Men of Impact - UIUC

African-American Men

Defunct organization. Men of Impact is a student organization that is dedicated to to servicing the needs of Black men. We address the needs and concerns facing Black men in our community, via education and enlightening activites. Our primary goal is to equip Black men with the necessary tools to overcome the social stigmas facing them in society today.

1992-?

Former Frances Nelson site now home to 2 Habitat homes

The Dee family happily tours their new Habitat for Humanity home in the former Frances Nelson Health Center location in Champaign, Ill on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. From background left are Wesley, 11, Bradley, 11, Sheri and LeRoy Dee. From left foreground are Bailey, 8, and Conley, 5.

Sat, 01/17/2009 - 8:00am | Julie Wurth
CHAMPAIGN – When Frances Nelson Health Center decided to move out of the Carver Park neighborhood, residents there got busy.

Fearful the old clinic at 1304 Carver Drive could become a neighborhood eyesore, they petitioned the Frances Nelson board to donate the property to Habitat for Humanity of Champaign County.

Today, the site has two new Habitat houses – and two families waiting to move in.

"It's looking really nice," said neighborhood association President Debbi Roberts, Urbana's deputy city clerk. "I'm hoping they feel at home."

Frances Nelson, which provides medical care and social services to uninsured patients, moved into a building on Bloomington Road in 2006. Habitat demolished the old clinic and built two houses – one for Sheri and LeRoy Dee and their four sons, and one for Rasheen Robinson, 30, and her son, Dizon, 3.

Funded by grants from Thrivent Financial, the city of Champaign and area Lutheran churches, construction started in September. Just a few finishing touches remain before move-in day Jan. 29.

"I can't wait," said Sheri Dee, 36. "I'm looking forward to a fresh start."

The Dees never thought they'd be a Habitat family.

In 2002, they were happily running their small day-care business in Rantoul and raising three sons.

Then, while pregnant with son Conley, Sheri Dee was in a serious car accident. She was hospitalized from October 2002 to February 2003.

The medical bills mounted, and though they had insurance, the Dees had to file for bankruptcy. They lost their home and moved to Champaign, taking jobs at Wal-Mart, Head Start, wherever they could – usually two or three at a time – to bring in money. But they couldn't afford rent, utilities and payments to creditors, so they moved in with family.

Eventually LeRoy, 38, found a food-service job at the University of Illinois, which allowed him to scale back to one and a half jobs, helping Sheri deliver papers for The News-Gazette. He's also a full-time student at Eastern Illinois University and will graduate in May. Sheri, who already has her degree, is taking courses for a certificate in early childhood education and would like to open a learning center.

A relative suggested they apply to buy a Habitat home. After some hesitation, the Dees decided to give it a try.

"It's hard when you go from being financially independent and self-sufficient to having to admit, 'You know what? We need help,'" Sheri Dee said.

She was shy about all the public speaking required, but got used to it. Most times she'd have a congregation in tears, talking about how she fell in love with LeRoy all over again as he made sure his family had what it needed through their troubles, said Habitat's executive director, Eileen Gebbie.

"He never complained," said Sheri Dee, who makes a point of challenging stereotypes about black men not supporting their families. "No matter what the situation was, or what bills we were trying to pay, he's been there. He's taken care of his boys. They never knew the struggles we had."

The hardest part was losing their independence, and their time together, she said. They used to work side-by-side at their day-care and had the boys home with them. Later, with both of them juggling jobs and school, their time was spread pretty thin.

"That's not what we wanted for our family," she said.

The Dees now hope to scale back their work hours to spend more time with their sons, Wesley, Bradley, Bailey and Conley. Their mortgage payment will be far less than what they pay for a three-bedroom apartment.

Without Habitat, "we'd still be cleaning up our credit, digging our way out," she said.

Danville native Rasheen Robinson, who is divorced, also overcame credit problems to qualify for her Habitat house. A clerical employee at Herff-Jones, she can't wait to move out of the drafty mobile home she shares with her son.

Neighbors are looking forward to meeting both families at a Habitat event Sunday. Roberts said many residents are senior citizens who have lived there since Carver Park was built in the 1950s.

"This is the only home I've ever known," said Pam Scott, who lives near the Habitat homes with her two grandsons. She and others wanted to maintain the homey feel of the neighborhood and not see the center end up as more rental property.

"We wanted homeowners," Scott said. "It's pretty nice."

