have come to Woodlawn to look and ask questions.

They have gone home to raise money. And TWO has sent trained men into Rochester and Kansas City to help them build permanent organization in their ghettos, ⁸⁶

There were, in addition, applicants who sought support from the Foundation for the purpose of conducting community organization activities using, they said, IAF principles. We turn now to a description of what happened in the case of two grantees: The National Conference of Catholic Charities and Hudson Guild, a neighborhood house in the Chelsea area of New York City.

The success of organizing efforts by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in California, the ability of the Back-of-the-Yards Council in Chicago to maintain its strength over several decades and the continuing pronouncements by Saul Alinsky comparing IAF community organizational efforts with those of the social work profession in general and neighborhood houses in particular inevitably led to the question of whether Alinsky's organizing principles could be successfully adopted by others. The Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation welcomed the opportunity to test this possibility. Three grants were made in the hope of obtaining information on this point. Two grants were given to the National Conference of Catholic Charities (NCCC) to support organizing efforts which, after some initial uncertainty, were ultimately specified to Lackawanna, New York, and Butte, Montana. The third grant was made to Hudson Guild, a neighborhood house in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, in New York City.

National Conference of Catholic Charities: Citizens Federation of Lackawanna

The applications submitted by the National Conference of Catholic Charities (NCCC) grew out of a keen interest in the IAF on the part of the Right Reverend Monsignor John O'Grady, secretary of the NCCC. He had followed the work of the IAF in the Back-of-the-Yards area of Chicago and elsewhere since its beginning. A man of strongly liberal outlook, he was concerned by the increasing alienation of Americans and saw in community organization a way to help citizens feel that they could still have some control over their lives. His hope was to find communities where the diocesan authorities would he hospitable to the idea of working with others to organize citizens for community improvement. With funding in hand, he proposed to contract with the IAF to train local persons to organize in the community. The latter would then carry on as staff members of the citizen organization thus created. The first community for which funding of such a project was provided by the Foundation was Lackawanna, New York (adjacent to Buffalo). A three-year grant in the amount of $45,300 was made in May 1956.⁸⁷

In requesting funding, Monsignor O'Grady indicated that in general his aims were to reduce apathy and to help residents of Lackawanna to develop an organization which could deal with community problems.⁸⁸ But first, let us review some of the salient characteristics of this community of something over 30,000 people.

1. Economically, the city was dominated by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, which controlled five out of every seven jobs. It is startling to learn that the second largest employer was the Catholic social welfare services organization.

2. The company's size meant that the union locals were also powerful.

3. The population was divided into a large number of ethnic minorities including black, Polish (the largest), German, Italian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Slovak, Spanish, Mexican and Puerto Rican. These groups seemed to cooperate with one another as little as possible.

4. It was not a community with a significant amount of basic illiteracy except possibly among older immigrants. Nor were there systematic obstacles placed in the way of exercising the franchise.

5. The community was anything but unorganized. In fact, it could be said that the various groups were so encapsulated in ethnically based organizations that activity on a community basis would be difficult.

6. The political system was highly corrupt. Apparently "the rascals were thrown out" many times but were merely replaced by others. In spite of the political turmoil, conditions in the city only went from bad to worse--unpaved streets, raw sewage on the surface in residential areas, slums, impoverished recreation programs, air pollution, floods, kickbacks, selling of jobs in city agencies, and so on ad nauseam. As a result, there was such a feeling of revulsion on the part of citizens against the political process that it was hard to see how a community organization could do anything effective.

Faced with this catalog of troubles, Monsignor O'Grady said:

Our problem was to find out how a town of over 30,000 people who were highly paid and very well organized in churches, unions, fraternal clubs, national groups and veterans organizations could be so plaintively helpless. We concluded that the completeness of Lackawanna's organizational life greatly contributed to making the status quo so difficult to budge. The organizations in the town which had the power (at least potentially) to make changes had each made their own accommodation with the system. True, the organizations' members did not share in these arrangements.... They suited the corporate personalities, not the individuals. . . . The process can be thought of as an unconscious one. ⁸⁹

Several examples of institutionalized self-interest may be cited. Industry had established influence over tax assessments. The unions were glad to have a policy of noninterference on the part of the Lackawanna authorities. Also, it was important to the union whether or not the politicians would do something for old or injured workers. Although church membership was high, the churches were largely immobilized. They, too, sought favors (lending a hand with money raising, with construction or with the use of city-owned equipment. As described by Monsignor O'Grady: "In return for this, what did the Lackawanna politician receive? He got the parishes' neutrality. For him that was enough."⁹⁰

A preliminary look around town made it clear to the organizers "... that what was to be done would have to be nonpolitical.... Obviously many people were disgusted with politics and with the [idea of] political reform. People would have to be convinced that anything we did was absolutely nonpartisan."

