HUMANITIES — HISTORY

Monsignor John J. Egan and Catholic

Action against Segregation in Chicago
Kamaria Porter

“You have to fight injustice wherever you find it!”

Y ou had no business there because you are a priest. This is not your role, the role of the priest,
to question the university. You are just plain wrong,”1 Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand censured
young Father John (Jack) Egan. Among a group of Catholic Action-trained colleagues, lay and
clergy, Egan received this harsh reprimand from his mentor for taking a public stand September
23, 1958 against the City Council and the University of Chicago in its plan to remove poor
blacks from the Hyde-Park Kenwood neighborhood. That year the City of Chicago received one
of the first federal grants for “urban renewal.” The city allotted fifty million dollars ostensibly to
revitalize the Hyde Park-Kenwood area and clear land for the university community. Under these
motives was a hidden campaign to remove blacks from the southeast neighborhood. As more
blacks moved to Chicago from the rural south in the late 1950s and early 1960s looking for jobs,
housing, and fleeing Jim Crow, they found segregation in cities like Chicago and vicious
reactions from whites out to maintain separation. From the top, city officials enabled racial
divisions through programs for “urban renewal” that would clear affordable housing for the poor
and replace it with expensive units. From the bottom, residents, real estate dealers, speculators,
and terrorists took local action to keep blacks out of neighborhoods or fled to suburbs. In taking a
position against urban renewal, Monsignor Jack Egan put himself and the Church in the midst of
Chicago’s most divisive issue through the fifties and sixties.
The Catholic Church, dominant in Chicago’s power structure and neighborhoods, played
a vital role in fighting segregation and white flight in the 1950s and 1960s. Out of parish interests
and ideals of justice, forward-thinking priests like Msgr. Jack Egan took action on the city and
parish levels in order to combat segregation. The urban renewal experience of 1958 taught Msgr.
Egan not only that the Catholic Church should stand against the segregationist agenda of the city,
but also that clergy had to support the people as teachers and counselors to affect peaceful and
lasting integration. These people, so far fearful of combining with blacks, had to be organized
through their most trusted institutions: their parishes. By examining Chicago’s growth—with
respect to race—in terms of Msgr. Jack Egan’s experience, we observe how the Catholic Church
in Chicago faced the racial problem both on the parish and archdiocesan levels, how vibrant
community organizations funded by the Catholic Church stopped racial violence, and how one
priest taught a city and the Church how to respect the dignity of all Chicagoans, especially the
marginalized African American and poor communities.
Chicago and its churches developed through the twentieth century following strict ideas
of ethnic boundaries. Chicago neighborhoods resembled tribes, as immigrants tended to settle in
similar areas and to create institutions reminiscent of their homelands, especially their parishes.
Historian John T. McGreevy writes in Parish Boundaries, “Fifty-five percent of Catholics in
Chicago worshiped at national parishes in 1936 … over 80 percent of the clergy received
assignments in parishes matching their own national background.”2 Tribalism of neighborhoods
and parishes made the experience of African Americans in Chicago over the twentieth century
strained and violent. Researchers Douglas Massey and Zoltan Hajnal trace segregation over the
twentieth century finding that blacks moved from the rural south, thereby integrating the
northern cities; segregation took hold within the city in racially isolated neighborhoods. They
write, “the regional integration of African Americans was accompanied by the creation of urban
ghettos that yielded higher segregation at the neighborhood level.”3 In Chicago between 1900
and 1930 the isolation index, which measures the number of single-race communities, went from
.1 in 1900 to .7 in 1930.4 Further, it rose to .84 in 1960 and .86 in 1970.5 These numbers reflect
white flight and “keep ’em out” tactics in Chicago. Community organizer Edward T. Chambers
describes the times of the late 1950s and early 1960s: “Block by block street by street, a black
would move in and literally the next day, six for sale signs would be up.”6 With fearful whites
fleeing the city, restrictions, and reactionary terror groups intimidating black migrants, Chicago
became the most segregated city of its size in the late 1950s. Government action escalated
separation through urban renewal projects in the 1950s and 1960s that were in many ways
designed to retake black neighborhoods by exploiting general public distaste for public housing.
Programs professed the goal of clearing “slums” that housed many blacks, Latin American
immigrants, and poor people of all kinds, while their intention was to change the area so that
none of these displaced people could re-enter. Only middle- and upper-income buyers could
purchase the new housing.
The Catholic Church mirrored the typical city responses to black migration: flight or
fight. McGreevy comments that as blacks moved in, “their encounters with the ‘white’ world
were filtered through a distinctly Catholic focus on parish and place.”7 As neighborhoods
changed over, creating black ghettos and isolated spaces, parishes went from all white and full to
all black and dwindling in size. Catholic clergy spoke against politicians, advocating the interests
of the Church and the people. McGreevy credits the training of liberal- and justice-minded
priests to the Catholic Action movement—an outgrowth of European Catholic groups drawing
inspiration from Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno and a fervent focus on the laity. Priests
were inspired in the 1930s by a “renewed interest in the Pauline notion of the Mystical Body of
Christ … All Catholics, therefore, were united through both this Mystical Body and Christ’s
literal body and blood as present in the Eucharist.”8 These ideals turned some Catholic heads to
building the community of God based on human dignity, no matter their race or status.
The Catholic response to racism grows from the principle of the Mystical Body.
McGreevy explains, “For those interested in race relations, the cumulative meaning of those
philosophical and theological developments was obvious. Racist ideologies destroyed hopes for a
genuinely corporate community, one united through faith.”9 Therefore, Catholic Church leaders,
infused with the idea of Mystical Body, responded to racial transformation on the parish and city
levels, speaking up against tactics that promoted segregation and facilitating ways to peacefully
integrate neighborhoods. For advocating justice, Church leaders met with hostility from the laity,
Catholic politicians, and power brokers. The tension between the Church and the city of Chicago
underlies the story of Msgr. John J. Egan and his battle with the University of Chicago over
urban renewal. Yet, Egan emerged from that incident reflecting that the work of many Church
leaders, even his own, may have been shortsighted in relation to the Mystical Body principle.
The lessons he took from the urban renewal clash and exposure to democratic people’s
organizations associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) led Egan to see that the war
against racial segregation needed more than a Roman collar at the City Council or a peaceful
march. He realized that as a priest he had also to incite action by the laity themselves to integrate
communities and support those efforts as a teacher and counselor. This reaction characterizes
Egan’s approach to social issues and parish ministry after his City Council battle. Egan’s model
of both taking assertive action and supporting community organization shows a truer reflection
of a priest’s role in fostering the Mystical Body of Christ; Catholics, most importantly the lay
people, had to fight racism to make the city and its parishes closer to the Kingdom of God.
