Resisting Racial Capitalism in the City

Based on archival research, this project will analyse a key moment of collective community resistance and grassroots activism against the destruction of a historic building and important space for African-American culture on Chicago’s South Side: The South Shore Cultural Center (SSCC) (known as the South Shore Country Club until 1974). In particular, the project examines the role of the Coalition to Save the South Shore Country Club (CSSSCC) (1977-1986) in preserving the building, focusing on how their struggle against the demolition of the Club comprised an important moment in resisting austerity politics under racial capitalism in Chicago. In 1977, the Chicago Park District (CPD) wanted to demolish the building, three years after it had purchased it, because it was too expensive to maintain it under Chicago’s austerity politics at the time. In response, Black middle-class individuals from the South Shore community formed the CSSSCC. It began an extensive grassroots campaign against its closure, particularly emphasising the cultural wealth of Black communities which public and media representations portrayed as culturally deprived in post-war America (Lieberman 2019). Ultimately successful in its fight, the Coalition disbanded in 1986 and today, the SSCC is an important community space for cultural events and activities on Chicago’s South Side. Today, the same community is, however, once more fighting a similar fight to preserve public park space surrounding the SSCC. In 2016, the Obama Foundation and the city of Chicago announced that they would build the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) into the area which included a proposal to privatise and redevelop two public golf courses surrounding the SSCC into a Championship PGA golf course to be managed and owned by Tiger Woods. In response to this plan, residents have come together to oppose this privatisation of public park space for the golf course development and to demand their right to public space. The aim of this project is to identify how the CSSSCC was successful in its fight against the Park District and how lessons for current grassroots activism against the privatisation and commodification of public space can be learned from the CSSSCC. Three research questions undergird this project: What political strategies did the CSSSCC use to preserve the SSCC? What challenges did the CSSSCC encounter in its struggles and how did the coalition manage to overcome these? What lessons can be learned from the CSSSCC’s fight for today’s grassroots activism against the privatisation and commodification of public space? Methodologically, this project builds on archival research. The Chicago Public Library has a collection on the CSSSCC which includes meeting minutes, financial and fund-raising records, community programming materials, and public relations documents between the 1970s and 90s. Through archival research, the project will reconstruct the political strategies that undergirded the CSSSCC’s campaign. Theoretically, the project is grounded in research on resistance against racial capitalism, particularly focusing on how such resistance becomes articulated through the defence of Black city space against privatisation and commodification under racial capitalism. The project will add to this research through a historical analysis of the CSSSCC that is not simply concerned with describing past community activism, but, crucially, with deciphering how lessons can be learned for current efforts to maintain public space in a racially marginalised Black community. An elaboration of how this will be achieved can be found below.