Danny K. Davis <fax# 773-533-7530> Date: 31 Dec 1996
December 31, 1996
Dear Chancellor Broski:
I write to add my voice to the call for a Maxwell Street Preservation District. Maxwell Street has been a port of entry; a social, cultural, economic and political center for successive generations of Chicago's new residents.
Maxwell Street was the most important center for Eastern European Jewish settlement in the late 1800s and early 1900s outside New York's Lower East Side. It is impossible to appreciate and understand the history of the Jewish People in the United States without studying the history of Maxwell Street.
In the period following World War I Maxwell Street became the terminal for the "Great Migration." It became the bridge from the rural South and the aftermath of slavery to the industrial North and a new chapter of struggle and creativity for the African American people as well as the opening in a new and shameful era of racism and oppression. Maxwell Street is world famous as home to the Chicago "blues." The "blues" are more than just music, they are a central part and expression of the development of African American identity and existence. They were part of a cultural renaissance in Black Life.
More recently, Maxwell Street became an exciting and vibrant center for Latino culture and entrepreneurship. Latinos have, like generations before them, used Maxwell Street as a launching pad to develop a cultural and economic base. Chicago as a whole, all of Chicago's people, have been enriched economically, culturally and politically by the Maxwell Street experience. Anyone who ever visited the neighborhood could feel the history and come away with a deep sense of its tradition. Each generation absorbed the legacies of those who came before them, and have added to and deepened that legacy. Is that not the mission of the University ... preserving and developing our social, cultural, scientific, artistic and educational legacy?
Maxwell Street is a treasure which we must preserve, and cherish and pass down to generations to come. It must be a living, breathing center for all who come to share in. This is not a burden to the University or to the City, it is an opportunity and a responsibility. The University of Illinois has a chance, a brief window in time, to preserve for itself, for Chicago, for all of America, this great heritage. Change is an inevitable part of the historic process, destruction is not. A Maxwell Street Preservation District will be a wellspring of cultural expression, a rich tourist attraction and a source of educational and research opportunity. I trust that the University will carefully consider this matter.
Sincerely,
Danny K. Davis
Member-Elect
DKD:ic
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