John Joseph Egan was born on October 9, 1916 in New York City, but grew up in the
highly diverse Chicago neighborhood of Ravenswood. Through his paper route and Our Lady of
Lourdes parish interactions, Jack Egan developed an appreciation and respect for different
peoples. Post-Great War Ravenswood included people of Japanese, Swedish, German, Polish,
Italian, and Irish heritages. As a “North Side Irish” Egan escaped the tribalism of the west and
south side neighborhoods where the Irish stuck together in packs. Egan biographer Margery
Frisbie writes that Egan “credits the mix for his ability to empathize with a wide variety of
human beings. He got into the homes of the people on his route … Jack learned the world is
made up of people other than Irish.”10 Jack Egan received a distinct education on Chicago’s
streets, not only in the diversity of peoples, but also in injustice, particularly racial injustice. A
twelve-year-old Egan, while riding a streetcar, witnessed the conductor throw a black man from
the train over a transfer dispute. Seeing that man’s dignity ripped away agitated Egan and
established the attentiveness to racial issues he maintained throughout his life.11 Egan went to
DePaul Academy and later DePaul University. In 1935, he decided the priesthood was his calling
and entered the seminary tract against his father’s wishes.
After ordination in 1943, Fr. Jack Egan rose through the ranks of the Chicago
Archdiocese Chancery office. He headed Pre-Cana and Cana programs starting in 1947, moved
on to the Cardinal’s Conservation Council in 1957, and founded the Office of Urban Affairs in
1958. Through his approach to ministry that stressed the importance of lay people and Catholic
Action, Egan built a reputation associated with social issues. When in parish life, he was mostly
on the South Side—ground zero for racial neighborhood change in Chicago. Egan’s relationships
in the archdiocese leadership structure and on the city’s south side made him the “go-to” priest in
many of these struggles.
From two mentors, Fr. Jack Egan learned the role of the priest in the community: Msgr.
Reynold Hillenbrand and Saul D. Alinsky. The former trained Egan in the seminary, and the
latter did so on the streets of Chicago. During many of the seminal moments of Catholic social
justice action in the 1930s and 1940s, Msgr. Hillenbrand observed and took in a new teaching.
When, in 1931, Pope Pius XI released Quadragesimo Anno, the “handbook for socially active
priests,” he was in Rome updating his education in his area of interest: workers’ rights. Pope
Pius XI declared, “If the members of the body social are, as was said, reconstituted, and if the
directing principle of economic-social life is restored, it will be possible to say in a certain sense
even of this body what the Apostle says of the mystical body of Christ: ‘The whole body …
derives its increase to the building up of itself in love.’”12 Creating this holy body was the task of
Catholics.
Hillenbrand also met Catholics putting this teaching into practice through the Young
Christian Workers groups—communities of Catholics who worked in the world for wages, but
also with each other to bring the teachings of Christ to society’s institutions. Their model—from
Belgian founder Canon Joseph Cardijin—was to observe social conditions, judge them alongside
scriptural teachings, and act for change. Hillenbrand founded more Catholic Action groups in the
U.S. upon his return and trained priests in the “Observe-Judge-Act” style in seminaries, such as
Mundelein which Jack Egan attended. Catholic Action aimed to create cells of Catholics in
different areas of society—labor, health, business, and the like—to come together for reflection
and action. Rev. Charles Dahm, O.P. adds that Catholic Action was a group of “Catholics
entering the world … Every group was to have its own cell … of people who would reflect on
their world and then make a change in that world.”13 The hierarchical model of Pope, bishop,
pastor, and church member was backwards if the Church wanted to do actual work in the world
that could mean something to people. Instead of leading, priests had to find lay people to take up
their own causes for justice. Pope Pius XI wrote to clerics, “It is chiefly your duty … to search
diligently for these lay apostles … to select them with prudence, and to train and instruct them
properly.”14 According to Egan, priests have to “find the people where they are in their life to
help them understand the dignity of their human life and the importance of their humanity …
[T]he role of the priest is to listen.”15 These teachings molded Egan into a different kind of priest,
one who wanted to have power with the laity, not over them, to work for the Kingdom of God.
Fr. Jack Egan met Saul Alinsky in 1954, seeking advice on how to put the principles of
Hillenbrand into practice. Alinsky grew up in a Jewish ghetto of Chicago’s west side, studied
criminology and sociology at the University of Chicago, and spent time observing and
interviewing troubled young people in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. He was instructed to
survey the west side neighborhood to “search out the local leaders, and, with them, to organize a
community program to combat juvenile delinquency.”16 Alinsky became fed up with seeing
people living in the undignified conditions that contributed to and fed social problems. An
admirer of John L. Lewis and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Alinsky came to see
community organization for power, not another “program,” as the ticket to transform conditions
in the Back of the Yards. He worked with leaders from community groups, fraternal
organizations, churches, and unions to form the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council
(BYNC) in 1939. Most impressively, Alinsky built relationships between the Catholic Church
and the labor movement. Alinsky went on to start the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940 to
fund community organizing nationwide. He recognized that democracy is the “best means of
achieving the values proposed by the Judeo-Christian and the democratic political traditions—
equality, justice, freedom, peace, and the preciousness of human life with its basic rights” and
wrote down these reflections in the books Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals.17
Egan and Alinsky began a mentoring and public relationship that gave Alinsky the vital
access to Catholic power in the Chancery office and Egan the training he wanted for community
organization. Organizing apprentice of Alinksy and Industrial Areas Foundation Executive
Director, Edward T. Chambers, comments that Egan’s relationship with Alinsky was “the
strongest political relationship that Jack had. He introduced Saul to the Chancery office.”18
Alinsky biographer, Sanford Horwitt, describes Alinsky and Egan’s partnership: “Alinsky
stumbled upon a young man who had the potential to become what Alinsky had found to be so
elusive: a crack organizer with whom he could work as a brother, or perhaps as a father, sharing
and rejoicing in the adventure, the jousting, the fun, the power, and the nobility of fighting for a
just cause.”19 Hillenbrand taught Egan about the primacy of the laity, but to do the kind of work
he wanted—to go beyond people’s everyday needs to changing conditions that created those
needs—he needed to organize. Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, friend and colleague of Egan, added
that Alinsky taught young Egan a great deal about social justice and that Jewish Alinsky “didn’t
have a better Catholic friend than Jack Egan. They were very close. And Jack admired him a
great deal.”20 Chambers reflects further: “Saul taught young Jack Egan about politics, about
power. That’s where he got his education.”21
Yet Jack Egan had something neither mentor could have taught—a genuine care for
people. Fr. Egan’s first concern was what he could do for the person in front of him. Alinsky,
who loved the excitement of public action and conflict missed the cura personalis that was
natural to young Egan. Edward Chambers was working as an organizer in Lackawanna, NY
when he first met Egan. Alinsky came to town with Egan and Msgr. John O’Grady, the creator of
Catholic Charities, for a large convention of the organization. After the meeting, Egan introduced
himself to Chambers saying, “Good job kid, you did a great job.”22 While Alinsky and O’Grady
were at the hotel having cocktails, Egan, Chambers recalled, “was at the right place, observing
the work of the citizens’ organization of Lackawanna that I was building. Jack was more of a
people’s person than Alinsky was. It was the first time anyone told me that I was OK and I was
doing a good job. It built my security in public life.”23 Egan’s care for people extended to their
social condition. One of his mottoes was “You have to fight injustice wherever you find it for as
long as you find it.”24 As a counselor for Young Christian Students, he worked with young
people concerned with their Puerto Rican immigrant neighbors who had no access to heat, food,
or education. Egan gained a reputation early on as a social justice-minded priest. Rev. Dahm, a
pastor in Chicago, remembered that Egan “was very focused on getting the Church involved in
making changes in the world. He had a very incarnational theology. Meaning that we are to bring
about the Kingdom of God here on earth and that we do this by working for the values for the
kingdom such as peace and justice and reconciliation. He also had a very strong compassion for
the underdog.”25 His care for the person and her or his social situation prepared him for taking a
public life role that was meaningful to combating racial injustice on the city and neighborhood
levels.