They further concluded:

The principal organizations would have to be reassured that nothing was underway which was designed to take from them the prerogatives and privileges they had come to think necessary for themselves.

The reader of this report may conclude that we were prepared to surrender our own principles before we had begun. Not so. If our thesis was correct, and Lackawanna's frustrating helplessness rested on a handful of major and powerful groups, one thing was certain: they must not oppose us at the beginning. If they did, we would be beaten before we started.

Secondly, until we were in a position to offer these groups new ways of getting what they considered vital to their well-being, or until we could propose adequate substitutes, we had no hope of getting them to shift their position.⁹¹

If the situation was as frozen as Monsignor O'Grady suggested, a valid question was whether there was any hope of achieving the stated objectives. But Monsignor O'Grady was determined to proceed, and organizing began in October 1956.

In a conversation in May 1957, Monsignor O'Grady and Nicholas von Hoffman reviewed the aims of the organizing effort in Lackawanna: (1) to seek to overcome the historical cleavages among ethnic groups through a positive, constructive community effort; (2) to build a realization on the part of citizens that government is their business and that it is their right and obligation to do something about it; (3) to replace an attitude of cynicism with a feeling of pride in their city; (4) to change attitudes towards politics and politicians (which, of course, also meant changing politics and the politicians); and (5) to encourage and develop new leaders who would team how to lead without acting like "the boss." (This involved helping leaders learn that more than good will was necessary and that it would also take footwork and follow-up. It meant being able to distinguish between the practical and the impractical.)⁹²

One difficulty in determining what contribution the project made to the achievement of these objectives is the lack of any final report, failing health having prevented Monsignor O'Grady from producing one. Nevertheless, on the basis of interviews, an interim report prepared by Monsignor O'Grady in 1957 and copies of certain field reports submitted to the NCCC by organizers in the field, it is possible to describe something of what happened and draw some lessons from this experience.

The Organizers

The first organizer was Nicholas von Hoffman, who had worked with Saul Alinsky for several years before coming to Lackawanna. He was to remain for only five months and subsequently would come in on a consultant basis as his time allowed (presumably for a few days each month) and as the need required.⁹³ It was his task to get organizing started, to identify and recruit someone to be trained in the local community and then to give from a distance such guidance as might be needed.

One of the first persons he met was Tom Murphy. Murphy was a native of Lackawanna, had worked in the steel mills after his second year of high school and had taken part in unsuccessful organizational drives in the past. He had been elected assessor and had begun to review the steel company's tax picture but eventually was ousted. When the organizing effort started, he was the city's senior building inspector and engineer's aide. He had been invited to the first meeting called by Monsignor Julius Szabo, director of the Lackawanna branch of the Buffalo Catholic Charities, to discuss the project. His background in politics and his activities over a long period in a variety of organizations persuaded Catholic Charities to employ him as an organizer. It was expected that he would be trained by Von Hoffman in IAF techniques.

A third organizer, Edward Chambers, was brought in later from the Middle West, presumably as a replacement for Von Hoffman. He had studied in a Catholic seminary and had worked with the Catholic Interracial Friendship House movement for several years. Subsequent to his work in Lackawanna, he became Alinsky's chief organizer in Chicago.

