Customer Reviews

The South Side: The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Like the author, I too attended Warren Elementary and Bower High School and oh, the memories his book brings back! My parents "held out" until the summer of 1969, when they moved to San Diego. Their move greatly affected my brother, who was entering his senior year at Bowen. I was in college at the time and noticed the change much less since I was so anxious to get away from home. The irony is that home got away from me! Even if my family hadn't moved to California, I couldn't really return to the Chicago I knew and loved because it doesn't exist for me -- or for any of us who grew up white and Jewish on the South Side -- anymore. I recall the disappointment my parents felt when "Rabbi Fineman" left our synagogue. I now understand why. I believe that by putting his career before his congregation's welfare, he missed the opportunity for "Tikun Olam," to repair the world. Even sadder, our world collapsed. Is it all his fault? Of course not. Could he have made a difference? A tremendous one, I believe. I enjoyed the book tremendously and highly recommend (in fact, INSIST!), that anyone who grew up on the South Side and moved in the late 60s read Louis Rosen's thoughtful and evocative book.

As an older neighborhood child (Bowen Class of '61), I knew the members of Rosen's age group first as babysitter and then teacher at Bowen (1965-71). I knew well and still see the people who inspired his major characters in the book and enjoyed the accuracy of his portrayals. I was surprised by his strong indictment of the Bowen principal. I remember her as being almost a non-entity, with Mr. Goldberg, who was liberal, non-racist and very caring about all students and faculty, the real leader. I remember my fellow faculty members as also being very welcoming to the new black students and very anxious to offer quality education to all Bowen students. As for the rapid flight, I feel that it was instigated greatly by the ferocious, insidious and constant attack upon the neighborhood by the real estate block-busters. My parents, who refused to move and died in their Pill Hill home in 1988 and 1990 respectively, countered these constant attacks by the blood-sucking realtors with equal doses of verbal venom, alas to no avail! Rosen touched on this subject but did not dwell on it nearly enough. He also should have included statements from the others whites who stayed in their beautiful homes, and are still living to tell their side of the story. Nevertheless, the book was a courageous statement of what had been kept an ignoble secret for too long. It was bittersweet reading, but made me renew my pride that I had the opportunity to teach at Bowen in this historical period and that my parents chose to stay. Thank you, Louis, for writing it.

Every now and then, a distinctive new voice rises above the literary din to announce itself. The most recent example now occupying shelf space in my personal library is Louis Rosen's "The South Side", a minor masterpiece that is one part sociological commentary to three parts emotional journey. Like a well-conceived theater piece, this highly affecting story of a man's search for closure is told in unique fashion through moving testamonials spoken by composite characters from Mr. Rosen's past. Over the course of its brief 183 pages, "The South Side" recounts the rapid and mysterious change in racial demographics in a pocket of Chicago's far south side during the turbulent '60's. While Mr. Rosen's personal experience may seem minute, the issues of fear and racisim he raises in "The South Side" still resonate on a national scale, sadly reminding us of how little has changed in the intervening decades. And while the uniqueness of Mr. Rosen's storytelling device may prove distracting for some, it is just that conceit which gives "The South Side" its capability to engage us on topics to which we seem have become numbed to complacency. Yet in the end, "The South Side" is a simple story of a man returning home to examine his roots and the core issues that shaped him as a child. And it is here that I found Mr. Rosen's book to be most affecting, as he takes the reader along with him on a cathartic, ultimately healing journey back to the old neighborhood.

Just read Mr. Rosen's book on the recommendation of another south-sider. We are (were) both Luella and then Bowen grads - a bit older than Mr. Rosen, but just as convinced that that place and time provided the best growing-up experience IN THE UNIVERSE! Memories so sweet and friends so precious. My family moved in 1970, but it was because of a job relocation for my father. I was married by then, but my sister finished her final two years of high school in California. Thank you, Mr. Rosen, for capturing the wonder that was the 50s and 60s on the South Side.

To those of us who grew up on the south side in the '6os (and our parents), the issues and questions that Louis Rosen confronts in his book are as much of a part of our lives now as they were then. And to those friends and acquaintances who did not, the story of our neighborhood's change is always a compelling one, because it is always a personal story. Mr. Rosen has given us his own moving account of coming of age and coming to terms in a conflicted world, but by including the affecting stories of so many others around him, he reveals the heart of a neighborhood. "The South Side" is ultimately a tale of what makes a community, and how a community shapes the lives of the people in it. It is a story that will forever be (and should be) told, and this lovely book should be a stepping off point for those voices still waiting to be heard.