Egan’s debut experience in political life came in 1956 when he testified at the
Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council for new housing regulations. Egan had an idea of
what living in Chicago was like for the poor, but he knew he needed to make a thorough social
analysis before representing himself and his church in a presentation. Through relationships with
police, firemen, and realtors, Fr. Jack Egan continued his street education. Egan followed public
servants through sub-standard housing units, shadowed cops on drug and prostitution raids, and
walked through apartments that were firetraps for residents. After testifying, the code proposals
were passed but to no avail for the people of Chicago. Housing for the poor of Chicago remained
dilapidated for residents had no power to hold officials accountable to regulations.
When Chicago received a fifty-million dollar urban renewal grant in 1958, Egan, by then
monsignor and director for the Archdiocese Conservation Council, observed how the federal
grant for the entire city was being disproportionately spent to rehab the University of Chicago-
Hyde Park Kenwood area. The chief interest considered in this plan was the University of
Chicago and its elite students and faculty. The University was out to create a “‘compatible
neighborhood’ in which it could thrive”26 by clearing slums and low-income housing. The New
York Times reported the renewal project to be the largest of its kind “involving about 900 acres
and costing more than 135,000,000 in city, Federal, university, and private funds over a five year
period.”27 Planner Julian Levi, who compared the University’s need to rebuild to those of
Harvard and MIT, deemed the blight surrounding the school a “national concern.”
Msgr. Jack Egan responded in a series of articles pointing to the inequalities in the Hyde
Park-Kenwood plan. First, the University was using selfishly the fifty-million-dollar grant that
could improve the entire city. Egan warned planners, “if the process of urban renewal is not
extended to other areas, then Hyde Park will be nothing but a gaudy showcase amidst a decaying
city.”28 The plan marked twenty percent of Hyde Park’s buildings for demolition. In the
archdiocese newspaper, The New World, dated May 16, 1958, Egan addressed the plan’s intent to
tear down units and exacerbate the housing shortage and racial isolation in an article entitled,
“More Housing … Less Segregation.” In the piece, Egan wrote, “The major moral problem of
our generation, the segregation of the Negro population into nightmarish shanty towns, will also
continue to disgrace us unless we house all our population in a manner consistent with their
dignity as human beings.”29 Further, he uncovered the root of the racial problem in Chicago
causing segregation: “There is no open housing market for Negroes … If a white person has the
money to buy a house, he can buy it. If a non-white wants to buy a house and he has the money,
he can buy it, provided it has been determined by certain real estate men, mortgage financiers,
and other groups that such and such a neighborhood is or is not going to be ‘colored.’”30 The
liberty to live in dignity and peace was not available to blacks in Chicago due to the intentional
actions of housing professionals and neighborhood leaders.
Egan felt urban renewal, with the right motivations, could be an opportunity to actually
improve the city. He wrote that a more nuanced approach should be adopted, arguing that
renewal should be about “doing everything that has to be done so people may lead the happy and
healthy lives they are entitled to” by clearing slums, building schools, churches and libraries, and
opening neighborhoods to all people to buy homes.31 The Hyde Park plan only focused on
removing blight, not rebuilding the necessary houses and apartments. Egan saw the remedy as a
two-part process: “the houses we need must be built, and our urban renewal program must keep
pace with our housing supply.”32 In urging public and private entities to take responsibility, Egan
declared, “The present situation must not be allowed to continue. Are we to endure the cycle of
deadly slum fires in the winter and murderous racial disturbances in the summer?”33 Without
more housing, indeed racial problems would increase. Appealing to the ideas of American
democracy and Christian community, Egan ended, “We believe that a country as rich and great
as the United States of America can and must house all her people … [W]ith faith in our
cherished democratic way of life and in our Christian belief, we say that our bountiful country
can and must house all her people.”34 Egan spoke out against the plan representing the position of
the Catholic Church trying to build and maintain the body of Christ in Chicago.
A month later Msgr. Jack Egan restated many of the Church’s concerns over the Hyde
Park-Kenwood plan and reasonable suggestions for adjustment in the Chicago Sun-Times. Egan
proposed four corrections to the plan from the Archdiocese to make it more fair and just for
Chicago:
(1) Land should be cleared only when new use is assured in a reasonable length of time.
