The Little Flower

I've written in this space before about sense of place in Chicago and how many Chicagoans identified their neighborhoods with the local Catholic parish, even if they were not Catholic themselves. I've also written about my great aunt, Gertrude, who lived for years not in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood as far as she was concerned, but in St. Sabina's. Her older sister Lillian a few blocks away, also lived in the same community on the south side, but in reality she lived in the parish of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus or as everybody called it, Little Flower, after the term of endearment given to the nineteenth century saint for whom the church was named.

Little Flower, like St. Sabina's, was one of the major parishes for the South Side Irish community. Unlike its neighbor about a mile to the east which would become a tremendously successful African American parish under the guidance of the Reverend Michael Pfleger, Little Flower struggled as the neighborhood changed, and closed its doors in 1993, a part of the major purge of struggling Catholic churches in the Chicago Archdiocese under the administration of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin. Here is a Tribune article from November 22, 1993 which contrasts the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Archdiocese of Chicago with the final mass at Little Flower.

The article notes that for the first time in a long time, Little Flower was filled to capacity as several former parishioners came back for one last look at their old church, while current parishioners wondered where they would be worshiping in the future. I imagine it was one of the few times in the church's history when the sanctuary was truly integrated. One of the current parishioners noted that if the people who came back that day never left in the first place, the church wouldn't have needed to close.

I was in fact a little surprised to read that folks actually came back to Little Flower from the suburbs, so great is the fear of many whites to return to the old neighborhood which had become predominantly black, even for just a visit. There was an incident a while back involving St. Sabina's that illustrates the situation. Fr. Pfleger wanted his school to join a predominantly white south side Catholic sports league. Many white folks, parents of children in the league, were aghast, no way were they going to risk driving themselves and their children back into the city, to "that neighborhood." The league originally voted 11-9 against admitting St. Sabina's. It was an embarrassing moment for Catholic Chicago, especially coming as it did on the heels of a letter from Cardinal Francis George on the need to close the racial divide. The league later voted a second time and overturned their original vote but the damage was done. Here is an impassioned view on the subject from Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and here is a much more scathing attack from the site BlackElectorate.com. Please note in the latter link, a very insightful letter from former Chicago Bear and St. Sabina member, Chris Zorich.

The phenomenon of neighborhoods radically changing population almost overnight, has been going on in this town since the beginning. According to U. S. Census data, the population shift in the community of Auburn-Gresham was especially dramatic. In 1960, the community's population was 100 percent white. By 1970, the population was 31 percent white, 69 percent black, and by 1980, the population was 99 percent black.

The changeover usually begins when a black family moves into a neighborhood. The first to go are the virulent racists who are so filled with fear and hatred that not in a million years would they consider living on the same block as a black family. They pass their venom on to anyone willing to listen. Panic sets in and the situation snowballs. Here in Chicago, other nefarious factors play into the mix. Unscrupulous realtors played on these fears. They approached home owners unawares by phone or even a knock on the door, offering the friendly and helpful advice to get the hell out.

"I've got a nice house for you in neighborhood X or suburb Y where it's safe for you and your kids. Get out now before you lose any more value on your house."

This was not an idle threat. Adding to the problem were the lending institutions who literally drew red lines on maps around neighborhoods they deemed undesirable, and green lines around the desirable ones. Desirability was always based on income and more often than not, on race. It was the green-lined neighborhoods, namely newer, suburban, and predominantly white, that received the lion's share of loans and other financial services, while the red-lined, poorer and predominantly black urban neighborhoods were pretty much left out in the desert. Without help from the banks for new investment, there was little hope for the communities within those red lines to maintain themselves and develop, and not surprisingly many of them deteriorated quickly. From the Encyclopedia of Chicago, here is an article on the practice of redlining in Chicago.

It would be easy to make a blanket condemnation of white people picking up stakes and leaving their neighborhood based on the threat of change. We'd like to think, as that parishioner sitting in Little Flower during its last mass: "If only those people had stayed..."

Yet, next to our children, the biggest investment most of us have is our home. As much as we all would like to be community minded, the bottom line is that most of us need to look out for ourselves and our families first. "Get out before it's too late and you lose your investment..." may not be the most altruistic or public-spirited advice, but one certainly cannot say that it is not prudent.

In the case of Auburn-Gresham however, contrary to a common misconception, census data also shows that while the population shifted almost 100 percent in 20 years, other factors such as income levels, average years of education, and age breakdown indicate that Auburn-Gresham has remained as it has been since its beginnings, a solidly middle class community. As you can see in the photograph, Little Flower has been successfully transformed into a church of another denomination.

Still we cannot force people where to live or with whom to associate. I'm reminded of my own church's now defunct alternative mass in the school lunchroom whose attendance did not reflect in any way the demographics of our parish. The whole community was invited to join the mass but its attendance was virtually all white. For their part, for whatever reason the lunchroom crowd is very unhappy about the termination of their mass, and their being brought back into the church proper. You can draw your own conclusions.

The question is, how can we live together in our communities if we cannot even integrate a church, where we all have a common interest and theoretically all of us are equal?

All I can say is this: St. Theresa the Little Flower, pray for us.