Cottage Grove Heights Community Coalition

by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

In the north­w­est corner of Wash­ing­ton Park, a 370-acre ex­panse on Chica­go's South Side, there's an ar­bor­etum that could, one day, be home to Barack Obama's pres­id­en­tial lib­rary. In Au­gust, I drove by with Cecil­ia But­ler, the long­time pres­id­ent of the Wash­ing­ton Park Ad­vis­ory Coun­cil. "I hope, if the lib­rary goes here, they'll find some funds to move those trees," said But­ler, ges­tur­ing to­ward a 150-year-old stand of Burr oaks. "But maybe the trees should be the least of my wor­ries."

In May, the South Side scored a long-awaited vic­tory when the Barack Obama Found­a­tion an­nounced that one of two city green spaces-Wash­ing­ton Park or Jack­son Park-would be home to Obama's pres­id­en­tial lib­rary and found­a­tion of­fices. (An ex­act loc­a­tion will be se­lec­ted this winter.) The news capped a year­long search that, to many Chica­goans, was too com­pet­it­ive for com­fort. To them, the South Side, where the pres­id­ent once worked as a com­munity or­gan­izer and the first lady grew up, was the only lo­gic­al choice.

But in the neigh­bor­hoods of Wood­lawn and Wash­ing­ton Park, which bor­der the two loc­a­tions, ex­cite­ment is tempered with con­cern. That's in no small part be­cause the lib­rary is be­ing built in part­ner­ship with the Uni­versity of Chica­go, an in­sti­tu­tion with which the sur­round­ing com­munit­ies have a tense his­tory. (Full dis­clos­ure: I'm pur­su­ing a mas­ter's de­gree at the uni­versity's di­vin­ity school.) "Around here, Obama is every­one's ho­met­own hero, there's no ques­tion about that," says Joel Hamer­nick, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of Sun­shine Gos­pel Min­is­tries, a faith-based non­profit in Wood­lawn, where about one-third of house­holds live be­low the poverty line-and which, like Wash­ing­ton Park, lacks ba­sic amen­it­ies such as gro­cery stores. "The prob­lem is that the found­a­tion is really deal­ing with two dif­fer­ent ho­met­owns: the uni­versity and the com­munity. So far, they've mostly been talk­ing to the uni­versity, and that in it­self sends a mes­sage."