(2) Specific means by which small income and moderate income families could be
assured of having some new housing built to meet their pocketbooks. (3) Homeowners
and landlords be given the security of clear “rehabilitation” requirements which, if met,
would protect them from the fear of future clearance. (4) A close review by the
 community conservation board of the 297 sound buildings to be removed, to be sure there
are overriding reasons for clearance.35
Furthermore, the suggestions came out of a concern that the 36,000 families estimated to be
displaced by the urban renewal plan should have sufficient time to find new housing and that
new and affordable housing would be built concurrently. Egan pointed out that many of the units
to be built in the area would cost Chicagoans forty-five to fifty-five dollars per room after
clearance—a cost low-income residents of Hyde Park could not afford. The removal of housing
would fuel the already pressing housing shortage. Egan entreated, “are 200 units of public
housing too much to ask in a community of 24,000 families? They need not be in a monster
project. This low cost shelter should be and can be dispersed throughout the community. Its
design should fit into Hyde Park’s architectural landscape.”36 Egan’s counterproposal for a
mixed-income neighborhood in Hyde Park would show “urban renewal is for all the people.”37
He dispelled the myths that a good neighborhood could not accommodate affordable housing and
that low cost shelter had to look cheap. Unlike the University of Chicago, the Archdiocese stood
for the interests of the entire city. With the adjustments, Egan stated urban renewal could “be a
program that shall benefit all the citizens of Chicago.”38
Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Egan’s superior, told him unequivocally that the Archdiocese
would officially fight the Hyde Park plan. Stritch told Egan the plan was “designed only to
preserve one institution. There are other social considerations to consider, so oppose it.”39 Egan
delivered the statement to the City Council Committee on Housing and Planning September 23,
1958. Egan’s goal was threefold: to legitimize the voice of the Church to speak on the matter, to
propose amendments to broaden the benefit of the plan for low-income people, and to challenge
the University and City Council on its racist agenda of removing housing occupied by many
African Americans. In his statement, Egan offered a strong statement concerning the role of
priests in the public sphere:
People prefer a priest say nothing unless he speaks beneficent words. Priests would rather
say nothing if they cannot impart blessings. I would rather say nothing if I cannot say
anything kind. Sadly enough, a priest’s job entails other duties besides benedictions. A
priest is also a pastor and a teacher. Occasions may come when he is forced to say things
that will be regarded as unkind … [S]tern words and honest ones are frequently spoken in
love and charity too.40
Egan set out to contrast the Archdiocese of Chicago with the University to show how the Hyde
Park plan was shortsighted. He said, “The vested interest of the Archdiocese of Chicago is
human beings. Everything we do is pointless without them … I have been sent here to protect it
and for it.”41 The plan needed to include the interests of more than the University’s students and
faculty. People in Hyde Park-Kenwood needed adequate housing. Egan and the Archdiocese
thought urban renewal could have greater meaning for Chicago’s neighborhoods if only the city
shared the Church’s concern for the people’s needs.
Egan presented the amendments to his June editorial to the City Council in hopes that the
city would want to change the plan and serve its people. He said that even if low-income
residents could not afford the standards proposed by the Council, they “do want some standards,
healthy standards, safe standards. They must be assured time and assistance to obtain such
housing. Then the enrichment of Hyde Park may not have been purchased by the
impoverishment of who knows how many other people and neighborhoods.”42 Egan suggested
that the plan contributed to segregation, “the major moral problem”43 facing the city. Without the
provision of new housing in the plan, the Archdiocese could not endorse it.
The September statement garnered a variety of reactions in the Chicago press. The
African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender, supported Egan and his advocacy for
housing and integration in a September editorial. Editors praised Egan’s courage: “Though he
spoke as an official representative of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, he nevertheless
voiced the sentiment, emotional feeling, and the interest of the Southsiders, especially Negroes,
who stand to suffer most from the ruthless operation of the Hyde Park-Kenwood demolition
scheme.”44 The lack of plans “to make up for the housing deficit” citywide was a problem only
Egan addressed at the city council.45 To the Defender readers, Msgr. Egan had made the most
important points on behalf of the city, and the paper declared “the common people have a stout
defender in Father Egan. More power to him; and long may he live.”46 Unfortunately, little such
praise followed his statements.
Hyde Park residents and leaders came out in favor of urban renewal, denouncing Msgr.
Egan and the Archdiocese for opposing the plan. A Hyde Park local wrote to the neighborhood
paper calling Egan reminiscent of “a genuine old socialist party warhorse.”47 James Cunningham,
the Executive Director of the Hyde Park Community Conference, disagreed “emphatically” that
Egan and the Church represented Hyde Park residents and business owners. Egan’s statement not
only rejected urban renewal, but also according to Cunningham, “maligned all of the people of
our community who support the plan.”48 Cunningham also jabbed at Egan’s impassioned plea for
the people of the city: “Cunningham refuted the premise that the Archdiocese speaks for human
beings, while the rest of us only for planning politics and property.”49
The Catholic Church had power in the city, but judging from the Egan City Council
incident, not united power. Egan’s act caused controversy within the city’s Catholic community.
Jerome Kervin, a Catholic and University of Chicago political science professor, told the
Chicago Daily News, “the charge that the Hyde Park program is careless of the needs of the poor
and depressed is wholly unjustified … [W]e [the University of Chicago] have always cared for
them and always will. The charge that we will flood the city with them indicated we have more
than our share.”50 Besides speaking against Egan in the papers, Kerwin called friends in the
Church to complain about Egan. Word reached Egan’s mentor Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand, with
whom Kerwin and his peers met weekly. In response Msgr. Hillenbrand called Fr. Bill Quinn
and asked him to get a group together, “to kick the hell out of Jack Egan.”51 At a meeting called
the “Egan Heresy Trial,” his Sunday discussion group, a collection of priests and lay people, met
after Egan’s testimony not to talk, as they usually did, about their common beliefs in the
principles of Catholic Action and lay power, but to chastise Msgr. Jack Egan.
Hillenbrand publicly lectured Egan on his role as a priest and speaking on matters with
which he had no experience: “You are just plain wrong, you who had the privilege of the best
possible training on the role of laity … and not only that, what do you know about urban renewal
… [Y]ou should be in favor of that plan just because the University of Chicago is there.”52 The
criticism from his mentor in front of peers jarred Egan. He had done the social analysis in
preparation for his 1956 housing testimony and had a right to be at the hearing. In addition, he
was obeying direct orders from Cardinal Stritch, who died before Egan’s testimony. Egan’s stand
did not intentionally subvert the laity, in his mind. He reflected years later to his biographer, “I
do think there are occasions when the injustice is such that lives of a large number of people are
affected and there does not seem to be a strong enough voice on the part of the lay people and I
think its only then a priest can come in and use whatever influence he can.”53 Catholic response
to housing and racial injustice varied within the community, yet Jack Egan clearly stood on the
side of poor Hyde Parkers. Commenting on Egan’s uniqueness, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh recalls,
“Jack was always on the side of the weak and the oppressed. And there were plenty of Catholics
who were not on that side, who were interested in other things.”54 Kerwin, Hillenbrand, and other
Catholics who failed to stand behind Egan’s leadership were more interested in removing
blighted areas without dealing with the root causes of slums: the housing shortage and
segregation.
Egan took center stage in the Hyde Park battle, which isolated him within the Church.
Frisbie comments that Jack Egan had “stepped outside the clerical culture. He’d left a safe,
familiar, and edifying place for a forum that was fairly much untried, unedifying, and unsafe—
for a priest.”55 Egan wrote friend Msgr. George Higgins after the “Heresy Trial”: “There have
been lonely moments and also a few disappointments, but the dust is beginning to clear and I
think that I am beginning to see things quite a bit more clearly now.”56 From the experience,
Egan gained a “far deeper understanding of what it means to the Church to engage itself in some
of the problems of the temporal order.”57 Despite criticisms, he maintained that he took “the
reasonable stand on principle and that the questions which we have raised are extremely
important for the future of urban renewal, not only here in Chicago, but throughout the
country.”58 It was important for the Church to speak on the matter; its “vested interest” in human
beings gave the Archdiocese and Egan a perspective on urban renewal no other entity could
convey—the housing deficit and racial segregation hurt the human community and were barriers
to people living in dignity.
