May 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 17, 2008
CONTACT: Toure Muhammad (773) 224-6500
Congressman Rush, community work to both preserve
rich legacy of Chicago’s southside
CHICAGO—Determined to preserve the rich legacy of Chicago’s
southside, a community coalition has joined Congressman Bobby L.
Rush in an effort to designate the Black Metropolis District, including
the historic Bronzeville area, of Chicago as a National Heritage
Area.
According to the National Park Service, “a national heritage
area is a place designated by the United States Congress where natural,
cultural, historic and recreational resources combine to form a
cohesive, nationally-distinctive landscape arising from patterns
of human activity shaped by geography.”
On February 29, the last day of Black History Month, Rep. Rush
introduced a bill to the House of Representatives, titled HR 5505:
Black Metropolis District National Heritage Area Study Act, which
calls for the federal government to “conduct a study to determine
the feasibility” of designating the study area a national
heritage area.
Black Metropolis District “has a cohesive and distinctive
history that is worthy of national heritage designation,”
said Rep. Rush. “This is more than nostalgia; by highlighting
the past, we can inspire the future.”
Supporters of HR 5505 believe the effort will help revitalize
the area culturally and economically, without compromising its history,
which includes great accomplishments in culture, business, sports,
education, health care, labor, politics, religion and social justice.
“The designation will support the ongoing development of
Bronzeville as an international heritage tourism destination,”
said Paula Robinson, President of Black Metropolis National Heritage
Area Project.
The designated study area roughly stretches between Lake Michigan
at some points and the Dan Ryan, from 18th street to 71st Street.
The area includes the neighborhoods of Oakland, Kenwood, Washington
Park, Grand Boulevard, Douglass, and Woodlawn.
The term Bronzeville was created by a then Chicago Bee newspaper
editor. The First Mayor of Bronzeville was selected in 1934. The
editor left the Bee and went to work for the Chicago Defender, where
the term was made popular. Later, the heart of the study area was
unofficially dubbed “Black Metropolis” following a landmark
1945 sociological study with that same title.
“The Illinois Institute of Technology is proud to be a long
time member of the Bronzeville community and we are excited about
the opportunities to help preserve the wonderful legacy of this
area,” said David Baker, vice president of external affairs
for IIT. “We plan to work with the Congressman to support
the bill in Washington and to help with the creation of the National
Heritage Area once it is designated.”
The Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District currently has nine structures
designated as Chicago landmarks: Overton Hygienic Building, Chicago
Bee Building, Wabash Avenue YMCA, Chicago Defender Building, Unity
Hall, Eighth Regiment Armory, Sunset Cafe, Victory Monument, and
Supreme Life Building.
“This is great, not just for the southside of Chicago, but
it’s great for the entire city of Chicago and state of Illinois,”
said Jan Kostner, Deputy Director, Illinois Bureau of Tourism, “Visitors
from all over the world will have an opportunity to see firsthand
the tremendous accomplishments of African Americans in business,
politics, education, and so many other areas.”
Once the study is complete, Rep. Rush will draft another bill to
actually designate the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District a national
heritage area.
#####
CHA Plan for Transformation poses challenges for
Bronzeville
by Marisol Rodriguez
Mar 20, 2008
Lee Peebles, 74, lived in the Ida B. Wells Homes for 46 years –
until they were demolished.

Marisol Rodriguez/Medill
Lee Peebles, 74, is content with her new public
housing unit at Oakwood Shores.
Since 2005 she’s been happily sharing a two-bedroom apartment
with her grandson Jeremy Day at Oakwood Shores, one of the new mixed-income
developments built as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s
Plan for Transformation.
“I love where I am,” Peebles said. “I thought
they could rehab [Wells], but they said the pipes were corroded
too bad.”
Peebles is an anomaly. Just as soon as the Wells homes were gone,
Peebles had her apartment at Oakwood Shores waiting for her to move
in to.
Thousands of CHA residents were left to find a place to live during
the interim of demolition and reconstruction, primarily through
the use of Section 8 vouchers, through which renters pay a fraction
of the rent.
Advocates for the displaced residents say that the shabby system
of temporary relocation of these residents has left many in the
Bronzeville/Mid South community skeptical of CHA’s vision
and the de facto future benefits of the plan for this historically
black community.
The Plan for Transformation was initiated in 1999 by CHA as an
answer to the isolated pockets of public housing where drug abuse
and crime became heavily concentrated.