Training. With respect to training, documentary evidence is almost entirely lacking. A brief statement by Monsignor O'Grady, however, indicates that it was typical of the IAF pattern:

The training has proven interesting in that while one might have thought it would have to concentrate on "techniques," nothing of this sort has been the case. We found the training consisted principally of two things. The first was getting to know oneself well enough to be able to look at the work around one impartially and ... accurately. The second part of this training program was long and careful discussion of all that was happening. This was not done under any formal set of circumstances, nor was any specific time set aside for discussion. These conversations would take place usually late at night after the work of the day was done and sometimes they could go on until three or four in the morning. ⁹⁴

Beginning to Organize

In his first report to Monsignor O'Grady, Von Hoffman stated that he began by visiting an old style family tavern in the community. After establishing "a beachhead," he moved on to other hangouts. He met Tom Murphy.⁹⁵

Through Murphy I am being lined up with a lot of other people in the town who feel acutely dissatisfied at the way things are going in a number of places.... They are all furious at the "apathy toward honest graft." I have been working on them to get them to see that the first thing is to build a strong organization and not to get into a war until it can be won.... The chief danger, as I see it, is getting tabbed as a reform group and getting into a fight too soon.⁹⁶

It was decided to begin by constituting a committee made up of interested individuals who were also members of major groups or organizations in the community. An alternative approach--to ask organizations to designate representatives to such a committee was rejected because it would have necessitated developing a general statement of principles and objectives which might or might not have fit the community and, in any case, might have provided "an invitation to be shot at." It was thought preferable to proceed on an inductive basis, as it were, and "to start talking about and working on the possible."⁹⁷ The temporary committee was called Lackawanna Neighborhood Cooperative Committee (LNCC).

At about the time when the initial group began to meet, the problem faced by some 120 families in the lower end of the town who would need to be relocated to make way for a new highway was brought up. Most of these families were black, and almost all were poor. Tom Murphy agreed to act as chairman of a committee to deal with the consequent problems. He began organizing and had a small committee working in a few weeks. They asked for and got from the Buffalo Housing Authority a promise of preference in access to housing for those who would be evicted. Apparently, this was the first time that local citizens had accomplished something for themselves instead of just complaining to the politicians. It was especially impressive that most of those involved were poor, ill-educated blacks.⁹⁸

The outcome of this issue would be crucial for the nascent organization. The question of where to put these people had been kicked around by the politicians for months; speeches had been made, denunciations issued, but nothing had been done or even started.

This small achievement provided the impetus for the decision to keep the organization in existence. People began to talk about things that had been bothering them but which they had held back because they did not really think anything could be done about them. ⁹⁹

By July 1957, several other undertakings, including a protest resulting in the city signing a contract to deal with a sewer problem, appeared to be successfully underway.

Another important development involved Albright Court, a public housing project built during the war to house workers in war industry. About the time the organizing effort began, plans were made to sell the project to the highest bidder. As it turned out, the high bid was submitted by local interests at a level far above the highest bid offered by outside investors. It quickly became clear that the local bidders expected to get their money back by escalating rents, by converting recreation rooms into apartments and rooms for rent and through a policy of minimum maintenance. This situation was made to order for a citizens' organizing effort. With help from the NCCC organizers, the Albright Court Tenants Council was formed. Its aim was to compel the landlord to bargain with the tenants, to compel the rent control office to establish a rental scale lower than the landlord proposed and to compel the landlord to specify a maintenance schedule. The council said that tenants would refuse to pay rent until repairs were made, and it worked out a maintenance and repair schedule. But, as a tactic, it made no proposals to the landlord, relying on the group's ability to keep negotiations tied up in order to force him to make proposals.

On July 11, 1957, the residents of Albright Court received notice from the owner of his intention to apply for rent increases, ranging from one-third to one-half in amount. Fortunately, because some organizational work had by this time been done in Albright Court, a petition was already on file with the rent control office calling for an extension of controls. A meeting of tenants was called, and plans were made for a mass meeting at which time tenants could complete their responses to the landlord's notice and have the forms notarized and forwarded to the rent control office. In the meantime, the tenants had also succeeded in getting an extension of time, from seven to eighteen days, in which to reply.

Prior to the mass meeting, outside groups were contacted for expressions of support and encouragement of the tenants. The president of the NAACP, pastors of two churches and union members agreed to try to arrange for such overt support. In addition, questionnaires were distributed to the tenants which asked them to comment in very specific terms on the condition of their apartments. The questionnaires "gave us an opportunity to get into every one of their homes and explain the organization we had and that we did have an effective instrument with which to fight the landlord."¹⁰⁰ Some 270 people from Albright Court attended the mass meeting.