Msgr. Jack Egan emerged from the Hyde Park-Kenwood fight with the knowledge and
experience that propelled him to recognize that, on issues of justice, the Catholic Church could
not act alone if it wanted to make an impact. Egan had hoped his eleventh hour stand against the
Hyde Park plan would incite the laity to act; however, there were no groups of lay people
organized around justice or race issues to follow him. Only moneyed and business interests
behind the University of Chicago could be mobilized in the fight. Largely due to the influence of
Alinsky, Egan came to see that the racial and economic injustice battles needed more than a
Roman collar at the city council; strong community organizations could challenge the city with
more success.59 Msgr. Egan also realized that the Catholic Church could not be the sole religious
voice behind these organizations; other religious and denominational groups had to be included.
He vigorously advocated for community organization and Catholic Church collaboration after
the 1958 urban renewal incident.
In his November 1958 report to Albert Cardinal Meyer, Egan reflected that the city and,
more importantly, the Church had to change their tactics in response to increasing black
migration and white flight. The “rigid community life” and “ancient ways” of the parishes and
the neighborhoods would not work in combating racism.60 Additionally, the behavior of the
Church in the urban renewal fight needed to be examined. Instead of acting alone, expecting the
city to soften, Egan wrote, “isolation from other groups and forces, neutralism toward secular
problems that immediately affect the church’s work, and intuitive judgments based on personal
points of view instead of adequate and systematic collaboration of accurate information are
procedures that will not serve us as they once did.”61 Egan pointed out as more people from the
Protestant south came to Chicago, both black and white, the concentration of Catholic power
dissipated. Therefore, Egan saw the prospect of working with non-Catholic groups on issues that
affect the churches and the city as “no longer academic.”62
 Segregation drained Chicago’s Catholic Church spiritually and financially, according to
Egan. Without a “substantial reduction” in the segregationist problems of the city, ghettos would
continue to grow while white Catholics fled for the suburbs, depleting the parish of needed
funds. Egan and Church leaders would welcome black parishioners, yet racism kept them from
well-paying jobs to contribute financially to their communities. Spiritually, loss of parish
members and the Catholic participation in racist practices marred the Mystical Body of Christ.
Egan wrote, “a change will not come easily. Sad as it is for us to report the fact, the truth is that
many of our own people are energetic in their support of racial segregation. Chicago’s worst race
disturbances have taken place in the city’s Catholic neighborhoods.”63 Catholics were not only
suffering from the problem, but central to creating it. Egan recommended organizations in both
black and white neighborhoods to break down the “intolerable situation” over the years.
On further reflection, Egan developed a theology of organizing that fit people’s need to
be recognized as human beings and to work for the Kingdom of God. In speeches to Catholic,
Protestant, and Jewish clergy and lay people, Egan agitated and excited people over the prospect
of invigorating religious life and collaborating for social justice. Egan challenged his peers to
rethink their conceptions of the Church community. The Church was “intimately” connected to
the struggles of its members.64 Therefore, communities of faith had to be involved in efforts for
justice and actively building people around moral teachings. For Jack Egan, communities were
not flippant classifications; a community was a “moral entity” for formation and action.65
Community organizations of religious groups flowed not only from the democratic foundational
texts but also from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Egan highlighted, “There is deep within the
Judeo-Christian tradition a recognition of the public character of our faith. Classic Judaism was,
above all, a community response … the obligations which it imposed were more communal than
personal.”66 Furthermore, in Catholic theology, the idea of the Mystical Body made it a Christian
mandate “to work simultaneously on one’s own personal sanctification and upon reordering the
whole social fabric of society.”67 To be true to the Mystical Body, believers had to be active in
restoring all things to Christ’s teachings.
Even though lay people had to be the leaders, clergy had to serve them as counselors,
teachers, and spiritual guides. Clergy had to challenge and guide lay people, recognize their call
to action, conveying to followers “the obligation they have as members of both the city of God
and the city of man to bring the two into alignment.”68 Lessons from Msgr. Hillenbrand, Saul
Alinsky, and his unsuccessful venture against the University of Chicago, had settled Egan on the
importance of training and leading the laity to take their own power in the public realm. Priests
had to be the catalysts for social action and prophets in their congregations and cities. Egan
explained, “as prophets, we clergymen must build for our laymen a vision of the future, based on
God and a God-oriented true community: a vision which will inspire them to turn their zeal
toward building the new city.”69 Clergy and lay members of the Mystical Body had a
responsibility to take action together, and yet the thrust and energy had to come from the lay
people acting for themselves.
Egan wanted to inspire religious leaders of both Christian and Jewish congregations to
join in this joyful work. In an address to a Christian and Jewish clergy delegation Egan called
leaders of both faith traditions to turn their vocations to action on common concerns of justice.
He stated, “It is not sufficient to lament the fact that in these circumstances human and religious
values are too frequently ignored or dismissed. We must rather strive to recognize and
comprehend critical modern problems, and seek out, choose, and dedicate ourselves to effective
solutions, solutions which make the voice of religion heard without contravening or
compromising the democratic principles that make America.”70 Clergy were “custodians” of the
cities and human community. They are called to speak on social issues out of a vocation that
holds people’s dignity as a central focus. The people of Chicago live in realities plagued by
social evils of disgraceful housing, segregation, and poverty. Egan challenged his peers saying,
“We cannot call ourselves men of cloth and be indifferent or helplessly wring our hands without
attempting to come to grips with them. These evils weigh so heavily on the lives of the people
we must serve, that our people cannot hope for a rich spiritual development, if we are
indifferent.”71 In order to be good spiritual leaders, clergy had to address the situation of their
flock—Christian or Jewish. Finally, clergy had to counsel the laity by evaluating their experience
with them and suggesting the “moral and spiritual implications” for deeper reflection.72
Egan’s next fight regarding segregation emerged from a project, funded by the
Archdiocese, starting in 1957, in which he and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation
studied racial population shifts in Chicago. Under Cardinal Stritch, the Church commissioned
Alinsky’s organization with a three-year grant of $118,800 to study how and why Chicago
neighborhoods, and, incidentally, parishes were transforming. Egan had been working with Saul
Alinsky, Nick von Hoffman and Lester Hunt through the Conservation Council on the report.
Egan, von Hoffman, and Hunt did the majority of the research and focused their attention on
Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. The borders of the African-American ghettos were
expanding and eventually taking over white areas. The IAF report concluded that, due to
migration and suburban growth, Protestant populations were replacing Catholic communities of
the South Side. McGreevy illuminates the matter: “Typically, the sudden rush to sell homes
occurred after a racial incident or when an invisible ‘tipping point’ was reached in the area’s
population.”73 Realtors exploited racial fears by encouraging people to sell for prices under their
property value.