Over the 10-year-plan, CHA is planning to spend $1.5 billion to
rehabilitate or rebuild 25,000 public housing units, most within
mixed-income developments.
At the end of 2007, CHA had completed 64.7 percent of the proposed
housing goal, with 16,172 units built, according to CHA spokesman
Bryan Zises.
“The Plan for Transformation is about saying, ‘You
know what, we are all Chicagoans, lets take down these [high rises]
and integrate the people into the rest of our society,” Zises
said.
CHA has attempted to economically integrate residents of the new
housing developments by allocating one-third of the units as public
housing, one-third as affordable housing and one-third as market-rate
housing.
However, the total 25,000 units of public housing promised by the
plan falls short of the 39,000 units of public housing CHA had before
implementing the plan.
According to the CHA, only 24,500 units were occupied as of October
1999, around the time the plan was implemented.
Despite this figure, some in the Bronzeville/Mid South area are
critical of the fact that the original amount of public housing
is being reduced substantially.
Jay Travis, director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization,
said that out of 4,086 units of public housing that once compromised
the Lake Michigan, Madden Park/Darrow and Ida B. Wells Homes, only
1,320 units of CHA replacement units will be left after the plan
is complete.
One neighborhood expert said the public housing residents who have
had to find housing after the demolition have mostly moved farther
south to areas like South Shore, Englewood and Roseland, presenting
new challenges to these South Side neighborhoods and reinforcing
traditional patterns of racial composition.
According to Harold L. Lucas, longtime Bronzeville resident and
founder of the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council,
the influx of public housing residents into the South Side has left
Chicago’s black community just as regionally segregated as
it has always been, only with additional negative impacts.
“The antisocial behaviors that were contained in public housing
have also been transferred into more stable communities further
south,” Lucas said.
The antisocial behaviors Lucas refers to are the drug and crime
problems that Chicago public housing was, at one point, nationally
recognized for. “You don’t break those [antisocial]
patterns overnight,” Lucas said. “They are endemic to
the culture of poverty.”
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said the plan has horizontally concentrated
the poor, while traditional public housing vertically concentrated
them. Horizontal concentration means by neighborhood; vertically
concentrated, in high rises.
“The problem is that it was all done at once,” Preckwinkle
said. “There wasn’t very much thought given as to what
was going to happen to people between the time their buildings were
torn down and the new buildings were built.”
The mixed-income developments that now offer housing in the Bronzeville/Mid
South area are Oakwood Shores, Jazz on the Boulevard and Lake Park
Crescent.
Lee Peebles who lives in one of the 126 public housing units at
Oakwood Shores pays one third of her income to rent costs.
Market rate housing at the development costs about $1.25 per square
foot; apartments range from 700 to 1,300 square feet, according
to Joseph Williams, president and chairman of Granite Development,
one of Oakwood Shores’ private developers.
To qualify to live in these new mixed-income communities, residents
have to meet what some view as a stringent CHA leasing compliancy
as well as additional requirements made by the private developers
of each respective mixed-income site.
Such criteria, which are listed in the CHA’s Admissions and
Continued Occupancy Policy, include rules governing work. For instance,
applicants between the ages of 18 and 61 have to be employed a minimum
of 15 hours per week at admission and 20 hours a week after two
years of residency.
Non-compliance can result in eviction.
Applicants are subject to rejection based on past criminal activity.
Requirements that consider criminal history have the potential,
some say, to leave black men out of new developments due to the
epidemic rate of imprisonment of black males in the United States.
A study by a Washington D.C. research and advocacy group, the Sentencing
Project, reported that 2,020 black men were imprisoned in Illinois,
compared to 223 white men in 2005.
Private developers used community input to come up with their respective
residency criteria. Preckwinkle and her constituents were involved
in this process.
“We deliberately instituted very high standards for all residents
in our new developments because we didn’t want new housing
to be perceived in the same way that the old was,” Preckwinkle
said.
Problems with the old, she said, included, “That they were
places that were a refuge for people who had substance-abuse problems,
weren’t working, criminal background and all the rest of it.”
The alderman added that what she called the high standard residency
requirements were also a way to attract affordable housing and market-rate
families who might have safety concerns due to the stigma public
housing residents carry with them.
Lucas said that these public housing residents – he referred
to them as “the best of the best” – will ultimately
have to face issues of displacement because, in his opinion, the
Plan for Transformation is an attempt to gentrify the community
and prepare it for upscale redevelopment.