The whole meeting was very well organized and was run off in about an hour and a half in addition to having over 130 forms notarized on the spot. Several labor fellows commented that it was one of the best-run meetings they had been to in a long time. We set up a system of Unit Captains ... we have tried to get a representative from each building to be on the executive committee . . . and in this way we have a rapid-fire way of communication, keeping people informed and of notifying people of changes.¹⁰¹

During these developments, Chambers made several telephone calls to the chairman of the LNCC to keep him informed. But at the next meeting of the LNCC executive committee, a bitter argument broke out because some of the members were violently opposed to rent controls. The chairman (a school administrator) argued that it might be all right to work with these "fringe groups" but that they

should not and could not be identified with the Lackawanna Neighborhood Cooperative Committee. ... He started referring to Tom and I as merely advisors to the executive group and he pretty much put me on the hot seat. I tried to point out that . . . people from the First Ward .. . thought that something should really be done on this issue and that the organization should get behind it. We also have about four members who were in the organization who live in the Albright Court.... There seemed to be a tremendous fear on the part of the chairman and others that the organization was growing to proportions where they no longer could control it and they were not willing to invest some trust and some faith in other people. In effect they were saying that we could possibly work with these groups but that they could not use our name or that we would soon have every rabble-rouser down on our necks. ¹⁰²  

At the general meeting of the LNCC, the argument continued, ending up with an announcement by the chairman that he was resigning. Chambers' reaction:  

The determination must come about as to whether this organization is going to have new groups who can operate under the principle of self-determination and can have representation on our executive committee and on policy-making committees. This determination ultimately is going to decide whether we succeed or fail. We cannot draw off at this point at getting these groups in; if we do it will be a complete victory for the middle-class mentality and for the mentality of a small minority who want to keep a complete air of respectability about our organization. 103

Subsequently, the owners of Albright Court were granted rent increases but in a greatly reduced amount from the original request.

Because it points up certain difficulties in the later development of the organizing effort, it is useful to compare the reports submitted to the NCCC by two of the organizers working in the project. Ed Chambers' reports emphasized organizational principles, including ways and means to use a particular issue to benefit the organizing effort. He tried to determine what lay behind an action or statement that might have relevance to the project. Tom Murphy's report for the same period devoted the first eight pages to a description of the Albright Court project from the viewpoint of a building inspector. This would be useful in a meeting of tenants, but it had no direct relevance to the problem of organizing in the area. Only one page was devoted to a rather cursory listing of some events which had been dealt with at length by Chambers.

As the negotiations concerning Albright Court proceeded, an increasing uneasiness manifested itself among members of the LNCC. They apparently had little inclination for controversy, an attitude which was basic to the issue of viability of the organizing effort. Chambers noted in a later report that some of the subcommittees of the Albright Tenants Council were beginning to show a certain apathy, as though having partially won one issue was enough. In the meantime, the landlords were trying to convert a recreational building into additional apartments although they had not yet repaired the existing ones. Even though the tenants pointed out building violations, the permit to reconvert was granted. Chambers did not appear to be too downcast, observing that:

organizationally it will be good for our tenants in Albright Court. The reason we got beat on this was because we were not organized well enough. . .. I think we have come out very well on this because I don't want to approach the Community Congress with a big fight in the Albright Court deal. We have become too much identified with this one issue ... we have got to submerge it for the benefit of bringing about the Community Congress and organizing many of the people who are yet unorganized... . Tom, on the contrary, was very interested in blasting and in general raising hell because the permits were given. I do not see what we would have gained from that. We were beaten no matter how big a stink we make. Permits will be given. ¹⁰⁴

It is difficult to second-guess a decision of this kind. It may be that had the issue been pressed harder, the organization would have collapsed before it had even held its first Community Congress. Yet the record indicates that the fight waged by the Albright Court tenants was one of the major efforts of the LNCC, and certainly the tenants made up a very large proportion of the persons involved with the LNCC committee. One can wonder, therefore, whether the tenants may not have felt that LNCC let them down by deciding not to push the matter. In the meantime, at the first Community Congress (January 1958) the LNCC had become the Citizens Federation of Lackawanna (CFL).