Neighborhood transition from Catholic to non-Catholic was not the only result of
migration that concerned Egan and the IAF organizers. Whites, unwilling to move, reacted
violently to African-American newcomers. IAF organizer Edward Chambers recalls that as
blacks began to purchase better homes in the southwest community, white Christians, Catholic
and Protestant, hatched terror plots to bomb porches of newly purchased black homes. The lay
Christians “were in cahoots with the police and the fire dept, they knew what they were doing.”74
After setting a fire, intimidators would “Call the fire department to report the fires …
[Firefighters] would go in and chop up the house looking for a fire, but of course there was no
fire.”75 Whites bombed black homes in hopes of chasing people away. Chambers adds, “It was a
total embarrassment to the Christians. [The southwest side] was a very Christian, Irish Catholic
neighborhood.”76 Violence and empty pews worried Egan and the organizers. The problem could
not be solved in City Hall. Egan envisioned three organizations to facilitate integration: one in a
changing neighborhood, one in an all black area, and one in a white ethnic community.77
The Civil Rights Commission hearings, in which Egan and Alinsky testified, brought to
the fore the racial question facing Chicago. Egan addressed the Civil Rights Commission on
May 6, 1959 to deliver Cardinal Meyer’s position on race relations. He explained how white
fears of blacks taking over neighborhoods came true as a result of the lack of sufficient action to
prepare and ease integration. Whites, not blacks, made their own forebodings come to pass. Egan
argued, “Had there been cooperation between individuals, between churches, between business
institutions; had there been planning, had there been constructive programming of different kinds
… a free market would have permitted the entrance into white middle class communities of a
proportion of Negro families who could only be considered an asset in any neighborhood.”78
Responsible parties concerned with segregation had to lead people, especially whites, to accept
blacks as their neighbors.
For true integration and racial harmony, Egan proposed the creation of more housing and
community organization to the Civil Rights Commission. He stated community organization
would “ensure that Negroes do gain access to our communities” not by increasing the size of
ghettos, but by calming people’s fears and welcoming black families.79 However, collaboration
and organization even among churches was rare. Egan warned, “The older practices of unilateral
action are not suited for this complex era. No single person, interest, church or group can be the
sole custodian of our communities.”80 Groups had to learn to pool interests and talents to “meet
the future together.”
Alinsky proposed to the commission that neighborhoods should admit a fixed number of
black families or a quota while organizing the people to stave off racial violence and ease
integration. He explained the goal was to convince whites that a few black families would not
lead to the neighborhood going all black. The Chicago Daily News reported on Alinsky’s idea,
“the Quota proposal further attempts to secure a non-threatened, non-hostile situation where
negroes and white families would have the opportunity of getting to know each other as human
beings rather than as faceless racial symbols … [I]ntegration would become more than a word.”81
Stories of the Church’s position and Alinsky ran together, making the race question, “the Great
Question,” proclaimed by the Chicago Daily News.
Egan and Alinsky resolved that in order for integration to occur, an organized community
that could pacify white fears and protect against violence had to embrace it. Egan and Alinsky
looked to the Back of the Yards community to test the endeavor. The Back of the Yards
Neighborhood Council made significant strides in improving housing and city services in the
area. The thrust behind the effort came from Catholic clergy and lay people. McGreevy writes,
“local Catholic clergy had assumed a variety of leadership roles within the organization …
‘[OSC was] acting on the Catholic belief that all human beings alike reflect the face of God’
wrote one avid [BYNC] supporter.”82 McGreevy also cites an article that called the effort of the
Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council “a heartening demonstration of Catholic social
action.”83 Alinsky and Egan hoped that Back of the Yards, both Catholic and organized, could be
a test case for organized integration. They visited Alinsky’s compatriot in building the Back of
the Yards Neighborhood Council, Joe Meegan, along with his wife and pastor. Alinsky thought
that, since the neighborhood was already organized and people trusted Meegan’s judgment and
leadership, if Meegan encouraged selling homes to black families of similar social standing the
integration process would go smoothly. Joe Meegan and the BYNC could control the number of
families coming in. Egan recalled the scene for an Alinsky biographer saying:
I remember Saul saying that the black families would be on the same economic and
cultural level as the people in the Back of the Yards, so that they would really become
friends … I backed Saul up, I said “and what a wonderful thing this would be for the city,
and how the Back of the Yards, which has had a racist reputation, would be looked upon
by the rest of the community’’ for its enlightened leadership.84
Unfortunately, the Meegans reacted angrily to the proposal, accusing Alinsky of asking too much
of them and pushing an unrealistic vision. The Meegans’ pastor did not reiterate Egan’s pastoral
comments. If organized integration were to happen in Chicago, the IAF and the Catholic Church
would have to build it elsewhere. Catholics in the southwest community showed more interest
than the Meegans.
 Egan knew that testifying before the commission was not enough to stop the violence and
integrate Chicago’s neighborhoods. Egan was approached by Msgr. John McMahon, the pastor
of St. Sabina, one of the large Catholic parishes on the southwest side. McMahon opposed white
“keep ’em out” tactics, but also did not want to see his parish transform, losing its strong Irish
Catholic base.85 McMahon was ready to take action and needed Jack Egan’s relationships with
the IAF and Chancery office to do it. Initially, Msgrs. Egan and McMahon convinced Cardinal
Stritch to support the idea of building some organization in the southwest side to combat racial
problems. After Stritch’s death, in the fall of 1958, McMahon and Egan won the support of
Cardinal Meyer for the proposal that included permission given previously by Stritch to use local
parish funds to build “a strong, responsible community organization.”86 Egan made the working
relationship between the IAF and the Catholic Church out of his, and others’, recognition of a
common mission. McGreevy expounds, “Alinsky’s ideas have maintained their popularity in
Catholic circles because of the congruence between the Catholic concern for neighborhood and
Alinsky’s vision of small-scale, non-partisan community organizations.”87 The Catholic idea of
Mystical Body reached fruition in the IAF organizing due to its focus on encouraging people to
act for themselves and bringing people together through strong institutions.