Lucas is convinced that the success of public housing residents
lies with their ability to move up the socio-economic latter and
to hold jobs that will enable them to pay market rate housing costs.
“At some point the goal is economic self-sufficiency and
getting people to the point where they can pay their own bills,”
Lucas said.
Neighborhoods across Chicago have struggled with gentrification.
The communities that have been seemingly successful in preventing
displacement are those that have established themselves as unique
ethnic neighborhoods—such as the Puerto Rican community in
the West Town/Humboldt Park area.
This community has used landmarks, such as the pair of Puerto Rican
steel flags that stand over Division Street as well creating and
supporting Puerto Rican-owned businesses to define their neighborhood.
According to Lucas, the preservation of Bronzeville as an African-American
cultural and historical district will provide this community with
the stronghold it needs to secure its place during this period of
transformation.
“We have the premiere tourism destination in the entire country
on the Great Migration experience,” said Lucas, who leads
tour groups through Bronzeville. He added that 46 percent of the
Great Migration landmark buildings are in Bronzeville.
There is no question Bronzeville is changing, to the drum of the
CHA Plan for Transformation. Some in the community embrace these
changes, such as Lee Peebles of Oakwood Shores, and others are skeptical,
such as Lucas.
But neither is willing to give up their place in Bronzeville.
When Peebles moved out of Wells into Oakwood Shores, she said leaving
her new apartment would mean the undertaker was coming to get her.
“I don’t ever want to move,” she said.

Marisol Rodriguez/Medill
Oakwood Shores replaced longstanding, and
decrepit, CHA housing stock.
Marisol Rodriguez/Medill
This building on the 3800 block of Ellis Avenue
is where Peebles has lived for the past couple of years.

Marisol Rodriguez/Medill
Left-over public housing, pre-Plan for Transformation,
can still be found in the Bronzeville/Mid South area.
Community retail needs begin to be met
Housing redevelopment in Bronzeville/Mid South has been followed
by initiatives for improved quality of life for the residents of
this area, specifically in the realms of transportation, retail
and amenities.
The newest, Reconnecting Neighborhoods, is a study administered
by the Metropolitan Planning Council in partnership with the City
of Chicago, the Regional Transportation Authority and HNTB, a multidisciplinary
engineering and architecture firm specializing in such areas as
urban design.
Reconnecting Neighborhoods has met three times since November.
All three have been directed at attracting Bronzeville/Mid South
community members to share the changes they want to see in their
neighborhood.
This study is also being conducted in the Near North and Near West,
areas also being redeveloped via the Plan for Transformation.
The feedback will be gathered and compiled into a report to the
study’s partnering agencies this November, according to Brandon
Johnson, project manager for Reconnecting Neighborhoods.
Increased retail options were a significant part of the conversation
at all of the community meetings.
Belinda Sparks, a Bronzeville homeowner, thought it was wonderful
that this community need was being addressed.
Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, director of the New Communities Program
of Quad Communities Development Corporation, has been most involved
with the retail portion of the initiative. NCP is a long-term initiative
to foster community-led development.
The overwhelming majority of retail options in the Bronzeville
area are limited to beauty supply stores, nail salons and dollar
stores, according to Johnson-Gabriel. “We have enough of those
[businesses],” she said. “We are not trying to get rid
of them, but we need other things to help balance those businesses.”
A 2004 survey prepared by Metro Edge for QCDC reported that Bronzeville
residents saw the biggest need for food stores in their neighborhood,
followed by restaurants.
Over the past couple of years, a number of community-owned businesses
have opened up with the support of QCDC. Included coffee shops,
shoe stores and a restaurant.
While the mixed-income developments may appear to pose a challenge
in catering to residents of different income brackets, Johnson-Gabriel
noted that Bronzeville has historically been a mixed-income community,
initially due to the restrictive covenants that forced all black
Chicagoans, regardless of their income, to live on the South Side.
While there has been an influx of public housing residents in the
Bronzeville area, a number of middle- to upper-income black families
continue to live in the neighborhood, according to Johnson-Gabriel.
“There has to be retail that will cover every segment of
our economic population,” Johnson-Gabriel said. “We’re
looking for a medium retail mix that has good quality goods and
services.”
With the help of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, QCDC
has most recently succeeded in bringing Bronzeville a farmers market,
which is scheduled to run every Sunday. The market will be open
from June to October.
