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Stories: Growing up Taylor Street
Taylor Street Archives
UIC: Flawed History
Vince Romano
September 2006
The Italian American component of “The Hull House Neighborhood”
was the laboratory upon which they, Hull House, tested their theories
and the rationale upon which they based their challenges to the
establishment.
“If our generation doesn’t act now, and act boldly, to preserve and
remember and disseminate the Italian American past, it will die.”
…Dominic Candeloro, noted historian and writer. If we heed not the
warning, the following shall be our epitaph: “…and it came to pass that,
for those who followed us, it was as if we never were here.”
Meet the ‘Hull House Kids’ appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on
Sunday, April 5, 1987. While the article was written in 1987, the
picture, taken on a summer day in 1924, depicts twenty young boys
posing in the Dante school yard on Forquer Street (now Arthington
Street). The historic picture was taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr.,
who became a top photographer with Life magazine. The article lists
the names of each of the young boys and refutes an earlier attempt to
label them as being of Irish ethnicity. All twenty boys were first
generation Italian Americans…all with vowels at the end of their
names. “They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers
and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer and a mob
boss.”
Fast forward to 2006 and it appears that a similar attempt to
disengage and minimize the Italian American experience from Hull
House (consciously or unconsciously) is in place. The UIC faculty,
serving as guardians for the Hull House and Bowen Country Club
(BCC) web sites refuses to even acknowledge the contributions made
by those who lived the Hull House experience on the streets of Taylor
Street’s Little Italy…the inner core of “The Hull House
Neighborhood.” A history that the local media, steeped in the
tradition of the “Hull House neighborhood,” has and continues to
publish. Neither, apparently, is the UIC faculty willing to make site
visitors aware of companion web sites that address the synergy that
existed between Taylor Street’s Little Italy and the Hull House
complex. Their arrogance to our existence is reflected in their refusal
of even--“the courtesy of a response.” Had this insult been heaped
upon any other ethnic group, the UIC Chancellor would have been
replaced and the UIC staff reassigned.
It took over six decades (1924-1987) to correct the first attempt to
manipulate the history of “The Hull House Neighborhood.” Here we
are, almost another six decades removed from the 1963 acquisition of
Hull House by the UIC, and we have another symbol of authority
manipulating, by omission (and commission as you will learn later)
the place of Taylor Street’s Italian Americans in the history of Hull
House. We have witnessed the Vineland Map hoax, claiming the
Vikings had knowingly discovered America centuries before
Columbus arrived; attempts to rename Columbus Day to Explorers’
Day; and other insidious attempts to disengage Italian Americans
from their rightful place in history. Our challenge today is to
reinstate the existing empirical and documented evidence of who and
what comprised “The Hull House Neighborhood”…that geographic
area known to the entire world as Chicago’s Little Italy.
.
Had such an insult been heaped upon any other ethnic group, the UIC
Chancellor would have been replaced and the UIC staff reassigned.
The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), via their inheritance, in
1963, of the physical site of the Jane Addams Hull House, is the
designated caretaker of the Hull House museum and hence, by
definition, caretaker and guardian of both the Hull House and the
Bowen Country Club (BCC) web sites. The UIC staff assigned to the
web sites, have, by default, been delegated the responsibility of
researching and documenting the story of those who sought the
services that the Hull House/BCC complex provided. Although well
compensated for their guardianship, there is a resistance to expand
upon the initial input made to the web site…or to even respond (or
even acknowledge) to requests that might improve the site.
In perusing the Hull House/BCC web site(s), one finds that links to
companion web sites such as the Taylor Street Archives.com and
references to writings of the Italian-American experience by local
historians, such as Dominic Candeloro, are conspicuously and
painfully absent. Neither is there any internet connection to the
project completed by Dominic for UICs benefit; i.e., --Italians in
Chicago. The link between Taylor Street’s legendary Little Italy and
the Hull House/Bowen Country Club complex is absent. References
to artists, some of whom resided at Hull House and whose works
addressed the Italian American experience in the Hull House
Neighborhood, are also non-existent. The void has existed for several
decades. There is an urgent need to address this matter. If not, the
memory of the most important component of the Hull House
Neighborhood will be lost forever…leaving untold the full story and
true value of the Hull House complex for posterity.
