Hate Groups, Racial Tension, and Ethnoviolence in an Integrating
Chicago Neighborhood 1976-1988
Chip Berlet
Senior Analyst
Political Research Associates
This set of pages is supplemental material to a chapter in The
Politics of Social Inequality, Volume 9. Copyright 2001 by Elsevier
Science, Inc.
Abstract
Between 1976 and 1988 organized White supremacist groups targeted the
Marquette Park section of Chicago, seeking to mobilize the predominantly
White residents to block integration. One local pro-integration group,
the Southwest Community Congress, (SCC) successfully reframed the debate
in the neighborhood and swayed public opinion against the violence
encouraged by the organized racist groups. This detailed history of
the conflict, by a participant-observer who advised SCC, shows how
both racist and anti-racist social movement organizations mobilized
resources, sought to open and close political opportunities, and framed
issues and grievances to appeal to multiple audiences. Frame theory
is used to identify seven different competing frames contending for
allegiance in the community.
Introduction
On Chicago's Southwest Side lies the verdant expanse of the pond-dotted
Marquette Park. In the 1970s and 1980s Marquette Park was surrounded by
several White working class neighborhoods, including Marquette Manor, Chicago
Lawn, West Lawn, and Gage Park. Open housing marches during the 60s
civil rights movement targeted this community. It was toward Marquette
Park that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched in 1966 when now-famous
film-footage showed him being attacked and hit by rubble hurled by White
racist counterdemonstrators.
In the early 1980s Marquette Park began a turbulent process of integration
by small numbers of Hispanics, Arabs, and Blacks. Sensing an opportunity, in
the mid-80s White supremacist organizers formed a coalition in the Chicago
area and developed a strategy using scapegoating to turn prejudice into overt
discrimination, and overt discrimination into race hate and violence. Their
organizing drive sparked physical assaults on people of color and firebombings
of their homes. The vast majority of incidents involved attacks on Black residents.
Most White residents of Marquette Park chose to remain silent. White supremacists
and equal rights activists set out to mobilize this constituency in opposite
directions. Representing the status quo was an entrenched parish-based Catholic
community organization that implicitly opposed integration and was reluctant
to mobilize residents against the race hate groups. A coalition of religious,
labor union, and business leaders worked with political activists in a progressive
multi-racial, anti-racist community group to circumvent the traditional neighborhood
leadership by creatively reframing the issues and pressuring government agencies
to enforce existing laws.
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THE
KU KLUX KLAN AND THE AMERICAN NAZI PARTY:
CASE STUDIES IN TOTALITARIANISM AND FASCISM
by Betty A. Dobratz, Iowa State University; and Stephanie Shanks-Meile, Indiana
University Northwest
First Amendment
Rights
by Avi Hein
A Brief
History of Englewood
By Chanel Polk and Mick Dumke
An Inside Look atthe NSDAP/AO
"
This article by comrade Michael Storm appeared in the July/August 1992 issue
(#99) of THE NEW ORDER, the English-language newspaper of the NSDAP/AO."
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