The southwest side was a heavily Catholic area; therefore, the organizing could not be
successful without the churches and the Archdiocese. Jack Egan was “instrumental” in forming
the Organization for the Southwest Community (OSC), according to Edward Chambers. As one
of the organizers for the OSC, Chambers remembers how Egan played both levels of the Church
to make things happen. Egan was “a priest-worker, priest organizer,” taking assignments to talk
to the Catholic pastors about the effort.88 Egan also formed the vital bridge from the IAF to the
Archdiocese. In the days leading up to the founding convention for the OSC in October 1959,
organizers realized that without an African-American congregation, the group would be
perceived as another racist “keep ’em out” group. Chambers found a Black Methodist
congregation near the boundary of the OSC’s organizing scope, but he needed one of the leaders
to make the motion to admit the congregation. Msgr. Patrick J. Molloy of St. Leo’s parish
pastored the largest congregation in the nation and was a known bigot. From the pulpit,
Chambers recalled, Molloy used racial slurs and was unwelcoming of blacks. Yet, organizers
targeted Molloy to make the motion. Molloy valued the work of the OSC because it would keep
his white parishioners from leaving St. Leo. Alinsky’s relationship with Msgr. Egan gave the
IAF a direct line to the Cardinal. At Chambers’ request, Alinsky convinced Meyer that a black
congregation had to be included to realize the vision of the organization. Meyer gave Molloy
marching orders, and in the meeting before the convention, he made the motion to admit the
congregation. The convention on October 24, 1959 was a success; the Organization for the
Southwest Community included Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations, along with
fraternal organizations, inter-racial groups, labor unions, and the prized black congregation. Egan
described the event as one of the great thrills of his life because “he felt great pride that his
friendship with Alinsky had helped to make it possible” by connecting and organizing the
Catholic Church.89
The Organization for the Southwest Community set out to renew their own community,
dealing with issues of sub-standard housing, segregation, and racial violence internally through
relationships and institutions. At their inaugural event, the one thousand delegates from 104
institutions resolved that “the cultural, economic, and religious life of the community should be
revitalized, and the physical community made a more attractive place in which to live and rear
families.”90 The OSC would promote the common good of all residents “without regard to race,
religion, or national origin.”91 While race was the central issue, the stated purpose of the group
was bettering the community for everyone—white and black. McGreevy states of Catholic
approaches to racial tensions, “The focus shifted from “integration” to “community.” While
careful to stress that Catholic parishes must welcome all newcomers, activists emphasized the
importance of local groups as a means of creating a more equitable society.”92 Everyone had a
vested interest in the southwest side. Thus, everyone could have a place in the OSC, even those
not directly connected to race issues.
While the OSC adopted a broad platform, much of their activities were related to race
issues. They embarked on a campaign of “permanent private renewal” of the southwest side. In
the area of real estate, the OSC drafted a Code of Ethics to combat blockbusting, the
underhanded acts of race-baiting real estate agents to promote segregation. The Code’s intent
was to denounce racism in all its forms. Citizens agreed not to engage in real estate practices that
created racial conflict or denied the rights of minority groups. Further, it banned property
speculating that incited white flight and race panic.
To stop neighborhood violence, the OSC took several different approaches. They targeted
hate groups, organized moderate whites with blacks against disruption, and forced police to act
in protection of black families. In the first couple of years, the OSC organizers and staff knew
which residents engaged in anti-black violence. Anti-black gangs used Molotov cocktails in
black families’ homes, fence burnings, and other violence. Troublemakers were a minority but
needed to be dealt with, for their actions intimidated both whites and blacks. The OSC took a
forceful position and organizers decided to work both internally and with law enforcement. To
build community against violence, the OSC targeted moderate whites. Organizers wrote Msgr.
Egan that they needed to bring together whites and blacks “to form a solid front of opposition to
all kinds of thuggery. In most cases even diehard segregationists find cooperation with Negro
groups is preferable to rupture of the public peace.”93 The OSC used people’s self-interest and
disgust for violence to organize for racial peace. The OSC also brought police to investigate
disturbances and worked with authorities to set up block watches, combating porch-and house-
bombings against black families. Edward Chambers looks back on the OSC as “historic in that
we did knock the violence out.”94 Further, the OSC brought people of faith together to combat
the pressures tearing communities apart.
The strength of the OSC greatly depended on the Catholic Church. OSC president Donald
O’Toole described the area as, “outstandingly Catholic. Its morals, its politics, the operation of
its business institutions, are all Catholic oriented. If the position of the Church is made positive
and aggressive by the clear-cut action of the pastors of all of our Catholic parishes, then we
would have no trouble.”95 Egan maintained the contact between the Archdiocese and the OSC by
visiting pastors, encouraging action by peers, and working with the Cardinal. In January of
1960, Albert Cardinal Meyer publicly endorsed the OSC. Previously, but from the background,
the Cardinal had supported the organizing and contributed church money for it. But, in 1960,
Meyer instructed the pastors to give total support to the OSC, encouraged their congregations to
be more involved in its activities, and chaired a meeting with all southwest-side congregation
leaders. Collaboration and communication between pastors was rare. The Southtown Economist
hailed the event as “the first time all Catholic pastors have had an opportunity to meet and
exchange ideas and opinions.”96 Meyer encouraged pastors to cooperate with the OSC’s
activities, emphasizing the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ statement that “gradualism must not become a
cloak for inaction.”97 Chambers recalls, “There was always a good relationship with the
Archdiocese about our work, the IAF’s work” and that relationship existed because of Msgr.
Egan.98
The Organization for the Southwest Community had some successes, but still fell short of
the goals held by Egan, McMahon, and Cardinal Meyer. On the positive side, the OSC was
successful in stopping the racial violence in the area. Egan wrote in 1965, “In the OSC, area
violence has been minimal. When it has occurred, the organization has taken the initiative to
bring together local community leadership to calm the community and to assist the Police
Department in searching out those responsible for the acts of violence.”99 The Organization was
able to create an active public community response to violence—people talked things out,
worked things out, and brought perpetrators to authorities. Flight to the suburbs was curbed by
the OSC, assuring neighborhood integrity and creating relationships around racial tensions for
peaceful responses. One woman explained to reporters, “The OSC has taught us how to head off
panic … [W]e talk things over.”100 The success of encouraging whites and blacks to know each
other as people can be judged by the news interviews of white residents in support of the OSC.
The Chicago Daily News quoted one OSC member saying, “‘Many Negroes improve their
property, you know,’ one housewife said, ‘they’re just as good neighbors as anyone else.’”101 On
housing, Egan also reported, “It can be documented today that Negro and white buyers or sellers
of property in the OSC community in fact, do get a fair market value for their property.” The
Code of Ethics and monitoring of real estate dealers successfully created a more equitable
housing situation for blacks in the area.
However, the OSC failed to reach its potential. The Archdiocese virulently supported the
OSC from beginning to end, but despite the official endorsement and strong encouragement of
the Cardinal to participate, many clergy and parishioners avoided the OSC. Many believers,
McGreevy explains, “instinctively equated integration with communist sympathies.”102 Egan
reflected that the OSC failed to attain “vocal support” from many Catholic pastors. McMahon
and Molloy were rarities as Catholic leaders in the OSC. The OSC also failed to inspire interest
and action from people not directly affected by racial change. In the overwhelmingly Catholic
area, the parishes did not create enthusiasm and a sense of community around the OSC and racial
justice. The successes of the OSC were vital for the survival of the community, until it collapsed.