It is fairly well agreed that one would be hard pressed to locate a non-
Italian name or face among those who utilized the services of Hull
House and the Bowen Country Club from the early part of the 20th
century through the demise of those institutions during the 1960’s.
That half century plus (over six decades) period of time constitutes
the giants share of the 70 year history of Hull House. The banner
(which once hung in the BCC dining room) commemorating the 257
alumni of Bowen Country Club who fought in WWII is saturated
with names like Garippo, Cavallo, Terraciano, DeFalco, Guido, etc.
The only non-Italian names I could find, in the “Chain Around the
World” letters memorializing our contributions in that Great War,
were those of Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen and the directors of BCC, Bob
and Ada Hicks.
The Bethlehem-Howard Neighborhood Center Records further
substantiates (per Jane Addams own words) that, as early as the
1890s, the inner core of “The Hull House Neighborhood” was
overwhelmingly Italians. “Germans and Jews resided south of that
inner core (south of twelfth street)…The Greek delta formed by
Harrison, Halsted and Blue Island Streets served as a buffer to the
Irish residing to the north and the Canadian –French to the
northwest.” If those were the demographics as early as the 1890s, the
flight of those ethnic groups shortly after the turn of the century
suggests that not only were the “Hull House Boys” from Arthington
Street of Italian extraction, but the entire community from the river
on the east end on out to western ends of what came to be know as
“Little Italy” —from Roosevelt Road on the south to Harrison Street
delta on the north--were virtually all Italians. Again, that leaves little
room for the melting pot theory.
The Mexicans were the only other ethnic group that existed in any
discernible numbers within the inner core of the Hull House
neighborhood. Other than the most western end of Taylor Street,
there were only two groups, to my knowledge that lived and played
among us. Families of the Tex-Mex group (came up from Texas and
mostly belonged to the Zacetecas gang) seemed to be randomly
interspersed throughout the community living among us as our next
door neighbors and were our classmates in school. The Mex-Mez
group (came from Mexico and mostly belonged to the Toltecs gang)
lived on the fringe of the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood
(south of Roosevelt Road) and were not integrated with the Italians
as were the Zacetecas. Tacho was the leader and spokesman for the
Zacetecas. One evening Tacho organized a team boxing tournament
pitting the Zacatecas against the Cecilia Boosters. The matches took
place on Newberry Street by the Cecilia’s SAC. . Needless to say,
CYO and Golden Gloves boxers the likes of Richie Guerrero, who
later became an Olympic hero, won their matches handily. By the
time they got to the final match, the victories by each side were fairly
even. That final match was short lived as the deadlier punching had
its toll. The Zacatecas heavyweight was forced to quit when a punch
shattered his elbow.
Although Mexicans and Italians were both teammates and
opponents in their athletic activities, social integration was rare and
virtually non-existent on a group scale. There were individual
Mexicans who had become members of an Italian gang or club. I
suspect a caste mentality rejected a reverse situation of individual
Italians became members of a Mexican gang or club. There may have
been a racist undertone that existed as well. If an Italian girl favored
a Mexican boy, she was labeled: “A Mexican lover!”
The only other ethnic groups that had a presence were Jews and
Greeks. There could not have been more than a handful of either
ethnic group living in the neighborhood. Most had abandoned the
neighborhood by the time of the Great Depression but retained their
neighborhood businesses; i.e., Greek Town and Maxwell Street (Jew
Town). Those who had remained lived in the same building that
housed their businesses. To the first generation Italian Americans,
blacks were never part of any assimilation other than through the
attempts made by the Hull House complex to integrate them into the
fabric of the community. The totally segregated black projects (Jane
Addams Housing Projects) stood as a reminder of that failed social
experiment for over a half century—1938 through 2005.