One reason that the tenants' struggle was not used more effectively was because middle-class elements in the CFL vehemently opposed supporting the Albright tenants on the ground that a rent strike was too controversial. Because the Albright tenants were not represented collectively, they had no leverage in seeking CFL support. Other issues requiring confrontation with authorities were also avoided by the middle-class group. As a result, there was no reason for a mass-base to develop. After the initial successful effort to gain housing for those displaced by the expressway, the organization failed to help those who needed help the most.

The Albright Court fight was localized, but there were other issues which affected the whole city. To deal with them, organizations were formed in each of the four wards into which the city was divided. These ward organizations, under the overall designation of Citizens Federation of Lackawanna (CFL), were the first in the city to include a broad representation of groups, including WASPs and professionals. Each ward organization had precinct captains who were not controlled by city hall. Along with these ward organizations there was a leader-in-training program, involving a group of lawyers and Bruce Young, a Protestant minister.¹¹⁵ One example of a citywide issue which was fought by the CFL and its ward organizations involved the policies and practices of the school board. The Education Committee of the CFL which had been organized at the first Community Congress undertook a detailed study of the school budget. On the basis of their analysis they recommended that the CFL oppose the school board's proposal for a bond issue to build a new school. "In this year's budget we laid the ground work for an intelligent understanding of the fiscal affairs of the educational system. ..."¹⁰⁶ In the election which followed, the bond proposal was defeated by a vote of four to one. "This was the first time that the power group in Lackawanna (that is, the school board and city hall) had been defeated." Moreover, the Committee's candidate was elected to the school board.¹⁰⁷

In the meantime, the Albright Corporation had changed its tactics by filing appeals for rent increases on individual units in an effort to split the tenants. The problem for the tenants was increased enormously because now each appeal had to be opposed on an individual basis. Unfortunately, the organization proved weaker than might have been expected in view of the fact that it had previously been able to gain advantages for tenants. In spite of such gains, of the 200 resident families, only seventy had paid a five-dollar membership fee to the Albright Court Tenants Council. Even so, the tenants did score a success because the New York State Rent Control Office reversed the Buffalo office on rent increases granted to the landlords. A summary of this decision was duplicated and distributed to every family.

Yet, the CFL continued to have difficulties. Prior to the second Community Congress, five persons were approached to run for president but all declined. Apparently, being identified as "controversial" was hurting the organization. Those with political ambitions as well as representatives of industry were withdrawing. A local bank pressured its employees to withdraw. Why, then, did the CFL lose momentum? In part, it was due to the character of the community itself. Both its structure and history had, in my opinion, a decisive impact on the effort to form a citizens organization. The overwhelming size of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation must to some degree have inhibited any effort to bring about significant change contrary to the wishes of the company. Even countervailing forces, such as the United Steel Workers locals, had made their own accommodations with Bethlehem, accommodations which might have been upset had the locals elected to throw their weight against the company on some political issue.

The strong divisions, involving not only whites against blacks but antagonisms among the European ethnic groups as well, made the election process in an organization a very ticklish business indeed. In spite of the active involvement of the Buffalo Catholic Charities, the Catholic parish organizations, with one or two exceptions, remained aloof. This, alone, was a fatal blow. The racial issue affected even decisions about recreational facilities because no progress could be made toward improving them if the effect would be either to perpetuate a segregated pattern or to promote integration. The desire to avoid raising a religious issue enabled the Protestants to block such fundraising devices as the raffle, which might have provided a first step toward self-financing. The widespread corruption in city government and the school administration had produced a cynicism matched by apathy at the polls, except when the electorate swarmed to the polls on occasion to "throw the rascals out." Disillusionment with the political process strongly inhibited any organizing effort which pointed toward political action. This was viewed by citizens as partisan, and they did not wish to have anything to do with it. It was as though they wanted to abdicate their political rights.