“We saw that other communities had healthy and vibrant farmers
markets and we were wondering why Bronzeville didn’t have
one,” Johnson-Gabriel said.
In past years Bronzeville had a farmer’s market in the parking
lot of Dunbar High School; it eventually dwindled to one farmer,
who occasionally showed up.
QCDC is working on creating a commercial/retail center on South
Cottage Grove Avenue, between 44th and 47th streets.
Johnson-Gabriel said that residents need to have a central place
they can shop for a variety of goods instead of having to travel
to different places, depending on what they need.
“What we have to do is create clusters of businesses,”
Johnson-Gabriel said. “We have to create critical mass.”
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=84621
#####

On Wednesday, February 13, 2008
at 4:30 PM, the Bronzeville Community Development Partnership (BCDP)
hosted a legislative reception and dinner celebration in the lower
level lounge of Sebastian's Hideout in downtown Springfield Illinois.
The legislative orientation reception was convened by the BCDP to
educate African American legislators in the Illinois General Assembly
on the importance of supporting African American heritage tourism
development in Illinois. Bill Williams VP at the Chicago Convention
& Tourism Bureau and board member of the BMC&TC (Right in
photo) makes a point during the lively and entertaining orientation
session. Other legislative and civic engagement leadership participating
in the session included Rep. Ester Golar 3rd Dist., Sharon Morgan,
Gina V Driskell, Deborah Cuzan, State Senator Mattie Hunter 3rd
Dist, State Senator Emil Jones Jr.14th Dist, Anne Walker, Cheryl
Colbert and Paula Robinson.
The Illinois Governor's Conference on Tourism
& Legislative orientation session -
February 13 to 15, 2008 Springfield, IL
By:
Gina V Driskell
marychances@yahoo.com
I had the opportunity to attend the Governor's Conference on Tourism
as part of the Bronzeville Visitor Information Center and Black
Metropolis National Heritage Area delegation. The tourism conference,
for the seven visitor destination regions in Illinois included sessions
on marketing, trends, partnering, international recognition and
Internet communication and presence. The sessions designed to stimulate
and make aware the different avenues, if not traveled, should be
looked into for the regional bureaus to up the ante on visitors
to their region. And of course the greening of the travel experience
on all levels was the hot topic.
The Bronzeville delegation's reason for attending the conference
was to bring awareness to the other regions and to make known the
African American experience in Illinois needs to be recognized,
that areas need to be preserved and funding for preservation and
education is sorely needed. Not just in the Chicago region but through
out Illinois, more recognition is needed to help remind visitors
of the African American experience. There is not enough being done
to document and preserve the movement and settlement of the African
American throughout Illinois.
The Bronzeville delegation hosted a dinner and orientation session
on the first evening of the conference to make state legislators
aware these funds are urgently needed for the preservation, restoration,
development and education of specific areas in Bronzeville and the
Black Metropolis National Heritage Area that are an integral part
of the African American experience not just in Chicago but throughout
all of Illinois.
Illinois does not want to lose its link to the rest of the nation
in documenting the Great Migration and experience of the African
American in the United States. Chicago has a vast history to preserve
to keep the experience of the African American migration alive.
The Bronzeville Visitor Information Center presence was a strong
reminder that the African American experience though ongoing, needs
legislative help in preservation and education and more should be
done for the African American tour experience in Chicago as well
as Illinois. Funding for the African American tour experience is
necessary and vital.
The conference was an excellent opportunity to further the message
of the historic Bronzeville experience, the Black Metropolis Heritage
National Area and the coming Great Migration Centennial to the legislators
and other attendees. We came away with information to help us remain
up to date and on track with the tourism plan as it relates to the
other Illinois destination regions and the African American experience.
As well, we were there to continue to remind those the African American
experience in Illinois and of course Bronzeville, still exists and
needs to be preserved and funded.
#####
Hotel planned near McCormick Place
Developer to buy site west of new building
By Kathy Bergen | Tribune staff reporter
January 8, 2008
Skokie-based Alter Group on Monday confirmed it has
an agreement to pay $70 million for a 3.7-acre site directly across
from McCormick Place's new West Building, where it would like to
build a convention hotel of at least 1,000 rooms, along with some
retail and residential units.
The plans, first reported by Crain's Chicago Business, could include
a casino, though "it's not very high on our list of expected
uses here," said Richard Gatto, executive vice president of
the commercial real estate development firm.
