Ongoing Exhibition

For those interested in viewing the Contract Buyers League exhibit, beginning on Tuesday, July 21, it will be at Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, North Lawndale, 3555 W Ogden Ave.  The exhibit is open to the public from 10am-4pm.  Please feel free to come at any time, and tell your friends.

Thank you.

Contract Selling Diagrams

Some diagrams outlining the exploitative contract selling process that occurred.  A preview of the upcoming exhibit, opening at the Homan Square Community Center next Thursday at 5pm.

Ongoing Exhibit

Thank you everyone who has taken some time to read this blog and for those that dig deeper into the history of the CBL, North Lawndale, and the themes of this blog. It's been awhile since I've posted here, but in the coming month I hope to do so a little more often.  We are working to complete a small exhibit about the CBL to be displayed in North Lawndale.  Information and progress of the developing exhibit will be posted here.  Feel free to comment and share, give suggestions, edits, etc.  Look for more to come soon....

Chicago Tonight - August 7, 2014

Mr. Ross is featured on Chicago Tonight discussing the CBL's history in Chicago.

The Chicago Freedom Movement and the CBL

With the recent 50th anniversary for the March on Washington, I’d like to post about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s relation to contract selling and the Contract Buyers League.  In 1966, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) brought their civil rights campaign north to Chicago.  With the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), a local group led by Al Raby, they began the Chicago Freedom Movement.  The movement was dedicated to ending housing discrimination in Chicago and focused on ending slums in the city.  They chose to focus on North Lawndale, and King even moved his family into an apartment at 1550 S Hamlin.1  John McKnight,  who was the Midwest Director of the US Civil Rights Commission (1965-1969), describes how he worked with Jim Bevel to try and persuade Dr. King to fight against contract selling, and ultimately the explanation of why they did not take on this fight:

...Bevel was the first person who was a real activist who seemed really interested in [contract selling].  ...And so I got him all set up to go to the next staff meeting and make a presentation about this whole thing.  And he did that, I mean I didn’t go, I wasn’t in their inner circle.  He came back and he said to me, it didn’t work.  And I said, why do you think that is.  He said, well, the other idea that we’re looking at is creating tenants unions.  He said, and the argument that won the day was tenants unions because if people have contracts they are at least well enough off to own property.  But the tenants weren’t, they were totally bereft of any resources.2

The Chicago Freedom Movement went on to organize tenants unions and lead marches into all-white neighborhoods where they were often met with violent responses.  They held a freedom rally at Soldier Field, and King posted a list of demands for open housing on the doors of City Hall that would have benefited contract buyers as well.  Here is a link to a collection of Tribune photos of King’s time in Chicago.

King speaking at Soldier Field rally (Tribune)

John McKnight had learned about contract selling a decade earlier from attending public meetings with Mark Satter.  His hopes of King and the SCLC fighting against contract selling were dashed, but something else was going on at the same time.  There was a new conservative bishop in Chicago, who didn’t want the church involved with the civil rights movement.  Monsignior Jack Egan was the spearhead of almost all church involvement in these activities.  So the bishop exiled Egan to a declining parish in North Lawndale, Presentation Parish.3

1 "Chicago Freedom Movement, 1966" pbs.org
2 Interview with John McKnight, Nov. 7, 2012.
3 Frisbie. "An Alley in Chicago". Ch. 16.

More CBL Homes Today!

(All photographs by John Wolf.)

I spent another afternoon recently going around part of the neighborhood to photograph CBL homes and talk to residents.  There were some vacant lots, but the majority of the homes were beautiful and well-maintained.  One woman that I spoke with was certain that her landlady was involved in the CBL, so she was going to talk to her bout all of this and respond back to us.  Another man I spoke with was a teenager during the time of the CBL, and he recalled his block being lined with sheriffs evicting some of his neighbors.  There are still many more CBL homes to photograph and document, and many residents to reach out to!  More to come...

CBL Addresses, Today!

Over the past several months of collecting information on the CBL, I have been compiling a roster of CBL members and addresses.  Many of the addresses we found are from a photograph in the 1972 Atlantic Monthly article, some names were listed in court documents, but not their addresses, and a few more were taken from various newspaper articles written about individual members of the CBL.  We don't know if any CBL members are still living in these homes.  We aren't even sure if many of these homes are still standing.

So this past Monday, I started going to these addresses to see what condition the buildings are in, and to ring some doorbells and talk to the residents to find out if any CBL members are still living or if their families are still living in the same homes that were bought on contract in the 50s and 60s.  I didn't really know what to expect.  It started out pretty discouraging;  4 of the first 5 addresses I went to are now vacant lots.  There was hope though.  I talked to the residents in the one house still there and explained the CBL to them.  They did not know anything about it, but the last name of the CBL resident for that address is the name of their landlady, so they were going to tell her about our interest and plans for an exhibit.