Organizational Structure

Although some inferences can be made, the records available provide little detail concerning the organizational process or structure of what was eventually to become the CFL. Given Lackawanna's history, however, it is clear that the process of building the organization could not have been easy. The many meetings held by Von Hoffman with individuals and small groups in Lackawanna did result in a small steering committee undertaking to plan for a large group meeting to be held January 24, 1957. They also proposed three committees: the Program Committee would in time be expected to have subcommittees for relocation and housing, traffic safety, flood control and sanitation and health; the Publicity Committee would control publicity issued on behalf of the organization; the Rules Committee would deal with matters of organization.

In constituting the group which was to meet in January, an attempt had been made to recruit key individuals who were important in the town's most powerful organizations. They were, however, recruited as individuals rather than as representatives of their organizations. This was done in part because no one was quite ready to explain just what the new organization was and, in part, because to define it in a statement of principles might result in the other organizations' refusal to designate representatives. It was finally decided that the steering committee would invite other people who were approved by the majority of its members and who would agree to support the purposes of the committee. The reason for the restricted entree was the fear that "politicians" would move in and take over.¹⁰⁸ By the end of March, Von Hoffman reported that the group had sixty members and that it was a well-balanced group so that no single bloc would control it. On the other hand, we might wonder whether it was so well balanced as to be immobilized, with the various interests canceling each other.

In the meantime, the group, which had taken the name Lackawanna Neighborhood Cooperative Committee (LNCC), was discussing what its permanent form should be. One question was whether its membership should consist of organizations or of individuals. And there were other problems to settle. For example, fear was expressed that the committee would become a rival of the Chamber of Commerce.¹⁰⁹ The many differences of opinion, indeed, led to the resignation of the chairman later that summer because he could not accept the fact that the organization would have to be run on democratic lines and not like a teachers' meeting in a school. An important unresolved question was the place of blacks in the organization. In late May, the chairman of the Rules Committee stated that their presence was keeping others from joining the LNCC. Later, action on program matters would be left undecided because of inability to accept the principle of equal access.

In early June, Chambers noted that the Rules Committee chairman wanted to keep the organization small and was concerned about the idea of having a constitutional convention. He also reported that members were lukewarm toward the idea of a delegate organization. Chambers thought that the Rules Committee did not understand the connection between the structural basis of the organization and its financing.¹¹⁰ While some of the leaders of the LNCC were talking about a ten-dollar membership fee, others were pointing out that this would carry the group for only a month; that the need was rather for a budget in the range of $15,000 to $20,000 a year if they were to have a full-time organizer.

The Community Congress was held in January 1958, and the Citizens Federation of Lackawanna was organized. The structure finally agreed upon made provision for a board of ninety persons plus officers. Evidently, there was strong pressure for every organization to be represented on the board.¹¹¹ A businessman was elected president. The CFL continued to meet through the spring with an attendance of about sixty at each general meeting. Discussion was beginning to improve, but no progress was made on raising money. This was in part because as pressure was applied to contribute to CFL, some of the organizations withdrew. In June, Monsignor Szabo proposed a raffle with a fifty-fifty split between the CFL and the ninety member organizations, a suggestion which was opposed by Protestants. No forthright decision was made on financing, and by 1960, the organization had no funds. In 1961, Monsignor Szabo reported to Monsignor O'Grady that the Buffalo Catholic Charities had appointed a supervisor of community neighborhood relations, adding that, "Our experience with the Citizens Federation has emphasized the necessity of such an office. I am happy to say that our federation has been quite active since all financial support was withdrawn...."¹¹² What was not disclosed by Monsignor Szabo was the nature and quality of the CFL activity.

Staff Roles

The attempt to apply IAF principles through another organization was one purpose of the Lackawanna project. Thus, the effectiveness of the contribution of the staff organizers (or the lack of it) was critical. The organizers' reports give us some clues about their activities and their perception of these activities.

At first, Von Hoffman had thought that Tom Murphy would become an excellent organizer.¹¹³ However, in March 1957, when Von Hoffman became ill and had to leave Tom Murphy in charge, matters soon became immobilized. Upon his return, Von Hoffman realized that he must invest more time with Murphy in further training. He reported that Murphy had the idea that

the details would more or less drop into place. "They have not, as he has now learned, and it is not easy to keep all the stuff straight.... Again, Tom seems to have been a person who believed there was a rule to cover every situation as long as you could find it.... Tom loves a yes or no, a good or bad, but the maybes, perhaps, and the gray shades of morality are tough for him to stomach." ¹¹⁴

By this time Ed Chambers had joined the group, and both Chambers and Murphy were concerned about their own roles. How much should they do? How much could they leave to others? And there were other problems. Their weekly reports show that there was a minimum of communication between the two organizers, and when they did refer to one another, there was little evidence of a meeting of minds. This situation was obviously damaging to the organizing effort, but there is no evidence in the available record that anyone noted this or tried to remedy it.