Egan suggests that the OSC teaches us that “a good, healthy, integrated community is
possible.”103
During the tenuous years of neighborhood transformation in Chicago—the 1950s and
1960s—the Catholic Church took decisive action to protect its parishes and cultivate the
Mystical Body of the Church through advocating racial integration and justice. Msgr. Jack J.
Egan led this process by standing up against the University of Chicago and City Hall in the urban
renewal fight, speaking for the Church on matters of racial justice through the Archdiocese
Conservation Council, and connecting the Catholic Church and the Industrial Areas Foundation
to create community organizations on the South Side which mirrored the Catholic community
proclaimed in Quadragesimo Anno. Egan’s development from the Hyde Park urban renewal
battle to the OSC shows deeper reflections and growth in his own belief in lay action, the role of
priests, and a social justice imperative. He moved beyond what he could do alone, to what he
could influence through the people of the city.
During a time of excessive racial violence, Catholics took different approaches: making
speeches, leading marches, and joining non-violent protests. Msgr. Egan did all these things, but
contributed on another road less traveled by Catholic leaders. He stood behind the laity in a fight
to integrate the southwest community, making the necessary connections from the Cardinal’s
office and serving as a counselor to fellow priests whom he encouraged to support the work of
the Organization for the Southwest Community. Egan told his biographer Frisbie, “Whoever
speaks at my funeral will not say I was a priest’s priest. I was a lay person’s priest.”104 Indeed
Msgr. Egan was the people’s priest of his time, taking strong stances for racial justice, but more
importantly, working with the lay people to fix social ills themselves. Egan’s response to racism
in Chicago gives us a fuller and challenging model of a clerical reaction to this national problem
and shows how Church teachings affected Chicago history through a faithful and energetic city
priest.

Notes

1
Margery Frisbie, An Alley in Chicago: The Ministry of a City Priest (Kansas City: Sheed &
Ward, 1991), 106.
2
John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 13.
3
Douglas Massey and Zoltan Hajnal, “The Changing Geographic Structure of Black-White
Segregation in the United States,” Social Science Quarterly 76 (3), (1995): 8.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., 10.
6
Edward T. Chambers, interview by author, October 18, 2005.
7
McGreevy, 17.
8
McGreevy, 43.
9
Ibid., 44.
10
Frisbie, 5.
11
Ibid., 7.
12
Pope Pius XI, “Quadragesimo Anno, On Reconstruction of the Social Order,” 1931,
http://www.osjspm.org/cst/qa.htm.
13
Reverend Charles Dahm, interview by author, October 11, 2005.
14
Pope Pius XI.
15
“Msgr. John J. Egan Interviewed by Margery Frisbie,” 1989, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre
Dame Archives: AI855-874, audio cassette.
16
P. David Finks, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 15.
17
Charles Curran, Directions in Catholic Social Ethics, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1985), 161.
18
Edward T. Chambers.
19
Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 269.
20
Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., interview by author, October 24, 2005.
21
Edward T. Chambers.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
“Msgr. John J. Egan Interviewed by Margery Frisbie.”
25
Rev. Charles Dahm.
26
“Chicago U Spurs Renewal Project,” The New York Times, October 31, 1958, John J. Egan
Collection, Notre Dame Archives, CHEG 32.
27
Ibid.
28
“Catholic View on Hyde Park Plan,” Chicago Daily News, June 17, 1958.
29
Msgr. John J. Egan, “More Housing … Less Segregation,” The New World, May 16, 1958,
(secondary source material suggests article was also written by Nick Von Hoffman).
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
Msgr. John J. Egan, “Egan Says Correct the Plan’s Inequities,” Chicago Sun Times, June 15,
1958.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Horwitt, 372.
40
Msgr. John J. Egan, Chicago City Council on Housing and Planning, Hyde Park Kenwood
Urban Renewal Plan: Statement of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, Sept 23, 1958.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
“Father Egan and the Hyde Park Plan,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 1958.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
47
“Letters to the Editor,” Hyde Park Herald, October 1, 1958.
48
“Hit Archdiocese Stand,” Hyde Park Herald, October 1, 1958.
49
Ibid.
50
“Hyde Park Plan Backers and Church Square Off: Catholic Layman Challenges Stand Taken
by Archdiocese,” Chicago Daily News, September 24, 1958.
51
Frisbie, 106.
52
Ibid.
53
“Msgr. John J. Egan Interviewed by Margery Frisbie.”
54
Rev. Theodore Hesburgh.
55
Frisbie, 111.
56
John J. Egan, letter to George Higgins, 1958, box 32, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame
Archives, Notre Dame.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid.
59
Frisbie, 90.
60
Msgr. John J. Egan, “A Report to the Archbishop, General Picture of Chicago and the Present
Situation,” box 51/1, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
John J. Egan, “Congregations and the Community,” December 12, 1960, box 10 “John J. Egan
Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
John J. Egan, “The Relevance of the Church and Synagogue to the Renewal of Community,”
December 9, 1959 “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid.
73
McGreevy, 103.
74
Edward T. Chambers.
75
Ibid.
76
Ibid.
77
Frisbie 124.
78
Msgr. John J. Egan, The President’s Commission on Civil Rights, Statement of the Most Rev.
Albert Gregory Meyer, Archbishop of Chicago, May 6, 1959, “John J. Egan Collection”, Notre
Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
81
“Alinsky defends Race Quota proposal,” Chicago Daily News, May 29, 1959.
82
McGreevy, 111.
83
Ibid.
84
Horwitt, 319.
85
Frisbie, 124.
86
John J. Egan, “The Organization for the Southwest Community, An Evaluation-October 1965”
box OSC, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
87
McGreevy, 262.
88
Edward T. Chambers.
89
Horwitt, 357.
90
“Constitution of the Organization for the Southwest Community,” box OSC, “John J. Egan
Collection” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
91
Ibid.
92
McGreevy, 262.
93
Memo to Msgr. Egan from Edward Chambers and Nick von Hoffman, box OSC, “John J. Egan
Collection”, Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
94
Edward T. Chambers.
95
Donald O’Toole, letter to Msgr. John J. Egan, October 3, 1960. box OSC, “John J. Egan
Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
96
Harold Cross, “Cardinal Indorses Organization for Southwest Community,” Southtown
Economist, January 17, 1960.
97
Ibid.
98
Edward T. Chambers.
99
John J Egan, “The Organization for the Southwest Community, An Evaluation-October 1965”
box OSC, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
100
M. W. Newman, “What Happens When White Neighbors Refuse to Panic,” Chicago Daily
News, September 3, 1960. Box OSC, “John J. Egan Collection”, Notre Dame Archives, Notre
Dame.
101
Ibid.
102
McGreevy, 120.
103
John J Egan, “The Organization for the Southwest Community, An Evaluation-October 1965”
box OSC, “John J. Egan Collection,” Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame.
104
Frisbie, 62.