The state has yet to decide whether it would authorize a downtown
casino as part of a plan to rescue public transit. If it did so
there likely would be heated competition for the new license.
The Alter Group plan targets a parcel directly across Cermak Road,
between Prairie and Calumet Avenues.
It is directly east of a parcel being pursued for potential hotel
development by the Metropolitian Pier and Exposition Authority,
which owns and operates McCormick Place and Navy Pier. The authority,
also known as McPier, will continue its eminent domain proceedings
to acquire a Cermak Road parcel between Indiana and Prairie Avenues,
Chief Executive Juan Ochoa said Monday.
"Over the last two years we have seen several plans for hotels
by this owner," Ochoa said, noting that those plans have not
translated into a project yet. "So we will continue the process
unless we see something that is very concrete."
McPier also is planning a 600-room expansion of the 800-room Hyatt
Regency McCormick Place, the existing convention hotel at the convention
center.
Maine-based developers Pam Gleichman and Karl Norberg own the parcel
to be sold to the Alter Group. They also own part of the parcel
that McPier is pursuing for its plans. They could not be reached
Monday.
The speed with which McPier proceeds with its site acquisition
will depend on whether Illinois lawmakers approve its request for
a debt restructuring, Ochoa said.
"If it is passed we can do it quickly," he said. "Otherwise,
we'll have to be very fiscally conscious of what it would mean for
the authority."
Meanwhile, the Alter Group "is in very early stages of due
diligence" on its land purchase, Gatto said, adding that he
would like to see the deal close at some point in 2008. It would
take another 18 months to two years to build the hotel, he said.
kbergen@tribune.com
#####
TIME Magazine
Business in Bronzeville
Monday, April 18, 1938
Although Chicago has 100,000 fewer Negroes than New
York, it is the centre of U. S. Negro business; last census figures
showed Chicago's Negro establishments had annual net sales of $4,826,897,
New York's were only $3,322,274. Chicago's Negroes all hail from
the South, work generally as laborers in packing plants and steel
mills, have a community feeling; New York's are less homogenous,
work mostly in hotels and apartments. Great majority of Chicago's
Negroes live in a south side section known as Bronzeville. Here
the principal shopping districts are on 43rd, 47th, sist and syth
Streets. Virtually all of this property belongs to whites, most
of them Jews, and they make it tough for Negroes to go into business
in these prize areas. Leases generally have clauses forbidding Negro
tenants; and if a Negro manages to wangle a lease anyway, he is
apt to find his rent tripled when the lease comes up for renewal.
When the Jones Brothers started the world's only
Negro-owned department store they had to buy the property to get
onto 47th Street. When dapper little Frank Howell Jr. started Mae's
Dress Shoppe, he was forced to pay six-and-a-half months' rent in
advance. This smoldered in Negro Howell's breast and continued to
as he prospered. After Marva Trotter, fiancée of Prizefighter
Joe Louis, bought her trousseau from Frank Howell, four other Mae's
Dress Shoppes were started by rivals eager to cash in on the publicity;
but Frank Howell's Original Mae's Dress Shoppe is today the biggest
and most fashionable in Bronzeville.
Now something of a tycoon, Frank Howell decided to organize other
Bronzeville bigwigs, hold a two-day Exposition of Negro Business
for the double purpose of spurring Negro business and arranging
a program to fight "fleecing" by whites. So last week
to the shabby 8th Regiment Armory trooped no less than 110,000 Negroes
to watch fashion shows, finger fancy caskets, see demonstrations
of pressing the kink out of Negro hair, listen to church choirs
and hot bands, munch free handouts or purchase raffle tickets from
the 75 booths. No Negro gathering is complete without Joe Louis
and he was on hand opening day to cut a ribbon across the door.
As usual he was surrounded with admiring pickaninnies who well know
his bodyguard's penchant of giving dollar bills to moppets so they
will leave Joe alone.
#####
Bronzeville International Summit
&
Summer 2007 Heritage Tourism Review
Bronzeville Summit –
A Showcase of Development and Information about Bronzeville Today
Chicago, September 14, 2007 - Greeted by a standing ovation, Congressman
Bobby L. Rush was the morning keynote speaker at the all day Bronzeville
International Summit, convened by the Bronzeville Community Development
Partnership on September 14, 2007 in the newly opened west building
of the McCormick Place Convention Center.