It seems clear that Chambers had a much livelier sense of what building an organization required than Murphy did. He was alert to issues and their relation to the organizing effort and had a sense of the motivations of those involved. In contrast, Murphy's reports were largely concerned with technical matters which interested him as a building inspector but had virtually no relevance to the organizing effort. He also invested a great deal of energy in attacking the iniquities of city hall, but much as city hall may have deserved it, it did not advance the organizing cause. At one point, Chambers did comment on Murphy's attitude:

I have tried innumerable times . . . to sit down and discuss the work, discuss approaches with him, but I seem to be able to get nowhere. He says he does not want to talk about it, let it go to the committee, and we can both present our ideas there and see what happens. He has never asked to have a meeting with me in the past two or three months. He discusses none of his activities; he does not tell me of any meetings; he has a tremendous amount of antagonism, which I frankly do not understand. . . . I have called conferences ... and never once has he tried to get together. This is a terrible state of affairs .... ¹¹⁵

Obviously, there was something seriously wrong with the organizing effort.¹¹⁶

On his side, Murphy complained that he was not being kept informed of what Chambers was doing, that "he begins to think . . . that he is going to be the one to tell the public officials what to do, that he is going to be the guy who is going to run this organization. . . ."¹¹⁷ A further dispute between Chambers and Murphy arose over Chambers' effort to keep in touch with politicians, which Murphy strongly opposed. What strikes one about these complaints is the implication that it is a staff role to tell public officials what to do and indeed to run the organization--a clear failure to understand the purpose of the organizing effort. Although the record is fragmentary, some further clues to Murphy's role suggest two main themes. First, he seemed to see himself as a kind of general "fix-it man," who, when he saw a problem, felt a personal responsibility to try to solve it. This was in sharp contrast to the view that the organizer should help those facing the problem to solve it for themselves. Second, he appeared to consider himself as the conscience of the community. In one report, he devoted two and one-half pages to the subject of gambling in Lackawanna. Yet his role within the CFL would have provided the only reason for his covering the subject in his report to Monsignor O'Grady. His personal and individualistic outlook precluded his seeing situations or events as opportunities for an organizing effort.

Reasons for Failure

There were a few CFL successes: some housing for those displaced by a highway in the First Ward, some help for tenants in Albright Court, and defeat of a school bond issue deemed by the CFL to be unnecessary. But on the whole, the CFL was a failure, both as an organization and as a test of IAF principles and methods. A summary of the reasons follows.

The Community. (1) Bethlehem Steel was just too big. It overwhelmed the city. There was no group not dependent on the company and yet large enough to exert leverage on city hall. (2) There was mutual antagonism among ethnic groups. (3) The unions were concerned about straight union issues. They did not address themselves to such issues as education, housing, sewage or pollution. The unions and the CFL did not make common cause. (4) For too many people, solving a community problem meant sending a delegation to city hall. They did not comprehend nor take seriously the idea of a neighborhood organization working to solve problems. And the organizing activity was not adequate to alter the stereotype. (5) Because economic alternatives to working for the company were so minimal, city hall (and the school system) and its jobs and contracts became the objects of intense political activity. If one got "in," it became a duty to help other family members. Inevitably, CFL leaders became involved. And (6) the community rejected involvement in controversy. This left, apparently, no place for an organization seeking to change the status quo.

