Most Unique and Unconventional Colleges?

[ucbalumnus]

@tk21769

Which nearby neighborhood are we talking about? Hyde Park? Or Woodlawn?
By the 1970s, Hyde Park (where many UChicago students and faculty live) had become one of the best examples in America of a successful urban renewal effort in what became a racially integrated, middle-class urban neighborhood.

The University of Chicago of Hutchins’ time was not exactly a bystander when black people attempted to move into predominantly white nearby neighborhoods in the 1930s, only to meet with resistance from racist white residents.

Mary Pattillo, in a chapter titled “Race, Class, and Neighborhoods” in *Social Class, How Does It Work?/i writes:

@Mary Pattillo

In the 1930s the University of Chicago was a key player in organizing property owners’ associations in Hyde Park and the neighborhoods that surrounded it like North Kenwood and Oakland. […]

Fortifying neighborhood boundaries was necessary for social and spatial closure. Chancellor Hutchins gave the university’s perspective from the highest levels, making it clear that such racial boundary maintenance was key to keeping its residential surroundings lily-white and prosperously blossoming, […]. In financing and encouraging white properly owners’ opposition to black neighbors, the university promoted the racist activities of these groups.

Chancellor Hutchins may have made significant curricular and other reforms at the University of Chicago, but he was certainly not ahead of his time when it came to racial equality.