Overall, I enjoyed Louie's book. I attended Bowen with Louie starting in my sophomore year of high school. I transferred from a rougher high school at that time (South Shore High) and found Bowen an excellent school to attend. Yes, Bowen had their problems (gang related), but not half as bad as the problems at South Shore and the Blackstone Rangers. Louie did a nice job giving both sides of the story and I never thought about the other side of it. My family stayed in South Shore until 1973 and then we moved to Hyde Park. There seems to be something magical about the south side. I have not visited the old neighborhood, but I talk about it alot. That is how I got the book. A fellow employee saw it at the bookstore and heard me speak about it. The only thing that bothered me about Louie's experience was that he lost his motivation at the end of high school. Bowen and a few of their good teachers fired me up. I enjoyed our graduation at McCormick Place and their were alot of warm feelings among the black, hispanic and white students. I went to Bowen's 10 year re-union and the feelings continued. Bowen did an excellent job preparing me for the University of Illinois (C/U) and my future life.

Louie, keep the books coming and I am real proud of your accomplishments. Barry Zuckerman

This is a powerful book that looks at the forces that define -- and redefine -- a community. Although the book primarily looks at a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, SOUTH SIDE reaches far beyond geographic boundaries. The author forces you to ask yourself questions such as "What would I do in this situation? Would I stay? Would I go? What would I sacrifice? And when would I have had enough?" This is the kind of book that you read -- and then find yourself engaged in heated discussions with your family, your friends -- and your neighbors. I recommend this book. Although it focuses on a time in the early sixties, the book, its subject and its conclusions are timeless.

In the 1950's a middle-class, Jewish community in Chicago, gave way to racial panic. In a few years the faces on its streets had changed from white to black. The Jewish community, including its leaders, had fled. Louis Rosen grew up in that neighborhood and, for the last five years he has been interviewing those who left and those who moved in. The result; an astoundingly gripping series of stories told in their own words by those who were lived through this experience.. Rosen has brilliantly juxtaposed and intercut their testimony, never finiding fault, never laying blame, but conveying the deepest feeeling of anger, guilt and anguish. The book is an impelling read; its effect like that of Greek drama. It is not for stone-throwers or hand wringers, but for sober, normal citizens; like those who people its admirable pages.

As a graduate of Caldwell and Bowen (Class of '66), it really brought back my fabulous childhood memories. However, Louis Rosen's book fails to mention what I perceived to be a very important fact about the transformation in South Shore. Many of the Jewish families (mine was one) moved to South Shore from Chatham. They moved from Chatham because the Blacks were moving in using the same blockbusting techniques described in Mr. Rosen's book. It seems to me that the fact that it happened twice, in twenty years was significant and this would have made the documentary more complete.

Louis Rosen grew up in the Pill Hill neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. In the 1960s Pill Hill and the surrounding area was a white Jewish and other ethnic neighborhood. By the mid-1960s, some of the white Jewish families were moving out (usually "up" to bigger houses in the suburbs) and black lower-middle class families began moving in (as they too looked to move up from old neighborhoods). The gradual change of the mid-1960s became a virtual stampede after the 1968 race riots, and even though Rosen's family did not leave until 1975, by mid-1969 the old, idyllic neighborhood of Rosen's youth was essentially gone.

Rosen has not written an historical or sociological study of why neighborhoods change, how unscrupulous real estate agents pray on white fears, or why integration did not take hold in this particular neighborhood. Instead, he has given us an impressionistic, quasi-literary study of the experiences of children and adults, principally from the Jewish but also from the African-American community. The most troubling aspect of the book is that all of the people interviewed by Rosen (his book is presented as a composite of their voices) seem to have been people of goodwill, trying to do the right thing, yet somehow at that time and place they were not able to address each other's fears and build an integrated community. We get a few tantalizing hints as to reasons for this phenomenon -- fear and racism among some of the Jews (not spelled out in detail), divisions within the Jewish community that had nothing to do with the changing racial composition of the community, a feeling on the part of African-American that it was not their place to ease fears or involve themselves with their white neighbors. It would have been interesting to hear more from some of the Jews who left in early in the process, who felt pressured by real estate agents and who left in the middle of the night, instead of just from people who (at least initially) tried to stay.

Because Rosen was a member of a Jewish community that no longer exists, the overriding impression of book leaves is one of loss -- a golden childhood, a perfect community, lost forever, to which Rosen can never hope to return, even physically. And yet, at the end of the book Rosen does return, and discovers that Pill Hill is still a neighborhood, just as important to its current residents, just as much home, as it ever was for Rosen and his neighbors. It was not destroyed by the arrival of African-American homeowners and is still a beautiful, well-kept, comfortable haven on the South Side.

The format of "The South Side" is a quasi-play with narrator, which could make it an excellent tool for discussion groups, where individual members could play the "parts" in the play. Although Rosen does not offer answers, he raises a lot of valuable questions and will make you think about the meaning of neighborhood, neighbors and community. Well written, and a fast and easy read.