Staffing Inadequacies. (1) The initial IAF organizing input was inadequate; Von Hoffman's illness reduced the impact of what was too short a training effort in any case; and (2) as an organizer, Chambers was promising; Murphy was not. But when Von Hoffman left, neither one was placed in charge. "The divided staff authority was catastrophic."¹¹⁸ After Chambers left, the staff of the Catholic Charities of Buffalo (CCB) assigned to CFL lacked adequate training, and they did not follow Chambers' example of trying to organize in the neighborhoods.¹¹⁹

Organizational Inadequacies.  (1) Implementation of the project design was inadequate. Five months of an IAF organizer's time (significantly reduced because of illness), plus monthly visits over the next six months, was simply insufficient. Chambers and Murphy needed more training (although it can be argued that Murphy's outlook was such that more training would have been futile). Alinsky may have been aware that the IAF input would be inadequate because he indicated in conversations at the time that IAF was feeling the strain of keeping up with its regular projects. Yet he recommended the Lackawanna project as being feasible. The know-how to probe for and identify the conflicting interests and to deal with issues on which local feelings were highly charged resided in an outside agency (IAF) which had little leverage or presence in Lackawanna.

(2) The initial organizing effort seems to have proceeded at a rather general level. Individual members of various organizations were asked to join in the effort to bring about constructive community improvement, but organizations as such were not invited to designate representatives; even though these organizations had shared concerns. In my opinion, involving the organizations on the basis of problems and issues would have been the IAF approach. Monsignor O'Grady probably thought that such an approach was premature. But the consequence was that too many members of the CFL, including its officers, were opposed to taking decisive action in behalf of lower-status groups such as the Albright tenants. They had in mind a white, middle-class miracle which would result in "throwing the rascals out."

(3) The organizational weakness was especially obvious in the obstacles put in the way of helping the Albright tenants and using this fight to build the organization. And the grantee's connection with the project was too remote. Age, illness and geographic distance dimmed the relationship. Monsignor O'Grady's headquarters were in Washington, D.C.; thus, at best, his interest and commitment to an IAF-style project would have to be filtered through Catholic Charities of Buffalo.

(4) The funds were controlled by CCB. The NCCC/CFL staff were on the CCB payroll. The CFL office was in the CCB office in the First Ward. There was some ambiguity, therefore, about the relation of staff to the organization. The organizations in the separate wards would have been well aware of Ed Chambers' contribution. But those whose view was limited to a "fight city hall" objective would not have understood or valued these efforts.

(5) There is no reference in the available record about any training effort involving officers or board members.

Finance.  (1) To have believed that a Citizens Federation of Lackawanna could be maintained out of individual dues payments was to have a very limited view of organization requirements--limited to mimeographing and postage. No staff could possibly be supported from so meager a base.

(2) The reticence about recruiting among established organizations meant that more significant sums, such as those secured by TWO from its organization members, would not be realized either. Almost no Catholic parishes joined CFL.

(3) Some knew, of course, that much more money would be needed. Catholic elements proposed almost at the beginning to raffle a house. But this idea was eventually dropped because of vigorous opposition from the Protestants. Their threat to withdraw would have wrecked the ecumenicity of which CFL was proud. (Ecumenicity in 1960 was not yet prevalent.)¹²⁰ CFL never came near to financial independence.

Racism.  (1) An early success was the favorable decision by the housing authority in favor of preference in new housing for those (mostly black) displaced by highway construction in the First Ward. But any improvement in other facilities which might have to be shared with blacks was blocked.

(2) In 1966-1967, the Buffalo diocese proposed to sell land in a white area to a conservative, black, nonprofit housing corporation, but CFL would not come out in support of the move, despite earlier professions of racial "liberalism" toward Lackawanna's blacks. This was upsetting to the Buffalo diocese, which pulled the Catholic Charities money out.¹²¹ When this happened, it was all over for CFL except for a remnant which served as a voice of the black community.

Ed Chambers still believes that CFL need not have failed, if adequate organizing staff could have been made available. ¹²² But the Lackawanna project certainly did not demonstrate that IAF principles were successfully applied by the National Conference of Catholic Charities. At the same time, the IAF contribution was too meager to allow us to determine whether IAF principles could have been successfully applied by NCCC.

National Conference of Catholic Charities: Butte Citizens Project

In July 1958, the Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation informed Monsignor O'Grady, secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Charities (NCCC), that a grant of $63,770.86 had been awarded to the NCCC for community organization and development in western Montana. As was the case in Lackawanna, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) principles were to be applied. F