The Dignity of Resistance Women Residents' Activism in Chicago Public Housing Environment and Behavior Series

The Dignity of Resistance chronicles the four decade history of Chicago's Wentworth Gardens public housing residents' grassroots activism. This comprehensive case study explores why and how these African-American women creatively and effectively engaged in organizing efforts to resist increasing government disinvestment in public housing and the threat of demolition. Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall, utilizing a multi-disciplinary lens, explore the complexity and resourcefulness of Wentworth women's grassroots, organizing the ways in which their identities as poor African-American women and mothers both circumscribe their lives and shape their resistance. Through the inspirational voices of the activists, Feldman and Stall challenge portrayals of public housing residents as passive, alienated victims of despair. We learn instead how women residents collectively have built a cohesive, vital community, cultivated outside technical assistance, organizational and institutional supports, and have attracted funding - all to support the local facilities, services and programs necessary for the everyday needs for survival, and ultimately to save their home from demolition.

Foreword Sheila Radford-Hill; Preface and acknowledgments; Part I. Introduction: 1. Struggle for homeplace; Part II. Wentworth Gardens' Historic Context: 2. US public housing policies: Wentworth Gardens' historic backdrop; 3. Memory of a better past, reality of the present: the impetus for resident activism; Part III. Everyday Resistance in the Expanded Private Sphere: 4. The community household: the foundation of everyday resistance; 5. The local advisory council (LAC): a site of women-centered organizing; 6. Women-centered leadership: a case study; 7. The appropriation of homeplace: organizing for the spatial resources to sustain everyday life; Part IV. Transgressive Resistance in the Public Sphere: 8. The White Sox Battle: protest and betrayal; 9. Linking legal action and economic development: tensions and strains; 10. Becoming resident managers: a bureaucratic quagmire; Part V. Conclusions: 11. Resistance in context; Epilogue; Appendices; References; Index.

Roberta M. Feldman is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture and the Co-Director of the City Design Center at the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois, Chicago.
Susan Stall is Chair of the Sociology Department and Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Northeastern Illinois University.