Heather Coit

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/miscellaneous/2009-01-17/former-frances-nelson-site-now-home-2-habitat-homes.html

17th January 2009

Douglas Branch has new manager

Essie Harris has appointed branch manager of the Douglas Branch Library. On August 1st 2003 while the previous manager retired after being there for a few years.

http://cms.news-gazette.com/news/other/2003-08-01/douglass-branch-has-new-manager.html

News Gazette

1 August, 2003

Urban League chief keeps building

Tracy Parsons, president of the Urban League of Champaign County, greets Urban League board member Robert Dodd at a luncheon last month celebrating Parsons' 10 years as president of the agency.
Sun, 10/10/2004 - 2:00pm | J. Philip Bloomer

CHAMPAIGN – When Tracy Parsons took on the job as president of the Urban League of Champaign County, he figured three to five years max.

That was in 1994.

Parsons is still here, still building his agency, still building people, and quietly – for the most part – smoothing patches on the rocky road to racial justice.

The length of his tenure is a little bit surprising both to him and to others who helped recruit this up-and-coming young businessman back home from Chicago. Parsons just signed another two-year contract.

"I stayed because I see that we're having a positive impact," Parsons said. "There are struggles. Daily. With budgets, controversies, different challenges all the time. But overall, this organization is having an influence on making this community a better place. And it's my hometown. The fact that I can play a role in improving the quality of life for people, however small, makes this somewhere I want to stay."

Many would beg to differ on his self-described diminutive role.

Parsons has grown the agency he oversees many times over. He took over for another institution, the late Vern Barkstall, who had been president of the league for 28 years.

Barkstall was a tireless advocate for civil rights in Champaign-Urbana. In contrast, Parsons says his strength is in programming and administration. That is evident in how far the agency has come in the last 10 years.

The league ran six programs when Parsons arrived, out of an office employing 12 people in a little rented building off an alley in downtown Champaign. In 1999, the league moved to its own building at the corner of Neil Street and Springfield Avenue. That is now the base for more than 20 programs and 44 employees serving in the realm of 5,000 people a year directly, and thousands more in subtler ways. Its budget has grown from $1.2 million to $4.5 million.

From traditional programming focusing on home improvements and energy assistance, the league's emphasis has broadened to include work force training programs and educational programs that touch the lives of the poor from preschool to adult.

Its Freedom School Summer Program served 180 black and Latino youths in literacy-based learning focused on conflict resolution and social action. It is the only Freedom School approved by the Children's Defense Fund to be operated by an Urban League affiliate.

The league recently collaborated with the University of Illinois' Success by Six program and the United Way to take over the operation of the 50-year-old Community Day Care and help ensure the availability of child care for working families and people actively trying to find work. The center operates from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily and on Saturdays as well.

The league's Urban Technical Outreach Center provides training and 16 computers, including one for special-needs populations, and just received another grant to add another class. There was one computer and no fax machine when Parsons took over the job.

The league has found jobs for 200 ex-felons in the last year.

Through its Development Corporation, the league has helped 30 families buy their first homes and initiated other efforts to revitalize neighborhoods. The corporation also recently bought 20 townhouses in Urbana and a 24-unit apartment complex on Park Place, also in Urbana, geared to low-income residents.

With charitable contributions declining, Parsons earlier this year initiated the league's bingo hall out of a vacant grocery store building on Cunningham Avenue. The hall brings in about 135 people a night.

The list goes on.

Parkland College President Zelema Harris, who helped recruit Parsons here, likened the league's new breadth of endeavors to a community college in a bit different sociopolitical context.

Danielia Rasmussen, who chairs the Urban League board, said Parson's days are an imposing mix of appeals for help on personal problems and issues, meetings with police officials, school officials, politicians and business leaders.

"I have to say two things really stand out about Tracy – his community advocacy work and his extraordinarily visionary leadership," Rasmussen said. "Even during rough economic times, he has consistently made the league grow and added innovative and unique programs."

Parsons was not an unknown quantity when he arrived here. He played football and basketball at Urbana High School, where he earned honorable mention honors for all-state and was awarded a scholarship to play football at Northwestern University.

From there he went into a successful sales job with DonTech, the telephone book publisher. He later became a district manager for Godfather's Pizza in Minneapolis and Baskin-Robbins in Franklin Park. Well-spoken, well-dressed and with an easy smile, it's no surprise Parsons enjoyed success at sales, but financial success didn't provide the personal satisfaction he got from working with kids.

At 28, he joined the Hire the Future summer jobs program for Chicago youth. He was its executive director, working in collaboration with the Urban League in Chicago, when the local search committee found him.