The history of Taylor Street’s Little Italy and the history of the Hull
House/BCC complex are not separate and distinct. Neither is
complete without the other.
One must ask, what prompted the UIC guardians of the Hull
House/BCC web sites, to overlook the memory, the existence, if you
will, of those of us who grew up in Taylor Street’s legendary Little
Italy. As the aggregate message from the stories to be found in the
Taylor Street Archives suggests, the Hull House and BCC experiences
contributed to the blossoming identities of the Taylor Street
residents. The history of Taylor Street’s Little Italy and the history of
the Hull House/BCC complex are not separate and distinct. Neither
is complete without the other. One of the first newspaper articles
ever written about Hull House (Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1890)
acknowledges the following invitation sent to the residents of the
Hull House neighborhood: “Mio Carissimo Amico”…signed, Le
Signorine, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr.
Following is a quote from the opening statement on the BCC web
site, from one of the non-Italian/non Taylor Street bred committee
members who served as counselor at the BCC summer camp from
1948-1953. “It (BCC) was based on the idea of …where people of
many races, ethnic origins, etc…could live in joy and harmony as part
of one family.” That opening message suggests that Bowen Country
Club was a “melting pot” of ethnic groups and races. As a camper
(1932-1946), BCC counselor and Hull house staff member (1948-52)
and visitor/observer (1953-1963), I can attest to the fact that BCC was
no melting pot. At least not during the thirty year span of time I was
there. The staff, with its North Shore debutantes to be, may have had
some measure of ethnic diversity. The campers, however, were, for
the most part, wall-to-wall Taylor Street bred Italians. I quote from
one of the stories in the Taylor Street Archives web site, a story
chronicling the BCC experience, “He was a reminder of the depth of
that gene pool that our ancestor brought over from the shores of
Southern Italy.”
To further refute the melting pot theory suggested in the writings the
UIC staff selected for inclusion in those web sites, one of my
assignments as a Hull House social worker, in 1952, was to provide
safe escort to a group of African American teenagers from the
projects on the outskirts of Little Italy to Hull House. This was the
first time (and the only time to my knowledge) that Hull house had
embarked on such a venture. Hence, the messages from the pages of
the UICs web sites, by omission and commission, were, arguably,
inconsistent with the reality of the times. During the glory days of
Hull House, non-Italians resided on the outer fringes of the “Hull
House Neighborhood.” The inner core, the heart and soul of the
neighborhood that surrounded Hull House proper, was Italian-
American. The handful not Italian acquired Italian mannerisms and
personalities. We were the “hood,” at least from the early part of the
20th century until the demise of the neighborhood's institutions in
1963. The mass migration from southern Italy to Taylor Street
occurred before, during and shortly after WWI (1890-1920)—until
congress legislated against any further immigration of southern
Italians to this country. Other ethnic groups had long vacated the
neighborhood by the time the offspring of those emigrant parents,
the first generation Italian Americans, arrived on the scene. And
that time line doesn’t leave much room for acceptance of the melting
pot theory.
While lauding Hull House’s successes, we must also faithfully
document their failures-else we will be doomed to repeat them in the
future. Failure to acknowledge the existence of a hierarchy of needs
inherent in us all, led to the failure of Hull House’s inner sanctum of
sociologists and philanthropists to usurp the power of ward bosses
who controlled the lower regions of that hierarchy. The Jane
Addams Housing Project dramatically improved the living
conditions of “The Hull House Neighborhood.” Later attempts were
made to move the integrated society of the utopian world being
fashioned on drawing boards of Hull House’s inner sanctum to their
neighborhood laboratory. The segregated history of the Jane
Addams Housing Project, a slice of Little Italy that earlier had
become one of their test tube triumphs, attests to that monumental
failure. To suggest otherwise is to manipulate and distort history.
Whether it was the wrong formula, or the wrong time, or the wrong
place, failure to acknowledge the failure of that experiment, will
encourage those who follow us to repeat those failures of the past.
A story told by college graduates (of Italian ancestry or not) and who
had grown up outside of the “Hull House Neighborhood,” is not likely
to have the same credibility as the story told by those who match the
demographics of the Taylor Street neighborhood.
