“The apartment is no longer available”: from the UofC reparations rally

Ms. Tatum speaks to the crowd at the February 15 rally.

On February 15, we joined CBA coalition group UChicago Against Displacement (UCAD) in rallying on the University to demand reparations from it. There our member Ms. Patricia Tatum offered this testimony.

I have lived and worked in Woodlawn for over 50 years. I served this community as a nurse at the University of Chicago and as a nurse for the Chicago Public Schools.

As a young nurse, I wanted to live closer to work, so I utilized the University of Chicago’s housing assistance program for employees and students. I received a list of available apartments in the area close to campus. For every listing I contacted, I got the response: “The apartment is no longer available.” I shared my frustration with my coworkers, and the unit clerk — who was a white male — asked for the listings, to see if he would receive the same response.

He came back and said he didn’t get the same response that I had. He was able to see the apartments and was invited to apply for them. I felt so naïve. I thought that since I was a nurse at the hospital, and since the majority of the (white) nurses lived in Hyde Park, I would have no problems renting there. I was wrong and hurt.

I eventually chose to purchase a home in Woodlawn, because the people I served in the hospital from Woodlawn were so welcoming and appreciative.

Now there are employees who would live to live closer to the University of Chicago, but they can’t afford to live in the area because of the lack of affordable housing. Housing is very important in the fight for reparations. Yeas ago, some people buying and living in Woodlawn closed their eyes as they drove to campus. We need to keep generations of Woodlawn families in the community they loved before it became the place to live that it is now.

Our Community Benefits Agreement coalition has been fighting displacement of long-time low-income Black South Siders, resulting from gentrification of neighborhoods surrounding the University and the incoming Obama Center.

We are campaigning for more investments from the City of Chicago. And we’re growing our campaign for reparations-scale investments from the University. Not least, we demand that it put up $1 billion — $50 million per year for 20 years — for affordable housing in neighborhoods like Woodlawn, where the University has undertaken decades of “urban renewal” to remove the Black people around it.

Yaa Angie, a member of UChicago Against Displacement, offered this call:

We're calling to demand reparations. Why? Because there's harm that has been caused, there’s removal that is happening — still happening to people who don't have nowhere to go, don't have nowhere to live.

Ain't never paid reparations. [The University] never sought any sort of reconciliation for what our ancestors have been through. And we're still getting violated over and over and over again. Institutions as such, are responsible for scenarios like this, are responsible for happenings like this.

Also check out news coverage of the rally.