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North Lawndale (also known simply as "Lawndale") is a community area located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois.

David K. Fremon (1998) calls North Lawndale "the embodiment of the urban black ghetto." From about 1900 to 1950, he says, Russian Jews dominated the neighborhood, starting in North Lawndale and moving northward as they became more prosperous. In the 1950s, blacks moved in and "unscrupulous real-estate dealers" all but evacuated the white population, which dropped from 87,000 in 1950 to 11,000 in 1960.

According to the Stearns Family Foundation, in the decades following the 1960s

there were a series of economic and social disasters... Riots followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, destroying many of the stores along Roosevelt Road and accelerating a decline that lead to a loss of 75% of the businesses in the community by 1970. Industries closed: International Harvester in 1969, Sears (partially in 1974 and completely by 1987), Zenith and Sunbeam in the 1970s, Western Electric in the 1980s. By 1970 African-Americans who could were also leaving North Lawndale, beginning a precipitous population decline that continues to this day.

Jonathan Kozol devotes a chapter of Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools to North Lawndale, which he says a local resident called "an industrial slum without the industry." At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents ... and 99 licensed bars." and that, according to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs.

In 1986 the Stearns Family Foundation was founded; it describes itself as "a small family foundation" that "concentrates its grantmaking and programs in North Lawndale" and "by dedicating time, money, and skills... works in partnership with local residents and institutions to build and enhance the North Lawndale community".

In the 1990s, the foundation sees some signs of revitalization, "including a new shopping plaza and some new housing," stabilization of the declining population, and a rise in the number Hispanic residents, currently constituting 4.5% of the population.

K-Town

K-Town is a nickname for an area in North Lawndale in which many names of north-south avenues (Karlov Ave., Kedvale Ave., Keeler Ave., Kenneth Ave., Keystone Ave., Kilbourn Ave., Kildare Ave., Knox Ave., Kolin Ave., Kolmar Ave., Komensky Ave. Kostner Ave.) begin with the letter K. The pattern is an historical relic of a 1913 street naming proposal in which streets were to be systematically named according to their distance from the Illinois-Indiana border; K, the eleventh letter, was to be assigned to streets within the eleventh mile, counting west from the state line. K-Town is one of the few places where the plan was actually implemented.

John W. Fountain (2005) writes:

K-Town is a city within a city, a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Chicago's skyscrapers... I used to joke that the "K" stood for "kill." I was only half-joking... it had developed a reputation for being one of the rougher places in the city.... K-Town is where my grandfather... and all the other black folk that flocked to the West Side during the mid- to late-1950s bought proud brick houses on tree-lined streets with crackless cement sidewalks....

Homan Square

Homan Square is a new development in the past ten years and consists of new residences, retail, and a community center on the site of the old Sears headquarters. Homan Square is often used as an example of the gradual turn around of North Lawndale.

References

• John W. Fountain (2005): True Vine: A Young Black Man's Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity. Public Affairs, ISBN 1586482858
• David W. Fremon (1998): Chicago Politics, Ward by Ward. Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253204909.
• Jonathan Kozol (1991): Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, Crown, ISBN 051758221X

External links

• Chicago Park District
  • Douglas Park
• K-Town, entry in the Chicago Historical Society's Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago
• North Lawndale History Stearns Family Foundation website.

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