Perhaps the flaw lies in the fact that the contributors to and
guardians of the UIC controlled web sites were not participants in
the Italian American experience. Perhaps the contributors/guardians
were college graduates who, along with their college degrees, resided
outside of the neighborhood, sheltered from the full experience of
“growing up in Taylor Street’s Little Italy.” A story told by college
graduates (of Italian ancestry or not) and/or who had grown up
outside of the “Hull House Neighborhood,” is not likely to have the
same credibility as the story told by those who match the
demographics of the Taylor Street neighborhood. The reality of
those demographics is supported by a Federal study (circa 1970)
confirming that Italians were the lowest of all European ethnic
groups in educational achievement as measured by college
enrollment. Quitting school at age 16 was the standard rather than
the exception for our neighborhood.
Stories from the Taylor Street Archives have been heralded by that
media (Journals, gazettes, newspapers, radio, etc.) which has its roots
steeped in the Italian-American culture of the legendary Taylor
Street. Serious writers (novelists, students, script writers, etc.) have
requested permission to use one or more of those stories/essays in
their works. The most recent were from a writer commissioned to
write a book on the history of Taylor Street and the producer of the
soon to be released television documentary (NBC5 and WTTW) on
Chicago’s Italian Americans. “I am most definitely covering Taylor
Street and the Italian Americans crucial role in nurturing the
neighborhood and its institutions. I am well aware of the importance
of Taylor Street and plan to give it my full attention in the film.”
Neither have they seen fit to make the visitor aware of companion
sites, such as the Taylor Street Archives or bibliographies that include
the writings of Italian American historians such as Dominic
Candeloro, to fill the void that currently exists under their
guardianship.
Meanwhile, the UIC staff, assigned the responsibility of researching
and compiling the history of Hull House and BCC, has yet to respond
to requests to make the web site visitors aware of companion sites,
such as the Taylor Street Archives or bibliographies that include the
writings of Italian American historians such as Dominic Candeloro
to fill the void that currently exists under their guardianship. How
ironic that those who snub us are also supported by our tax dollars.
Documents and essays, written long before Hull House’s existence,
paper the landscape of those web sites. Documents, historic
photographs and “scholarly essays” that had been languishing on the
shelves of resource libraries for over a century, now fill the pages of
the UIC monitored web sites. Nationalities maps of 1895,
contradictory as they are to the empirical observations made by Jane
Addams herself, permeate the web site. No maps are included for
the time period that concluded the mass migration from Southern
Italy to Taylor Street at the turn of the 20th century. The Italian
American component--the component that served as their living
laboratory where the successes and failures of their sociological
theories were played out, the component that dominated the
neighborhood during Hull House’s most celebrated years-- is sadly
missing. Recognition of the symbiotic relationship that existed
between the Hull House/BCC complex and the Italian-American
community would, while instilling credibility, also breathe life into
those sites now being managed (more appropriately, “guarded”) by
the UIC staff. In the shadows of Chicago’s loop—(through two world
wars and the Great Depression)—that symbiotic relationship
between the Hull House complex and Taylor Street’s Little Italy
flourished. We were the laboratory upon which they tested their
theories and the rationale upon which they based their challenges to
the establishment.
Decades ago, the UIC, through the rule of law, had conscripted our
homes. While we will never regain those homes, we can (and must)
recapture our rightful place in the history of the Jane Addams’ Hull
House…“the Hull House Neighborhood.” We cannot permit them to
rewrite history to their liking.
I leave the reader with these final observations. At the recent event
celebrating Jane Addams, of the hundreds of items and photographs
hanging on the museum’s walls, the only mention of the Italian
American component to the “neighborhood” was a single item.
Alphonse Capone (and his benevolent soup kitchen) was/were
chosen to memorialize our existence and our contribution. The
historic Sun-Times photograph, Meet the Hull House Boys, (all with
Italian surnames) receives no mention by the guardians of our
history on the UIC web sites. Go figure!