Urbana schools Superintendent Gene Amberg went to interview Parsons in Chicago. Parsons' youth (he was 32 at the time), his hometown roots and understanding of the community and his business experience all worked in his favor, and the national search came to a close. Amberg said it's one of the best "hires" he's ever made.

"Tracy has really become a friend as well as a colleague," Amberg said. "He has really actively engaged the Champaign-Urbana community to create a shared responsibility for racial progress and success. It takes a special leader to command respect from a broad spectrum of the community, and Tracy has done that."

Amberg also got a new teacher out of the hire. Parsons' wife, Martha, is a teacher at Yankee Ridge Elementary School.

Parkland's president also was on the search committee and remains close to Parsons.

"We were lucky he applied, then we sort of strong-armed him into coming," Harris said. "I've observed his accomplishments, especially in the area of working with minority youngsters, and am pleased to report on how effective he has been. He's just everywhere. The tentacles of the league are everywhere. And people believe in him."

Parsons downplays his role in some of those successes and is effusive in praise of his staff.

Parsons said that while some would try to pull him to the podium to be Champaign-Urbana's answer to Al Sharpton, a more important contribution for him is to ensure the financial health of the Urban League.

"I can't be out there on every issue and every cause. If I was, the league wouldn't be in the position it is today," he said.

To be effective and influential with decision-makers requires the maintenance of integrity that becomes compromised if one is constantly pounding fists in front of TV lights. That doesn't mean Parsons hasn't been in the forefront of several major issues that have divided white and black communities in Champaign-Urbana. It just means he picks his battles judiciously, and his approach generally tends to be less confrontational. Not that he lacks the capacity to get angry.

Parsons was instrumental in persuading the Champaign city administration to withdraw its recommendation that the police department start using Tasers, and a comment by Mayor Jerry Schweighart prompted Parsons to demand an apology.

While those issues are important, Parsons could fill his days with them if he chose. More flag carriers would be welcome.

Parsons said he and his peers in the Urban League organization across the country struggle with the relevance of civil rights fights and how those issues affect their agencies. The fundamental platforms – the Civil Rights Act, school desegregation, affirmative actions programs, the Community Reinvestment Act – are in place or have otherwise played a role in allowing Urban Leagues to focus energies elsewhere.

"Is civil rights still the battle or has the battle changed to economic struggle? I believe that it has. For me, it's about creating a black wealth, economic power, giving individuals the tools to make a good living, and fighting the educational system to create fair and equitable opportunity.

"Don't get me wrong. There are still many battles to be fought. Black and white people want me to put a positive spin on things and say that racism is better now. White people want to be told there is no racism and they've done a great job. Well, no, look around this town, where people live and work and socialize. There's a lot of work to be done."

Earlier this year, Parsons wrote community leaders to convey just that message:

"We cannot continue to suggest that we have created a community that treats all people equally," Parsons wrote. "In fact, the consequences of racism are readily apparent in both the black and white communities. Apathy among blacks is rampant and should be unacceptable. It has instilled in our youth an attitude of disengagement and complacency. Equally as disturbing is the white community's denial of 'white privilege' as it relates to their acceptance of responsibilities in creating and leading institutions that perpetuate discriminatory practices. It is a constant battle to gain the concern and understanding of decision-makers, white and black, who continue to implement policies that keep our community lagging behind."

It's not a lot of fun to have to be the point man in example after example of painful, confrontational racial issues. Parsons longs for a more cosmopolitan flavor for the community, restaurants, bars and other social venues where there are no color barriers.

For relaxation, he sometimes visits friends in Chicago, and when time permits, plays basketball at the YMCA, a place where barriers of race and job and social status happily vanish, and where his rainbow jumper still finds its target more than not.

Parsons' office at the Urban League reveals surprisingly few mementos for this one-time high school and college football star, a man who has already won many accolades, certificates and plaques from important local and national organizations.

There is a copy of a high school diploma on his desk. It is not his own. Prodded, Parsons said it is a copy sent to him from Tommie Berry Jr., a young man he mentored at Urbana High School. There's a kind note of thanks to Parsons for helping him through school, with a scholarship search and with his selection of friends.

"That's what matters about this job, when you can make a difference in a young man's life like this," Parsons said. "That's why I do what I do."

You can reach J. Philip Bloomer at (217) 351-5371 or via e-mail at pbloomer@news-gazette.com.

