School in North Lawndale. duration: 7 min. credits: google maps, no profit intended.
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Chicago West Side Past and Present
Video and Pictorial Study of all of Chicago's West Side
Hi I went to. Bryant school in 1972 and Franklin school
thanks for viewing.
I attended Bryant school around 1959. I traveled to the area yesterday and the building is gone. The neighborhood is very depressed. 😢
Thanks for your input and taking the time to view.
Great video, please be mindful of ur choice of words the idea that “black took over” implies that there was a hidden agenda to take the neighborhood from its prior inhabitants and that would be a misrepresentation. Black Americans had no choice in were they lived in the city proper as living in a diverse community was seen as un-American and lowily . The powers at be (old man daley and his predecessors) not only a). encouraged racial division (redlining), b) didn’t even protect racial dividing lines or one race from over taking another races area. As u said in this video, “the area was a Jews/Irish neighborhood until the late 1940s” then black just randomly take over? No! It was zoned for blacks in a rapidly growing city during a huge migration in American history. In the vicinity, those big spacious apartments which allowed Jewish abd irish families to raise their families pre and during the war, were cut in half for two family to live separately in the same space one family formerly occupied . This allowed for more families, with more kids, in the area than ever before Bryant school swole to just shy of 3,500 pupil (daily tribune) after 1957 because of the density. This dense-cramped-living, violence, racism and other things of course would affect mental health and quality of life leading you right to the unrest of the black community burning the area down during kings death. I didn’t find evidence that Bryant was effected by the king riots. U said the fires happened some time after . Might I add that when those big flat were revamped from big full flats to half spaces, it stripped the longevity of the neighborhood. In 1944, the tribune interviewed a woman with a Jewish surname who lives on south kedvale. The article tells of her life since her husband and eldest child went to war. The wife gets a job from9am to 3:30 at the mail post in sears and roebuck, her oldest daughter gets training at jones prep school (which seems too far to me), the next daughter go to high school, the youngest son attends Bryant’s elementary and they all save ten percent of any wages for war bonds. Their children help to make ends meet and reach household dues as the wife had plans to continue living in her apartment, as she and her husband had been raising their family for there for the past 17 years. SEVENTEEN YEARS in an apartment!!! Dated 1944. Well I imagine dem 17 years spots for a family of 6 were long gone, or hard to come by, by the time that Bryant was demolished. I’ve been researching this vacant lot for the past 3 hours because I just could not understand how it sits so barren and ur videos summarized it in 7 minutes haha. Great job I enjoyed it.
I graduated in 1953. I recently found the graduating class photo and pamphlet.
The Westside was a great place to grow up.