Located on the Chicago’s South Side, Woodlawn is a neighborhood with a rich cultural and historical legacy. Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” depicts the Younger Family struggling to break the walls of entrenched racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry based based the play on her family’s own personal and legal struggle to purchase a home in Washington Park, known then as West Woodlawn, in 1937. Woodlawn was a neighborhood where racial covenants would have legally prevented them from purchasing a home. Yet, by the premiere of the play in 1959, Woodlawn had essentially undergone the process of racial and socioeconomic upheaval (Taub, 1988).
Just across the Midway from the University of Chicago, Woodlawn has a strong legacy of community organizations such as The Woodlawn Organization (TWO). Unfortunately, it has become an unfortunate tragic tale of racial change in South Side Chicago. For several decades, much of Woodlawn has been plagued by social duress.
The recent push to improve smaller buildings in Woodlawn has grown out of efforts to redevelop Grove Parc. Grove Parc is one of the neighborhood’s affordable housing (Section 8) communities, notorious for its state of deterioration in recent years. Having grown out of the efforts to organize against University of Chicago’s Urban Renewal project, it has provided long-term affordable housing for low-income residents and an informal commitment from the University to forego expansion opportunities below 61st Street that is still in effect today. Grove Parc is the center of the Choice Neighborhoods revitalization initiative in Woodlawn.