Jon Lowenstein

THE HEART: SouthSide

Chicago's South Side has experienced major changes in the past five years, including a multi-million dollar rehabilitation of the Lakefront. Unfortunately, as the city is repackaged the poorest residents are being squeezed out of the city and forced to move to new communities and are not reaping the benefits of gentrification and urban transformation.
  
Madonna Driver runs in her front yard before she and her family moved to another neighborhood. Vacant lots that used to sell for $1 in the 1980's are valuable real estate and developers all over the South Side are clambering to scoop up the land that at one time was considered almost worthless. These developers and the city's politicians have worked together to ensure that the city will be a place for the wealthy, but have created few reassurances that poor people will be welcome in the new city.
   
Reggie and his crew hanging out on a car on 72nd St. Chicago's South Side has numerous gangs and the Pocket, a six block square neighborhood there are three rival gangs that battle each other for turf and supremacy. Most of the members know each other and many of them went to school together at Paul Revere Elementary School.
     
  
A group of kids run across Woodlawn near 73rd St. across from the old Midwest Gulf State Factory. Only the floor remains of the Midwest Gulf State Company on S. Woodlawn. Like many other factories in the neighborhood, the Midwest was a solid employer for local residents for many years. The factory which manufactured tiles, paint and asphalt shuttered its doors in 1988.
  
What began as the wish of Chicago Defender's founder Robert S. Abbott to organize the many youth who sold the newspaper, mushroomed into what is now the largest parade in the United States.The first Bud Billiken® Parade and Picnic was held August 11, 1929. The parade route ran from 31st and Michigan Boulevard to Washington Park. In the mid-30's the city rerouted the parade to South Parkway because its Michigan route tied up traffic as it went east into Washington Park. Around 1947, it was rerouted back to Michigan due to street repairs on South Parkway. After the street repairs the Bud Billiken® Parade and Picnic returned to South Parkway and has remained there ever since. South Parkway, now named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, runs through the African American neighborhood on the City's Southside.Since the Bud Billiken® Parade and Picnic began, more than 50 million children and their families have made the second Saturday in August a day of community and celebration of African American togetherness and just plain fun.The South Side of Chicago’s once proud industrial communities fell onto hard times during the 1970s and 1980s, changing from thriving working class communities to places far removed from local and federal resources, rife with unemployment, poverty, drugs and gang violence. Despite this adversity, many residents have held on and guard deep feelings of affection for their communities. More recently, though, another challenge has reared its head. Residents in each of these communities face the very real possibility of being displaced from the communities they love because they can no longer afford to live there.
  
A girl and her brothers pose for their picture in the Pocket. Approximately 63% of African-American kids grow up in single parent households.
     
  
Sade and Horace pose for a picture at the basketball courts on 73rd St and Woodlawn.
   
Only the floor remains of the Midwest Gulf State Company on S. Woodlawn. Like many other factories in the neighborhood, the Midwest was a solid employer for local residents for many years. The factory which manufactured tiles, paint and asphalt shuttered its doors in 1988.
  
Friends and relatives hug after coming out Starkeshia Reed's household in March 2006. Fourteen year old Starkeshia Reed was shot in her living room as she was preparing to go to school in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. She was the first of two high profile drive-by murders that killed children in the same neighborhood. Shortly after Starkeshia died, ten year old, Siretha White was also killed in her home while she was celebrating her 11th birthday.
     
  
Friends and relatives hug after coming out Starkeshia Reed's household in March 2006. Fourteen year old Starkeshia Reed was shot in her living room as she was preparing to go to school in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. She was the first of two high profile drive-by murders that killed children in the same neighborhood. Shortly after Starkeshia died, ten year old, Siretha White was also killed in her home while she was celebrating her 11th birthday.
   
Willie Jones Sr. was born in Shably, Mississippi and moved to the neighborhood in the late 1950's. He was an institution in the Pockettown neighborhood. He worked at R.R. Donnelly for 25 years until his retirement in 1988. He was remembered for many things, among them, clearing the whole block with his snow blower every time it snowed. He died on February 6th after a long battle with ALS. He was a lifetime Boston Red Sox fan.
   
The last house standing on a block on Chicago’s S. East side.
     
  
Many buildings are being bought, demolished, rehabbed by the Comer Foundation. This site across from the school on 72nd St. will be turned into a parking lot for the teachers so the current lot can be made into a playground for the children. The Comer Foundation is establishing its own building company that is going to use local residents who want to be a part of the change in their own neighborhood. The Foundation is paying for them to become part of PACT (Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program) a city program which teachers residents basic building and rehabbing skills necessary to obtain an union apprenticeship. Anyone who completes the program successfully will be guaranteed a year position rebuilding the neighborhood.
  
Many buildings are being bought, demolished, rehabbed by the Comer Foundation. This site across from the school on 72nd St. will be turned into a parking lot for the teachers so the current lot can be made into a playground for the children. The Comer Foundation is establishing its own building company that is going to use local residents who want to be a part of the change in their own neighborhood. The Foundation is paying for them to become part of PACT (Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program) a city program which teachers residents basic building and rehabbing skills necessary to obtain an union apprenticeship. Anyone who completes the program successfully will be guaranteed a year position rebuilding the neighborhood.
  
Remains of the Acme Coke Plant at 106th and Torrance on Chicago's Southeast Side. The Southeast Preservation Society has made an effort to purchase and preserve some of the buildings on the site, but this past summer they failed to do so and the factory is slated for demolition.
     