I made it to about 30 addresses that afternoon.  I came across a few more vacant lots and a few vacant, boarded up buildings, but many of them are still standing and have someone living there.  I talked to one man whose mother was in the CBL, another woman said her in-laws had bought their house on contract and were a part of the CBL but are now deceased, and a teenage boy who was going to relay the information to his 82-year-old grandmother.

Here are some photos of CBL homes that were owned with pride.  More to come...

(All photographs by John Wolf.)

It is a Small World After All...

My name is Blaire Lewis, I am a first year doctoral student at the Adler School of Professional Psychology for clinical psychology.  This spring 2013 semester I am enrolled in Community Psychology.  In this course we learn the principles, standards, and functions of community psychology such as advocacy, social justice, and empowerment.  During this semester I am also, along with my fellow colleagues, working with an organization on a community service practicum (CSP).  The organization I work closely with is Neighborhood Housing Services-North Lawndale (NHS).  While working with NHS of North Lawndale, I have learned a great deal concerning housing and homeownership.  Together we incorporate the goal of the organization through utilizing principles of community psychology to improve North Lawndale with the end goal of increasing homeownership in North Lawndale.

During my time spent with NHS, I have learned about the history of the Contract Buyers League (CBL) and many of the people that played a major role in making CBL a success.  One of those influential leaders was Jack Macnamara.  Surprisingly, I was in my community psychology class when my instructor handed out an article written by John Macnamara titled “How real estate exploitation helps produce ghettos”.  I asked my instructor “Is this Jack MacNamara?”  She replied, “No.”  Well as I began to skim the article a couple of words stood out to me like Lawndale and contract buying.  I thought to myself, John Macnamara and Jack Macnamara must be the same person, or else this is too coincidental that these two men have the same last name and similar advocacy backgrounds in Lawndale.  Maybe the two are related? 

Ironically, the day John Macnamara came to visit our class as a guest speaker, it turned out that Jack and John are the same man.  I was glad to be a well-informed student because of my previous knowledge that I learned at CSP with NHS.  In addition to his article, I knew a bit more about Jack and the CBL.  After he spoke to my class, sharing his experience working with CBL, we had a chance to speak concerning our connection with NHS.  My first encounter with Jack Macnamara was a shocking event because I would have never guessed that some of the people I read, learn, and hear about at CSP would show up in my class!  I guess it is a small world after all!

The Beginnings of the CBL

In January 1966, Monsignor Jack Egan was assigned to Presentation Parish in North Lawndale by the newly appointed Archbishop Cody.  Egan was a well-known priest in Chicago who worked tirelessly to maintain the church’s presence in the inner city and assist the urban poor.  Looking back on his assignment to Presentation, he said “I’m living with black people for the first time in my life.  Archbishop Cody couldn’t have given me a greater gift.  I don’t think he thought of it that way.  I think he thought he was getting rid of me.”1 

While at Presentation, Egan visited seminaries to recruit students to come work with him on Saturdays.  He assigned each seminarian a block in the neighborhood as their “parish”.  They were to get to know everyone on that block, and then gathered in the afternoons to discuss what each had learned that day.  They called this Operation Saturation.  Jack Macnamara was one of those seminarians, and visiting his “parish” once a week was not enough.  With Egan’s support, Macnamara and another Jesuit seminarian, Jim Zeller, received permission from their Jesuit superior to move to Lawndale for the summer of 1967 and continue this work.2 

Macnamara and Zeller recruited college students to volunteer and live together in Lawndale for the summer to help organize the community.  They listened to many problems that the residents were having, but nothing added up to an issue they could organize around.  Until one resident confided in Macnamara about her struggles with making her monthly housing payment.  Macnamara was stunned by the amount she owed each month, and knew that something was wrong.  Around the same time, Ruth Wells went to Egan to ask what she could do about the fact that her seller wanted another $1000 when she had never been late or missed a payment over a ten year period.  With the guidance of Egan and John McKnight, midwest director of the US Commission on Civil Rights, Macnamara and the college students began researching an 8-block area of Lawndale at the Recorder of Deeds, finding that the majority of properties in that area were sold on contract.3

They finally had an issue to organize the community around, and by January of 1968 the first community meetings took place to present this data.  Out of these meetings was born the Contract Buyers of Lawndale,  and later the Contract Buyers League when it expanded to include homeowners beyond Lawndale. 

