The World of the South Side

This article was written about Woodlawn, the neighborhood that Sunshine is located in...

Killings shed light on rift
Woodlawn, U. of C. have had ups, downs through the years
Dawn Turner Trice
December 3, 2007

If you want to know more about the tension that still exists between the Woodlawn community and its neighbor to the north, the venerable University of Chicago, you need only look at two murders that recently brought attention to the Woodlawn community.

Helen Latimore and Jeane Clark, two longtime Woodlawn residents, believe the killings speak volumes.

I'm referring to the shooting death of the University of Chicago doctoral student who was gunned down not far from his off-campus Woodlawn apartment in the 6100 block of South Ellis Avenue on the edge of the university; and the murder of a 21-year-old woman whose charred body was found in a dumpster in the 6100 block of South Prairie Avenue. You probably have heard the name, Amadou Cisse.

Memorialized on Friday, Cisse was the 28-year-old Sengalese student who had just successfully defended his doctoral thesis in chemistry. You may be less familiar with the name Theresa Bunn. She was a graduate of Englewood High School and was about to have a baby.

Clark believes that if Bunn had been a university student, her murder would have gotten far more attention.

"There are murders over here that you hardly hear about," said Clark, who lives not far from where Bunn's body was found. "It's not only about [Bunn]. What about the other lady [Hazel Lewis, 52] found burned to death on 50th and Cottage Grove?"

And that's kind of at the heart of the schism that, after decades, remains between the university and some community residents: The feeling that if you live outside the university's footprint, or if you aren't affiliated with the university, then you don't have the same worth as the students and faculty members right across the street.

After Cisse's death, the university responded in the way it often does when a student is victimized. Police presence was stepped up. Students were reminded to be aware of their surroundings and to make the most of shuttle services and the emergency phones around campus.

Latimore said her neighbors responded in the way they often do when there's a violent crime on campus.

"Your heart goes out for the victim, but you say to yourself: 'Lord, please don't let [the assailant] be one of our children,'" said Latimore, 65, who lives a block away from where Cisse was killed. She lives in a lovely townhouse her mother bought in 1950.

Latimore said the anxiety is immediate, and then comes the fear that the divide between the university and the community will deepen. She said that it wasn't until residents saw the non-Woodlawn addresses of the teenage boys arrested in a string of recent violent campus attacks, "that we could really start to mourn for Cisse. That's a sad commentary, but it's true.

"Perhaps that's what happens when you're old enough to have seen Woodlawn at its best and its worst, and you're trying to restore it to better times. You know that anything at any moment can upset all the hard work.

"Some days you can hardly walk down the street, past the store that sells loose cigarettes, the other store that only sells through a fiberglass window with a hole in it," Clark said.

Her two-flat, which sits in the well-tended 6100 block of Rhodes Avenue, has been in the family since 1942. She remembers when Woodlawn's residents had several full-service grocery stores in the heart of the community rather than only gas station mini-marts, which they have now.

By the late 1950s on Clark's block, black doctors, lawyers and judges lived side by side. Lorraine Hansberry, the late playwright who wrote "A Raisin in the Sun," and her family lived a few doors down.

"So when the community started to deteriorate and the city wouldn't clean our streets, we swept them ourselves," Clark told me as we sat with other residents in Sunrise Gospel Ministries' new state-of-the-art community center at 61st Street and Rhodes Avenue. "When the lights burned out, we called and called until the city replaced the bulbs. When people started hanging out in abandoned buildings, we pleaded with the city to board them up or tear them down.

"Today there are pockets of progress around Woodlawn. New developments are planned on some vacant lots. Older residents encourage newer residents to rein in their children. Vandalism and loitering are reported immediately. Residents also have begun youth programs and opened youth centers to give young people alternatives to joining gangs and hanging out.

Residents say it was tragic that Cisse lost his life; but equally tragic that such young people may have been involved.

The fight is a tough one. And that's true even though the university in recent years has tried to be a better neighbor by investing $70 million in housing initiatives, jobs programs and public education/charter schools.

For some, it hasn't been enough to lessen the resentment.

"People still see the university as harboring dreams of taking over our property," Latimore said. "Of waiting until Woodlawn is in such disrepair that all they have to do is swoop down and take it over.

"It didn't help that a few years ago the university hired a planning consultant that recommended the university expand south of 61st Street, which it has long said it wouldn't do. University officials quickly nixed the idea. But not before it reignited the suspicions and the mistrust among some Woodlawn residents.

In a fragile situation such as this almost anything can. Nothing happens without some reverberation, including the sad, sad deaths of two young people -- and too many others, Woodlawn residents say, we'll never hear much about -- who weren't allowed to live out their promise.