Approximately 100 dedicated urban preservationists, community developers,
city planners, students and other heritage tourism advocates blocked
out their busy schedules to hear Congressman Rush, Democrat 1st
District, in his opening address commit the power of his congressional
seniority toward the creation of federal legislation in support
of designating the Black Metropolis Historic District as a National
Heritage Area.
The Bronzeville Community Development Partnership hosted the 2007
Summit, Bronzeville International. The summit showcased current
projects in the Bronzeville Community Development Planning Studio
and launched its formal bid to establish a Black Metropolis National
Heritage Area. The event had the authentic distinction of being
the first community/public event in the newly opened McCormick Place
West building and celebrated the installation of the Bronzeville
Portal on 23rd & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, marking the
civic gate of the world’s largest convention center.
Bronzeville is Chicago’s Black Metropolis, a historic “city-within-a-city”
destination where more than a half million southern migrant families
in search of a northern “promised land” adapted, innovated
and thrived. They inhabited a narrow boundary know as the “Black
Belt” which stretched along Chicago’s south lakefront.
Their unique experience is imprinted in the music, literature and
civil rights struggles of this amazing era. Some of the country’s
great cultural and entrepreneurial business contributions were born
here and have had a great impact on the world.
Over the last 15 years, the descendants of this rich history have
worked with the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and partners
like the National Trust for Historic Preservation to preserve Bronzeville’s
environment, the stories of its people and places and most importantly,
its vision of promise for new opportunities and a better life.
The National Park Service has recognized the Great Migration as
a nationally significant American Story and invited the neighborhoods
that constitute Chicago’s legendary Black Metropolis to broaden
their collaborative efforts towards securing a National Heritage
Area (NHA) designation. There are currently 37 NHAs that have sustained
their economic revitalization strategies through these congressional
designations and the implementation of a comprehensive management
plan. NHAs are eligible to attract $1 million a year in matching
federal funds over a 10-15 year period.
Heritage Partners have pledged their long term support through
community-based investment, in-kind services, resources and cash
contributions or grants. Multi-year investment partners of $100,000
or more including East Lake Management and Development Corporation
and Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) have signed Community
Benefits Agreements (CBAs).
“Illinois Institute of Technology is pleased to be a collaborative
partner in the continued revitalization of the Bronzeville community
and the proposed Black Metropolis National Heritage Area,”
said John L. Anderson, president of IIT. “We invite others
to be a part of this bold, historic and innovative initiative.”
Speakers at the Bronzeville International Summit event included:
· Congressman Bobby Rush
· Jan Kostner, Director of Illinois Bureau of Tourism
· John Cosgrove, President, Alliance of National Heritage
Areas
· Paula Robinson, Managing Partner, Bronzeville Community
Development Partnership
· Lilia Rach , Associate Dean and HVS International Chair
at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management
at New York University.
· Lee Bey, Executive Director, Chicago Central Area Committee
Community, business, political leaders and students attending the
2007 Summit Bronzeville International gained insight through these
and other speakers, historical films, an Internet cafe, workshops
and exhibits on current Bronzeville projects.
“We are beginning the process of establishing the Black Metropolis
National Heritage Area in Bronzeville,” said Paula Robinson.
“Our hope is that the summit ignited a spark and generated
community enthusiasm for this inclusive, bottom-up grassroots effort.”
Sponsors of the 2007 Summit Bronzeville International included:
Illinois Institute of Technology
Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity
Metropolis Pier & Exposition Authority
Illinois Bureau of Tourism
Black Metropolis Convention & Tourism Council
Local Initiative Support Corporation
Quad Community Development Corporation
Partnership for New Communities
University of Chicago
National City Bank
Shorebank Corporation
Wexford Technology
Capri Capital Partners
#####
Bronzeville Heritage Tourism Review
Summer 2007
As the historic Bronzeville community continues to
emerge as a premier African American heritage tourism destination,
the tourism, hospitality and capacity building business development
services provided to the general public and local residents of the
Bronzeville Visitor Information Center continues to grow and expand.
The following photos and captions provide our web site readers and
interested cultural heritage travelers with some insights into events
and attractions involving Bronzeville from an international perspective.
#####
Northwestern University Video Links
Please click the links below to hear interviews on
the Bronzeville community from Northwestern University:
https://depot.northwestern.edu/dms272/public_html/BVILLEhistory.mov?uniq=vfl3nc
https://depot.northwestern.edu/dms272/public_html/JEWEL.mov?uniq=vfl3nu
#####
BRONZEVILLE DOCU SHORT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUbeeZdXkOY
|