Preface and Acknowledgments

Summary

In the spring of 1987 nearly 400 people – public housing residents, housing activists community organizers, housing professionals, and academics – gathered for the Women and Public Housing: Hidden Strength, Unclaimed Power conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The intent of this 2-day conference was to provide a public forum to highlight resident-initiated responses to entrenched social problems existing within public housing developments locally and nationally. There was the added hope that the conference participants could become a base for future organized actions. One of us, Susan Stall, was the coordinator of the conference. The other, Roberta Feldman, prepared the photo documentary for the plenary session, “Sharing Our Homes, Sharing Our Communities.” Representatives from Wentworth Gardens spoke in the session entitled “Planning Our Communities to Resist Displacement.” Through the year-long preparation for this conference we became acutely aware of the essential roles that women residents living in Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) developments play through their organizing efforts to create and secure their communities. This was our first opportunity to become acquainted with women from Wentworth Gardens, and we have remained involved with Wentworth activists since that time.

Our initial visits to the Wentworth Gardens development were motivated by our intention to write an accessible account of the residents' past and present organizing initiatives for an audience of community activists and reformers (Feldman & Stall, 1989).