The Hull House Museum: Flawed Legacy/Historic Lobotomy www.TaylorStreetArchives.com
If we do not act now, the following shall be our epitaph:
“…and for the rest of time, for those who follow us, it will be as if we were never here.”
Having petitioned for and been granted permission to present to the UIC’s Board of Trustees, the following are hi-lights of that presentation.* Vince Romano, Taylor Street Archives.
The Taylor Street Archives website is referenced in the bibliographies of numerous articles
written about Jane Addams, Hull House and the Italian American experience. One must inquire why the Director of the Hull House Museum remains firm in her conviction that the stories of those who lived the Italian American experience of growing up in the “Hull House Neighborhood,” in the legendary Taylor Street’s Little Italy, are not worthy of inclusion in the museum’s massive bibliography. Only recently, upon a plea to the UIC’s Board of Trustees, has the Museum reluctantly given token recognition to the Italian American presence. The Board’s recommendation to include a link to the Museum’s website titled Stories from the Hull House Neighborhood continues to be ignored by the Museum’s Director…thus depriving all immigrant groups of their rightful place in the Hull House legacy.
Hull House was founded in 1889. The very first invitation (1890) sent to the residents of the Hull House Neighborhood was written in Italian. It begins with, “Mio Carissimo Amico” and is signed, “Le signore Jane Addams and Ellen Starr.” (Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1890) The Bethlehem-Howell Neighborhood Center further substantiates 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.” Jane Addams, in The First 20 Years of Hull House, confirmed that Italians occupied the area from the river on the east on out to the western end of the Hull House neighborhood… from Harrison Street on the north to Roosevelt Road on the south.
The “Hull House Neighborhood,” which included its enclave of 10,000 Italian-American immigrants (1895 census), became the laboratory upon which the elite group of Hull House sociologists tested their social theories. Their protests to the establishment were based upon the living conditions of the near-west side slum’s immigrant population. Of the three (3) dominant immigrant groups, Jews and Greeks began their exodus of the neighborhood during the first part of the 20th century. The Italians were the only immigrant ethnic group that remained as a vibrant community through WWI, the roaring twenties, the prohibition era, the Great Depression, WWII, and beyond the physical destruction of the neighborhood by the UIC in 1963. Only the business sections of Greek Town and Jew Town (Maxwell Street) endured.
Meet the ‘Hull House Kids,’ a historic picture taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., Hull House Director, on a summer day in 1924, circulated the globe as a poster child for the Jane Addams’ Hull House. Kirkland, who became a top photographer with Life magazine, identified the 20 boys as being of Irish ethnicity.
On Sunday, April 5, 1987, over one-half century later, the Chicago Sun-Times refuted that earlier attempt to label those twenty young boys posing in the Dante schoolyard on Forquer Street (now Arthington Street), as being of Irish ethnicity. It lists the names of each of the young boys. All twenty boys were first-generation Italian Americans…all with vowels at the ends 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.”
Hull House and its summer camp, the Bowen Country Club (BCC), during the greater part
of its 74 year history on the near-west side (1889-1963), served a community that was primarily Italian Americans. The Hull House and BCC records substantiate as much:-- From the list of the 257 Bowen Country Club (BCC) alumni serving in WWII, all were Italians except for perhaps a dozen or so with non-Italian names. One must conclude that the history of Jane Addams (sociologist) and Hull House is not complete without acknowledging the symbiotic relationship that existed with the Legendary Taylor Street’s Little Italy. Jane Addams, social theorist, embraced “symbolic interactionism” in her design of the Hull House experience.
The Hull House Museum, under the guardianship of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), is the primary outlet for the dissemination of information to scholars and the public, alike. Consistent with the code of the International Community of Museums and, as noted in the Mission Statement of the Hull House Museum itself:--the Museum, in preserving the legacy of the Jane Addams Hull House, is directed to “serve as a dynamic memorial to Jane Addams, the work of her associates and the neighborhood they served.”
“It is important that we do not have a narrow vision of ownership over history or who gets to tell the story, but realize it is a collective story to be told. History should include the story of those who lived it.” Lisa Lee, Director: Hull House Museum UIC College of Architecture, (Spring 2007 issue). Despite this self-professed philosophy and the mission statement that binds her, the Director of the Hull House Museum, confident in her immunity to fraud charges by those who apply for and receive NEH grants, remains firm in her conviction that the stories of those who lived the history of the Italian American experience of growing up on Taylor Street, the inner core of the Hull House Neighborhood, are not worthy of inclusion in the Museum’s massive bibliographies and links to their website.
We must ensure that our place in the history of the Jane Addams’ Hull House, as the laboratory upon which the Hull House inner sanctum tested their theories and based their protests to the establishment, is neither usurped nor redefined by a power structure that chooses to ignore our place in that phenomenon known as the Jane Addams’ Hull House. We contest their right to remove us arbitrarily and capriciously from that legacy. (www.TaylorStreetArchives.com: UIC: Flawed History)
More recently, when questioned why the Museum rejected renewed attempts to include the stories written by Neighborhood writers who contributed to the TaylorStreetArchives.com, the Museum’s director, to support her decision, adamantly responded, for the consumption of historians, scholars and the public alike that, after all, “Hull House also served 24 other ethnic neighborhoods.” Medill School of Journalism, Dec. 3, 2008.
The Museum’s director appears to be oblivious of the fact that it was only with the dismantling of the neighborhood, which culminated with the physical demise of Hull House in 1963, that the Hull House Association, beginning as a shell organization operating out of store fronts throughout the city, came to the forefront in dispensing social services beyond the original Hull House Neighborhood. Therefore, the Museum, the primary outlet for the dissemination of information to scholars, etc., about the history of the Jane Addams’ Hull House and the neighborhood it served is dispensing, by both omission and commission, flawed history.
*January 20, 2011
“We are more than objects. We are more than artifacts.
Our legacy is the sum of our stories!”
It is not the words of our enemies that will be remembered…it is the silence of our friends.