1 Satter. “Family Properties” 234.
2 Frisbie. “An Alley in Chicago” Ch. 17-18.
3 Macnamara, personal interview.

blockbusting

noun /ˈbläkˌbəstiNG/ 
The practice of persuading owners to sell property cheaply because of the fear of people of another race or class moving into the neighborhood, and thus profiting by reselling at a higher price

Below is an excerpt describing blockbusting from The Story of the Contract Buyers League by James Alan McPherson, published n the Atlantic monthly in April 1972:

Between 1958 and 1961, most of the southern part of Lawndale passed from white to black occupancy, with little enough push from the blockbusters.  Some merely hired black women to walk their children through white neighborhoods, or paid black men to drive noisy cars through an area a few times a day.  Sometimes it was a telephone call for "Johnnie Mae."  Another caller might simply say, "they're coming."  The whites sold, many at prices far below the appraised value of their homes.  And very shortly, sometimes within the same week, the houses would be resold to eager black families at inflated prices and at very high interest rates on installment purchase contracts.

Blockbusting was made illegal by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which made it unlawful to induce any person to sell a dwelling by representations regarding the entry into the neighborhood of someone of a particular race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.1

1 42 USC § 3604(e)

Photos from the Lawndale Conversations Series: the Contract Buyers League

The audience listens to Professor Satter.

Jack Macnamara and Clyde Ross tell of the accomplishments of the CBL.

Jack Macnamara, Clyde Ross, Beryl Satter, and Charles Leeks (L-R)

The discussion with Mr. Ross continues.

NLHCS, NHS, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, and JCUA would like to thank all those who attended.  We received great feedback in our post event survey.  It was a wonderful and enlightening evening for all.  Please feel free to post and share your experiences or any comments below.

Look for audio postings from this evening in the near future.

(photos by Gordon Walek)

Lawndale Conversations Series: The Contract Buyers League

Thursday, January 31, 2013, 6pm

A panel discussion with Beryl Satter, author of "Family Properties" and History professor at Rutgers University, Clyde Ross, North Lawndale resident and former CBL co-chairman, and Jack Macnamara, community actvist and CBL organizer, discussing the efforts and legacy of the Contract Buyers League, a collective of black Chicago homeowners which originated in North Lawndale in the 1960s to protest exploitative contract selling.

Jane Addams Hull House  Museum
800 S Halsted Street
Chicago, IL 60607

Partners in this event include the North Lawndale Historical & Cultural Society, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.

Recommended Readings

Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
By Beryl Satter

"In My Father's House There Are Many Mansions - And I'm Going To Get Me Some Of Them Too" The Story of the Contract Buyers League
By James Alan McPherson
The Atlantic Monthly, April 1972

An Alley in Chicago: The Life and Legacy of Monsignor Jack Egan
By Margery Frisbie
Chapter 18: "Very close to an economic miracle" 

Trial and Error: The Education of a Courtroom Lawyer
By John C. Tucker
Chapter 7: Losing-and Winning 

Discriminatory Housing Markets, Racial Unconscionability, and Section 1988: The Contract Buyers League Case
By Gregory L. Colvin
The Yale Law Journal, Volume 80 Number 3 January 1971 

The Contract Buyers League and the Courts: A Case Study of Poverty Litigation
Thesis by Jeffrey M. Fitzgerald
La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
Law & Society Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, Litigation and Dispute Processing: Part Two (Winter, 1975) 

Dilemmas of Protest Strategy: A Case Study
Thesis by Pamela Browning
Master of Arts (Sociology) at the University of Wisconsin, 1970

3555 W Ogden Avenue: Paint City to NHS

NHS North Lawndale Offices, 3555 W Ogden Ave., photo taken Dec. 19, 2012

Several weeks ago, a client came to NHS whose mother was known as an activist in Lawndale.  We asked her questions about the Contract Buyers League and if she had any memories of how her parents bought their home.  When asked for proof of ownership for possible repair work on her home, the client presented a credit application her mother had applied for from Al Berland.  The application indicated that Berland sold the house to her mother on contract.  And one thing she did remember was going along with her mother to make her contract payments to Berland at Paint City, 3555 W Ogden Avenue. 

Like many others, the Berland family faced hard times living in Lawndale during the Great Depression.  But in 1936, at the urging of a family friend, Mr. P G Berland opened a paint store on Ogden Avenue, and it prospered.  After the Depression, many homes required maintenance that had been put off for so long, so they came to P G Berlands Paint City for paint and supplies.  Albert Berland worked at his father’s store after college and would go on to take over and expand the family business.  Through contacts from working at Paint City and influence from a longtime friend, Berland began to invest in real estate and became part of a small group of men that exploited the housing market on the West Side, though not the only group. 1

The building at 3555 W Ogden remained Paint City until 1982 when the chain was sold to Sherwin Williams. 2  In 1999 Neighborhood Housing Services opened their North Lawndale office within this very building, however, by that time the building’s past life as an office for contract selling had been forgotten.  It is ironic that today NHS is supporting homeownership and strengthening the community of North Lawndale in the same building as a contract seller’s business. 

