Vincent Romano
If we do not act now, the following will be our epitaph:
“…and it came to pass that, for those who follow us, it will be as if we never were here.”
RE: Historic Preservation and the People’s History Workshop.
The historic lobotomy and ethnic cleansing being practiced by the director of the Hull House Museum was called to task during the February 12, 2012 panel discussion, Historic Preservation and the People’s History Workshop, sponsored by the National Public Housing Museum and held at the Hull House Museum. The workshop, attended by students, faculty, historians, scholars, and community members was shown by Can TV on Sunday, March 4, 2012, 10:30am on Comcast (or RCN) channel 21.
The policies of the University of Illinois and the Hull House Museum’s director, as it concerns Taylor Street and the Hull House neighborhood, were refuted by a nationally recognized panel of experts during a heated debate at the Hull House Museum.
Taylor Street’s Little Italy, the port-of-call for Chicago’s Italian American immigrants, became the focal point in an intense discussion by a group of prominent panelists—plus an audience comprised of historians, researchers, educators, students, representatives of the Taylor Street community, and Lisa Lee, the director of the Hull House Museum. The panel remained steadfast in their definition of historic preservation:-- concurring with the Italian American community’s long held position that the preservation of the stories of the people who lived the experience of growing up in the Hull House neighborhood was as equally important, if not more so, than the preservation of the buildings that housed their activities. Taylor Street’s contingent won the day when the renowned group of panelists dismissed the arguments of the Hull House director that one must be a vetted historian to include their stories in the Museum’s website. One panel member suggested “job security” as a remedy to the resistance to include “the people’s history” in their historic preservation.
Further, exposing the hypocrisy the director displayed that day was the printed handout distributed by the Museum’s director supporting her previously documented interview that “History should include the stories of those who lived it.” Amazingly, that printed handout, supporting the panel and the community, completely contradicted the position of the Museum’s director who arrogantly refused to include a website link that would contain the stories of those immigrants and migrants that had lived the experience of Jane Addams’ “Hull House Neighborhood.” Once again, the director publicly “talks the talk” but does not “walk the walk.”
Further discrediting and refuting the position of the UIC’s Hull House Museum was the quote attributed to the sponsor of the event, the National Public Housing Museum: “We are more than objects. We are more than artifacts. Our legacy is the sum of our stories.” www.TaylorStreetArchives.com
The panel of experts supported the community residents challenging the director’s right to arbitrarily and capriciously direct the Museum to dispense, by both omission and commission, flawed history concerning Jane Addams, sociologist, and the “Hull House Neighborhood.” The hotly contested discourse between and among the various entities ended when the Director, asked to respond why she had boycotted a meeting with the community representatives on this issue–as was requested by both the UIC Chancellor and the President of the UIC Board of Trustees–to discuss the recommendation that the Hull House Museum’s website contain a link titled: Stories from the Hull House Neighborhood, the director, abruptly left the premises without a response. ..\..\TSA STORIES\UIC PKT\B-2-23-11-B meeting notes-2.doc
Epilogue: Unfortunately, the edited version of that TV program left out the hotly contested discourse that occurred between Lisa Lee, director of the Hull House Museum, and community residents challenging her right to arbitrarily direct the Museum to dispense, by both omission and commission, flawed history concerning Jane Addams, sociologist, and the “Hull House Neighborhood.” ..\..\TSA STORIES\Hull House Museum-2 Flawed Legacy.doc
Epilogue2: On February 20, 2014, the Hull House Museum recently posted, on their website, its publication of essays “inspired by a conference (originally called a workshop) held at the Hull House Museum in February 2012.” Lisa Lee, in the introduction of the book of essays, further quotes from that ill-fated conference, which she, as director of the JAHHM, sponsored: “…essays in this catalogue are meant to be an intervention, to disrupt and to broaden the practice of preservation and public history, and to insist on more inclusive narratives that take into account diverse perspectives on gender, race, ethnicity, and class.” Adding to the hypocrisy, the preface suggested that the February conference resolved such questions as: “How do we prevent historic amnesia?”
The following are hi-lights surrounding the presentation made to the UIC’s Board of Trustees in February 2011.
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.
“The Hull House Kids,” a historic photograph taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., Hull House Director, on a summer day in 1924, circulated the globe as a poster child, of sorts, for the Jane Addams’ Hull House. All twenty boys, posing in the Dante school yard on Forquer Street (now Arthington Street), were of Italian ancestry… offspring of immigrant parents. “They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer and a mob boss.” (Michael Cordts, Chicago Sun-Times, 1987) Aside: This photograph had been removed from the recently renovated HH Museum.
During the greater part of its 74 year history on the near-west side (1889-1963), Hull House and its summer camp, the Bowen Country Club (BCC), 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 handful 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.”
*Lisa Lee, your director of the Hull House Museum, is quoted, in the Spring 2007 UIC College of Architecture journal, as follows: “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.” 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 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.
*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, in an attempt 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.
IN CONCLUSION:
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.
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.
“We are more than objects. We are more than artifacts. Our legacy is the sum of our stories!”
Vince Romano, Editor
Taylor Street Archives.