In the summer of 2003 Louis Carter decided to organize a little reunion in Seward Park of friends he’d grown up with in nearby Cabrini-Green. They joked that they had to hurry because the neighborhood was changing so fast they might not be welcome anymore. Several Cabrini high-rises between Chicago Avenue and Division Street had already been torn down, part of the massive, federally funded Plan for Transformation the city launched in the mid-90s. “You blink and something’s changed,” says Carter, who works for the secretary of state and still lives nearby. “It was like, ‘Let’s party in the old hood one last time.’”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Yet neighborliness and a sense of community were very apparent at the August 9 Old School Monday, even though many of the people who’d called Cabrini home had lived there after it became infamous. It was like a high school reunion. All around me I heard people shrieking with joy as they saw friends they hadn’t seen in years. There must have been 600 people on Hill Street, which dead-ends at Orleans across from Seward Park–people who’d grown up in the row houses, the high-rises, and the old working-class black neighborhoods just north of Division. There were people who still lived in Cabrini and former residents who’d come from as far away as Las Vegas.
It was a hot, sticky night. People were grilling hot dogs and ribs and chicken. Someone had set up a makeshift stage near Byrd elementary school, and a DJ was playing Marvin Gaye, the Isley Brothers, Smokey Robinson, and Lenny Williams. In the middle of Hill Street at least 50 couples were dancing.
At about 11 the crowd started to thin out. At midnight Green and his friends turned off the music, cleaned up the debris, and promised to meet again the next Monday.
In 1974, when he was 22, Stone and his best friend, Norman Gibson, were playing basketball at a court on Sedgwick when a limousine pulled up. “This black guy, Michael Schultz, got out,” said Stone. “He said, ‘How would you like to be in a movie?’ He was in town making Cooley High, and they were looking for tough guys from out of Cabrini. They had other people from Cabrini in that movie–Jackie Taylor and Maurice Havis. Me and Norman went to the audition. We said, ‘Let’s go. If we don’t get the part, we can stick them up.’”
As Stone sees it, Cabrini’s “fate was doomed when they realized white people were willing to spend hundreds of thousands moving here and they didn’t give a fuck about being next to the projects. After that, man, they couldn’t tear this place down fast enough. The land was just worth too damn much money.”
Glover and his friends noted that the transformation plan is going slower than expected. Several high-rises that were slated for demolition are still occupied–the CHA doesn’t have the money to tear them down. They figure a good chunk of Cabrini will still be around next summer, and they’re planning to have more parties.