  
Remains of the Acme Coke Plant at 106th and Torrance on Chicago's Southeast Side. The Southeast Preservation Society has made an effort to purchase and preserve some of the buildings on the site, but this past summer they failed to do so and the factory is slated for demolition.
   
A landscape of Hoard Park in the PocketTown neighborhood.
   
A boy plays in Lake Michigan at 63rd St. beach.
     
  
Pastor Dunlap often feeds the local seagulls in the neighborhood.
   
Troy poses for a picture at the corner of 72nd and Woodlawn. I have photographed Troy posing for pictures in several locations of his choosing. He grew up in the neighborhood and has raised his family in the Pocket.
   
Matias Purnell, 12, poses for a picture on S. Chicago. S. Chicago was one of the main industrial corridors in this small, tight-knit neighborhood. Today, all the factories are closed and the future remains uncertain as change is in the air. As gentrification and redevelopment speed South, who will benefit from the change remains an unanswered question.
     
  
Post-industrial Chicago has been particularly difficult on working class people who did not receive a good education. Many once vital, thriving neighborhoods fell on hard times during the 1970's and 80's and are only now recovering. Unfortunately, the most impoverished citizens are unlikely to benefit from the neighborhood's economic transformations.
   
Children cross Commercial Ave on Chicago's East Side. This neighborhood once was home to US Steel the largest steel mill in the world at one time.
  
An advertisement on a window of a real estate company on Chicago's East Side.
     
  
LaToya Jackson poses for pictures before her senior prom with her mother, Carolyn and her boyfriend on their front porch of their S. Ingleside home. Her boyfriend, Magic, holds their son in his arms.
   
Uncle Al holds up his niece at Sam Binion’s house on the 7200 block of S. Ellis.
   
Fans of Yung Jock scream and tossle for attention for the well known rapper as he rode by on the WGCI Radio Station's float in the annual Bud Billiken Parade in 2006.
     
  
Kokomo, a stripper, performs at a bachelor party on Chicago’s S. Side.
  
Pajama party at a house on the 7200 block of S. Ellis.
   
Crystal, having her picture taken, shortly before attending her senior prom.
     
  
A teenager posing for his picture with a pet Iguana. He did not offer his name. I had just photographed a shooting around the corner from my house and saw him and asked him if I could photograph him.
   
Troy poses for a picture with his family during a summer barbecue.
   
Photograph of a Lisa Wrencher posing for her picture next under a tree on Woodlawn Ave. just north of 72nd St.
     
  
"Steel Man" says he's a "gym rat' and works out consistently at the Windy City Gym on Chicago's Southwest Side.
  
Waiting for a chainsaw to arrive on the 7100 block of Dobson.
   
View looking Northwest from 73rd St. in the South Shore neighborhood.
     
  
Vacant lot at the corner of 71st and Ingleside.
   
The Comer Foundation pays for adult residents of the PocketTown neighborhood to attend the PACT (Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program). PACT is a city program which teachers residents basic building and rehabbing skills necessary to obtain an union apprenticeship. Anyone who completes the program successfully will be guaranteed a year position rebuilding the neighborhood. Pockettown: Change and Transformation on Chicago's S. Side.
   
"Trag" shovels snow to earn a few dollars on a snowy winter day on Chicago's South Side.
     
  
An abandoned office in the Acme Coke Plant on Chicago's Southeast Side.
   
A man poses wearing his mask from the Friday the 13th movies. He stand in front of Jimbo's Bar which was a local legendary establishment in the Bridgeport neighborhood. Bridgeport, home to Mayor Richard J. Daley was known as one of the most brutally racist neighborhoods in the city to this day has resisted integration by African-Americans, although many Asians and Latinos have moved into the neighborhood in the past few years.
   
Mariah Driver plays Hide and Seek with her sisters outside her house on S. Chicago St. in Chicago's Pocket Town neighborhood. The family has since moved to the Englewood neighborhoodand the house, which was in decrepit condition, has been demolished to make way for new development by the Comer Foundation.
     
  
For a history competition sponsored by the Hyde Park Historical Society, students from the photo and journalism clubs did a project on the Oakwoods Cemetery which borders the Pocket on the North side of 71st St. The cemetary only started allowing blacks to be buried starting in the 1960's. Today Oakwoods is one of the most popular cemeteries for both neighborhood residents and prominent black Chicagoans to be laid to rest, Famous people buried there include Jesse Owens and former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Big Jim Colosimo was a famous Italian gangster who was murdered during Prohibition days and buried in Oakwoods Cemetery.
   
Demilo Shern is comforted by his aunt shortly after learning that his little brother “Bow Wow” was gunned down at the corner of 69th place and Kimbark in early March. “Bow Wow” was only 18 and said the happiest and most peaceful day of his life was when he got the opportunity to leave the neighborhood and visit a music festival in the Chicago suburbs. In October, Demilo also died of unknown causes.
   
Demilo Shern stares into his brother’s grave after the funeral. Six months later Demilo also died of unknown causes.
     
  
A man shows how he saw Jesus Christ three times on his two-year journey from British Guyana to the United States. He is the night watchman at the recycling plant near the Pocket and grows a one-acre plot of Heirloom tomatoes which he waters every night and says that he earns about $10,000 annually selling the tomatoes. He lives in a small shack on the property.
   
A view of Paul Revere Elementary School looking North from 72nd St.