West Chesterfield History As Seen Through the Eyes of the Writers: A Proud Neighborhood with Strong Roots

By Percy Moss

The West Chesterfield neighborhood stood tall back in the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and it still stands tall in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and today, 2017! Please organize your neighborhood and stand with us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640964570

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West Chesterfield History As Seen Through the Eyes of the Writers: A Proud Neighborhood With Strong Roots

Percy Moss

Copyright © 2018 Percy Moss and Clotee M. Moss

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2018

ISBN 978-1-64096-456-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64096-457-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

West Chesterfield Defined as a Black Neighborhood

1931–1940–Public Transporation and Housing Expand to Our Section

1941-1950–Schools, Housing

1944–The West Chesterfield Neighborhood Oppose FHA Housing

1944- Ku Kluxers Join Fight on Chicago’s West Chesterfield Housing Project

1950- Neighborhood Organizations Came Alive, The Redline Came to 95Th, Boundaries Set, and Founders

To West Chesterfield neighbors, the Sixth and Ninth Wards, with love

Acknowledgments

This edition of West Chesterfield Neighborhood History as Seen through the Eyes of the Writers is dedicated to its neighborhood circa 1896. With their encouragement, opinions, views, and support, hopefully, this book will be housed in every home in the West Chesterfield neighborhood!

For those who expect history to be a public relations document, they may be disappointed in this information. Frankly, in this research on the West Chesterfield neighborhood, from its roots circa 1896 to the present, we found neither angels nor demons in the West Chesterfield neighborhood. We did find many conscientious people dedicated to an ideal—people who tried hard, sometimes failing, but more often succeeding. Many built homes! This was as true of blacks as it was of whites. Any opened-minded reader will make allowances for the social, political, and economic climate in which the characters of this story acted their parts.

We could have skipped all references that imply imperfection, but we chose to include some. Historians do a disservice to the public when they edit their findings to tell only the good about those whose reputations they prefer untarnished.

Examples are the histories of blacks in America. Historians attempting to further rapprochement between blacks in America and whites in America at the turn of the century, emphasized the bad about blacks and overlooked the good by blacks; subsequent generations have presumed congressional or radical progress a total failure. As a result of this rationale, white America delayed further experimentation in achieving racial equality.

In this first extensive research challenge of our neighborhood, we have tried to organize fragmented information from primary sources into a meaningful whole without too much concern for the neighborhood’s image.

This does not mean that we have always found the truth—an elusive quality at best. Many facts are not available to us, because of fire and some carelessness in preservation of official records, or our inability to find all extant material.

No history of this size and scope can be written without the help and support of many persons. We are indebted to Mrs. Clotee M. Moss, writer, and Mr.