description:
Page Four - The SKYSCRAPER - May 17,1968 North side tenants by Janet Sass It was a clever gimmick. Perfect Madison Avenue tongue-in-cheek. See our spe cial features, the California Terrace Block Club advertised for their slum open house. See the latest in housing construction: rooms without radiators; toilets that don't work; doors without locks. Rats and roaches by special arrangement and price. It was a clever publicity stunt by tenants to get the landlord to do something . . . to get anyone to do anything. We're not pigs or ani mals, one woman insisted. We just want to live a better life. Despite the unpainted hall ways, the broken windows, the lack of heat and hot water, the slum open house had a festival mood, something like an Italian street carnival. Some of the residents had pooled their money to plant grass in the courtyard with visions of adding flowers and maybe even trees later. The Negro and Spanish- American tenants seemed to be having their first sense of power and gloried in the press coverage. For a sense of pow er seems to give people a cor responding sense of dignity. Only about 22 of the 29 fam ilies of 733 California Terrace joined the Block Club. The non-members leaned silently out of windows. Some would talk; they seemed afraid. Yet it was difficult to decide if they were afraid of their land lord Mark T. Maxwell or of their more militant neighbors. Perhaps they just had re signed themselves to being mi nority group members. They don't know what's happening, one woman said of her passive neighbors. They've been calling me 'nig ger' all morning, another added. And what does Mr. Maxwell, the landlord, think of all this? A lot of the trouble stems from the fact that three fami lies have been given eviction notices, he said in a tele phone interview from his home in Highland Park. Les Williams, president of the Block Club, has received an eviction notice for not pay ing two months' rent. Yet Wil liams claims he has paid his rent and has receipts to prove it. The tenants guided the visi tors, mainly whites, through The tenants pay 110 a month for their five- room apartments. ,- . The slum open house had a festival mood, something like an Italian street carnival It was a clever gimmick, tongue-in-cheek.
title:
1968-05-17 (4)
publisher:
Women and Leadership Archives http://www.luc.edu/wla
creator:
Mundelein College
description:
Student newspaper for Mundelein College
subject:
Newspapers
subject:
Religious communities--Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
subject:
Students
subject:
Universities and colleges
subject:
Women's education
relation:
Mundelein College Records
type:
Text
language:
English
rights:
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coverage:
Chicago, Illinois
coverage:
Mundelein College