Robin Scholz

http://cms.news-gazette.com/news/other/2004-08-22/fund-raising-both-sides-fence.html

News Gazette

10th 10 2004

News-Gazette Clippings on Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration, 2005

MLK

Article 1: King's legacy: 'It belongs to all of us'

Parkland Community College President Zelema Harris talked of it in her Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech Friday at Urbana's Holiday Inn.

University High School counselor Sam Smith saw it in the planning for University of Illinois' weeklong celebration of the civil rights leader.

"It" is the fact that King's message is universal, that the celebration is more than just for black Americans and, at least on good days, that it seems some people are beginning to get it.

"It may seem like a small thing," said Smith. "But there's a group of us who've been working together over months on planning to celebrate this common vision. It's whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and nobody's holding this up as just a black holiday or an African-American experience. The focus is on social justice and inclusiveness and how to make the circle bigger."

The UI's celebration next week includes the Chinese Scholars and Student Association Ethnic Dance Group, an American Indian storyteller, the South Asian dance group Raas, the Sancocho Music and Dance Collage of Indianapolis and a Korean movie titled "If You Were Me."

The Urbana Rotary this year again has reached out to involve young people, young white people, in its own celebration that includes singing by a joint choir from Urbana High School and Mahomet-Seymour High School on Monday at the Illinois Street Residence Hall.

Last Friday, Parkland's Harris said that as strong as King's message, actions and influence were, over time that message has been both sanitized and reduced to a lesson about civil rights, when what he taught was an even more courageous and bold lesson about the eradication of pain and poverty for all of mankind.

"Many people have been uplifted by civil rights. I have been uplifted by the civil rights movement. The challenge is not to forget those whose plights are still with us. Poverty is still with us. Crime is still with us. The work is not over," Harris said.

One doesn't have to go far to find a black person who feels their life was changed directly or indirectly by King. Whether it's opportunity, affirmative action, a new way of thinking about things, about people and their worth, the impact of King and the civil rights movement is ubiquitous. For many, their future is not assigned to them. There is a degree of self-determination and choice that did not exist before. It's not coincidence that King's portrait is a staple in many black homes. It is a portrait, a visage and a message, Harris and Smith suggested, that belongs in all homes.

It was a King scholarship that went to Sherrika Ellison in 1999 that helped enable the Urbana High School graduate to enter the University of Illinois, where she flourished, making the dean's list, serving on the Illini Union Board, participating in the Peer Recruitment program and now working on her master's degree.

A singer, Ellison also won a regional competition that had her in New York City with her mom, Pam Ellison, competing – and winning – at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater's amateur night last Wednesday.

"Martin Luther King definitely opened up opportunities for me," Ellison said. "The whole movement opened doors that weren't open before."

Sam Smith's home was also one with a King portrait prominently displayed, along with one of John F. Kennedy. His parents were sharecroppers in South Carolina. They moved to New York City in the late 1960s. Smith was 11.

"We moved for opportunity and to escape racism. Certainly my life would have been far different had it not been for King and the civil rights movement," Smith said. "In New York, I grew up in an area with many ethnic influences, and I was quite comfortable in that. Living here, I sometimes think the country is more polarized around issues of race. There's a lot more opportunity, a lot less overt racism. But structurally, where we live and where we interact with each other, we're still so segregated."

Martel Miller has deliberately placed himself in the eye of the storm of racial controversy by challenging the Champaign Police Department's treatment of young black men. The group he helped organize with Patrick Thompson filmed local police stops, produced a videotape last year that was shown in the Champaign Public Library, Boardman's Art Theatre and other places, and he and Thompson were arrested and charged with eavesdropping before pressure from the public and the Champaign city administration resulted in the charges being dropped.

Miller, a Champaign product, keeps a keen eye on this notion of civil rights for all in the community in which he grew up. Miller remembers being bused to schools every day on the west side of town, not liking it, and not liking being told that the way he talked wasn't proper English. He remembers driving with convoys of family to visit relatives in Mississippi and knowing the towns it was good to avoid, and knowing that they drove in a convoy for safety.

"Things you live with," he said. "It is better here now. I can say that. I don't want to say anything too negative, but we've got a long way to go," he said.

"I'd like to see us do things differently, try things differently in the schools, in how we relate to young people, involve different people and the whole community. The black leaders you see aren't always synonymous with the black community. Maybe it's time to pass the torch to different people."