P G Berland’s Paint & Wallpaper City commercial from 1982 3

1 Satter, "Family Properties". 32-34.

2 “Albert E. Berland Owner of Paint Stores.” Chicago Sun-Times 26 Jan. 1994, LATE SPORTS FINAL, NEWS: 69.

3  “Berlands Paint & Wallpaper City (Commercial, 1982).” YouTube.

NHS of Chicago Recognizes Local Heroes for Strengthening Chicago's Neighborhoods

(L-R) Cornell D. Lurry, Vice President, Community Investment Relationship Representative, First Midwest Bank, Mary Morstadt, Vice President/CRA Manager, Mortgage Banking Standard Bank & Trust Company, Clyde Ross, 2012 North Lawndale Neighborhood Leadership Award Recipient, and Ed Jacob, Executive Director, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago

Nearly 300 partners, volunteers, city leaders, and residents attended Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago’s (NHS) Annual Meeting and Neighborhood Leadership Awards, “Promoting Our Neighborhood Treasures” on Tuesday, October 16^th at the Garfield Park Conservatory.  The event was hosted by NHS’ Community Banks Partnership.  Members of the partnership donated items to the silent auction and raffle, which raised over $3,300 to support NHS’ programs.

At the event, seven community leaders, including North Lawndale’s, Clyde Ross, were honored with the 2012 Neighborhood Leadership Award for their dedication, commitment and inspiration in their communities.  Mr. Ross has been an activist on behalf of the North Lawndale community since the 1960s, when he was one of the organizers of the Contract Buyer’s League, a movement that fought against predatory lending to African Americans – and attracted Martin Luther King, Jr. to the neighborhood. His activism spread as far as the South Side of Chicago, and resulted in settlements for many of his neighbors and fellow homeowners on the 3300 block of West Flournoy. Half a century later, Clyde is still fighting for his community, even as he nears his 90th birthday. He continues to have a keen interest in protecting his block, one of the best-maintained blocks in North Lawndale and is a potential nominee to be included on the National Register of Historic Places.

The event also celebrated NHS’ work in seven target neighborhoods in Chicago.  In the past year, NHS served over 5,800 clients, loaned over $22 million, created 104 new home owners and worked with over 3,000 home owners at risk of foreclosure in the Chicago area.

Established in 1975, NHS of Chicago is the city’s largest nonprofit community development organization committed to providing Chicago and Elgin residents affordable resources so they can buy, fix, and keep their homes. Since its creation, NHS has created more than 3,880 new homeowners.  NHS also works to stimulate community reinvestment through a partnership of residents, businesses, and government.  With the help of these partners, NHS has leveraged investment of more than $1.1 billion in Chicago’s neighborhoods.

NHS Chicago is also part of the NeighborWorks® America network, which includes 235 independent, community-based nonprofit organizations serving more than 4,500 communities nationwide.  For more information on NHS, call (773) 329-4010 or visit www.nhschicago.org.

Jack Macnamara's Visit

Paul Norrington and Jack Macnamara

A special guest joined the NHS-North Lawndale Advisory Council at the December meeting.  John “Jack” Macnamara, the former Jesuit seminarian and community organizer, and a central figure in the formation of the CBL, provided the group with a first-hand account of his experience.  Despite his humility, Mr. Macnamara’s courage and conviction in empowering the members of the CBL to seek fair terms for their home purchases shone through as he spoke.  Mr. Paul Norrington, an advisory council member and current resident of the K-Town Historic District in North Lawndale, summed up his appreciation of Jack’s story and his efforts in North Lawndale with the following:

“I hope that we’ve all gained a new appreciation for the significance of where we live now and that we go back to whatever other organizations we belong to and fight that much harder for what we have and what’s been passed down to us through the hard efforts of those that have gone before us.”

We will be highlighting, exploring, and celebrating the role many individuals had in the success of the CBL throughout the course of this blog, including a more in depth look at Jack Macnamara’s work here. 

The importance of the Contract Buyers League

The story of the Contract Buyers League has the power to promote the history of activism in Lawndale and the individuals who were instrumental in making change, raise awareness of recurrent housing issues by providing historical context, and empower individuals and the community in achieving stable homeownership and community development.