How White City became Black space: notes on Jackson Park
“One bitter irony of real estate development, it is often said, is the convention of naming places for what they aren’t. Every office park named for a creek is a concrete desert; every subdivision with a hill in its name is flat. Even among this inglorious company Jackson Park stands out for its perversity. President Andrew Jackson’s legacy—defense of slavery, hostility to abolitionism, violent removal of indigenous tribes—is the exact opposite of the ideals that the park, once known as Lake Park, was designed to demonstrate. And yet it is also a smirking, swaggering irony, for Jackson Park today is no more a tribute to Jackson than a monumental middle finger.”
My notes on Jackson Park — a racial heterotopia — were featured in the Best of Black Chicago issue.
For its highly-anticipated annual “Best of Chicago” issue of 2020, Newcity magazine announced a theme: under guest co-editors Tara Betts and Scoop Jackson, it would focus on Black Chicago. In the Great Migration, Chicago’s restrictive covenants and racial politics forced newly arrived Black families into a string of southside neighborhoods that became known as the “Black Belt.” Jackson Park was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted as the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition — known as the “White City.” But by the middle of the 20th century, the park would become the social and cultural center of Black life.
In a feature story, I outline the history of Jackson Park from its origins as landfill to its current use as a vibrant platform for Afrocentric events, recreation, joy, wellness, and love. Jackson Park, which now hosts a center dedicated to the first Black president of the U.S., is a racial heterotopia, I argue: a safe space to be Black. The story shifts between historic narratives and the voices of contemporary parks stewards and residents, including house music DJ Elbert Philips and the doyenne of Chicago’s arts and culture Michelle Boone.