The Rev. Eugene Barnes says amen to that. Barnes runs the Metanoia Center, a faith-based community improvement project out of the Bristol Place neighborhood in north Champaign. Barnes said progress toward King's dream requires individual decisions, as King preached, to purify oneself and purge the hate before direct action can produce results.

As a young man growing up in Waukegan, Barnes said, he was taught in church and in the NAACP about nonviolent protest and direct action to move the institutional mountains standing in the way of progress. That work occurs in Champaign-Urbana and the other Central Illinois communities, where demonstrations at banks by Metanoia and affiliated organizations have been instrumental in improving lending practices.

"We do see progress," he said. "What I continue to see, however, is the great failure of white America to love people of color. So what I'm doing now is remembering my teaching. There's nothing extraordinary in it. As I look down the road, and you ask have we entered the dream, it's not a right-now thing. It's a journey, a collective journey we're on."

Von Young has spent much of that journey in Champaign, where he joined the Champaign Police Department in 1974 and later became its first black lieutenant. In 2002, he became police chief at Parkland. Would that have occurred if not for King, if not for the fact the college had a black president?

"I have no way of knowing that," he said, adding that at the time of the search, finalists included another black man and a woman.

"There was commitment to diversity," he said.

Young is a chief in a town where the chiefs of police in Urbana and at the University of Illinois are also black, where his former department recently reversed a decision on the purchase of Tasers because of resistance from the black community.

"There was a lot more racial tension in 1974. You couldn't have said those things then. That (progress) comes from the city council, The News-Gazette, institutions and people in the community addressing those problems. We still have problems, but Champaign-Urbana is moving in the right direction."

Smith, the counselor, said the inclusive nature of the 2005 celebration is testament to that direction.

"The folks I've been involved with make me feel hopeful. For my money, this is something that belongs to all of us. That's what King was talking about."

Area events scheduled to mark King's birthdayHere are events scheduled to mark the birth of Martin Luther King Jr.:

– Today, 5 p.m.: The Rev. Ben Cox, a freedom rider with King's civil rights crusade, will speak in the Great Hall at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts with music by the Community Interracial/Interdenominational Choir.

– Monday, 8:30 a.m.: Prayer breakfast, Canaan Academy, 207 N. Central Ave., U. Rayco Terry, King Scholar and Chicago Public Schools teacher, speaker.

– Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.: Keith Beauchamp, director of "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" will present his film. Virginia Theatre, 203 W. Park St., C.

– Thursday, 7:30 p.m.: The film "Injustice," Room 101, Armory Building, 505 E. Armory Ave., C.

– Saturday, 2 to 5 p.m.: "Stories of Our People," Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Ave., U.

Performers include Champaign storyteller Dawn Blackman; the presentation of Martin Luther King Jr. Essay Contest winners from local middle and high schools; the Protege Dance Group of Champaign; Chinese Scholars and Student Association Ethnic Dance Group; Larry Lockwood, an American Indian storyteller from Chicago; the UI Raas Team, a South Asian dance group; and the Sancocho Music and Dance Collage of Indianapolis.

– Jan. 25, 7:30 p.m.: The movie "Bread and Roses," Room 101, Armory Building.

– Jan. 26, 7 p.m.: Illini Room C and the South Lounge, Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., U, a student and faculty discussion: "Diverse Perspectives on Campus and in America: Finding and Exercising Your Voice."

The panel will debate issues, including the supposed liberal domination of academia, racial discrimination, religious intolerance, gender inequality and sexual orientation.

– Jan. 27, 7:30 p.m.: The movie, "If You Were Me," in Korean with English subtitles, Room 101, Armory Building.

You can reach News-Gazette staff writer J. Philip Bloomer at (217) 351-5371 or via e-mail at pbloomer@news-gazette.com.

Article 2:
Speaker: There's more to King Jr.'s legacy

Sat, 01/15/2005 - 3:00pm | J. Philip Bloomer

URBANA – Zelema Harris confessed Friday that after more than 40 years since she first heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak, she remains spellbound by his oratory, yet torn about the influence his words and actions have had.

The ambivalence arises from the selectivity and sanitization with which society has treated his message, and the pain and disappointment his words force her to relive.

Harris, president of Parkland College, was the keynote speaker at Friday's King Day celebration, put on by the cities of Champaign and Urbana and the Champaign County Board.

Harris acknowledged she wouldn't be there had it not been for King. Before him, before the civil rights movement, she was just another little black girl growing up in east Texas afraid of white people.

It was not a typical speech for a college president, appearing in the grand ballroom of the Holiday Inn Conference Center before several hundred people, including dozens of elected and appointed officials in the county. It lacked flowery prose and intellectual posturing but abounded in intellectual observation honed by personal experience.

"I understood what it meant to be a second-class citizen and walk in fear of whites. I understood because it was my daily life," she said.

When a sheriff's car would approach, "black children knew instinctively to run and hide," she said. She told of her mother having her stand on a piece of paper to outline her feet, so her mother could take it to the store for new shoes.

"Blacks were not allowed to try on shoes," she said.

She told of getting in trouble for drinking from the white water fountain at the local A&P grocery store.

"At 9 years old, I had broken the law," she said.

And other stories.

While in college, she talked of visiting lunch counters in Beaumont, Texas – counters where blacks weren't supposed to sit. She and her friends spoke in Spanish to trick the owners into thinking they weren't really black.

"The only phrase I knew was 'The donkey was important in Spain and Mexico,' but he didn't know any better and we got served."

Harris said that as she grew into adulthood, so did her ambivalence about the civil rights movement, and her patriotism toward the country that promised so much. Those who were "prepared," Harris said, primarily middle-class blacks, were liberated by the civil rights movement, but that same movement has and still does leave poor, primarily urban blacks behind.

"Dr. King asked in 1968, 'What good is it to be allowed to sit in a restaurant if you can't afford a hamburger?'"

Seldom, she said, when talking about the legacy of King do people talk about his opposition to war, about his advocacy for the impoverished everywhere, or the connection between war and poverty.

Harris said she has little doubt where King would stand on the war in Iraq. The parallels to Vietnam are too obvious.

Before the military buildup in Vietnam, Harris said the United States was making progress on poverty, in the right way, by a hand up and not a handout. Then the resources dissipated, "like some demonic, destructive suction," King said.

The Vietnam War also sent a disproportionate number of poor people and poor blacks "to fight for liberties in Southeast Asia when they had yet to find them in southwest Georgia," Harris quoted King as saying.

"Dr. King loved this nation and what it could become," Harris said. "We owe it to him to respect the totality of his work." Harris said that as King did, and as an educator herself, she has great optimism for our country and community. In particular she cited success of mentoring programs, of the Urban League, of Rotary clubs and churches and appealed to the audience to take ownership of the future in the visioning process that has just been undertaken at the county level.

"There is within each of us the capacity to help others. We have this in our hearts. We must feel the fire in each of us," Harris said.

You can reach News-Gazette staff writer J. Philip Bloomer at (217) 351-5371 or via e-mail at pbloomer@news-gazette.com.

J. Philip Bloomer

News-Gazette

2005

Making the dream affordable

Housing

Image Caption: Burch Village manager Karen Hite walks through the Champaign public housing complex Friday. The Champaign County Housing Authority and the city of Champaign plan to raze the 52-year-old complex later this year and replace it with new housing. Photographer: by John Dixon

Article: CHAMPAIGN - Burch Village, the public housing complex on Bradley Avenue at Fourth Street, has seen a lot of living in its 52 years.

It has not aged gracefully.

The wear and tear is beginning to show on the institutional-style, tightly compacted apart- ments that squeeze some 200 poor people into its 66 units.

The Champaign County Housing Authority and the city of Champaign are now planning for its replacement. Government officials hope to do it on an expanded site, with a variety of housing styles for people to choose from.

It is an expensive and disruptive proposition, but at this stage, far less disruptive than the discord that accompanied the many earlier phases of urban renewal and fair housing movements that have checkered the community's history.

"Some of the people are excited about the move," said Burch Village manager Karen Hite. "Some are just happy to have a roof over their heads. That's the most important thing to them."

Residents will be offered alternative housing or Section 8 housing vouchers during the relocation and will be given the opportunity to move back into the new housing if they meet the federal criteria, housing officials said.

The city has been working with a variety of other government officials, advisory groups, residents of the complex and residents of the surrounding neighborhood to evaluate the neighborhood's needs and work toward solutions acceptable to everyone.

It has been a peaceful process, snagged more by bureaucratic problems than the shrill political and racial divides that accompanied the debut of public housing here more than 50 years ago.

Newspaper reports tell of Burch Village's construction being held up by opposition to where a companion complex to be called Bradley-McKinley, now Joann Dorsey Homes, was to be built. The papers matter-of-factly described Burch as the "Negro" complex and the Bradley-McKinley project as the "white" complex. While there was debate over where to build, there was little sentiment expressed that there was anything inappropriate in the segregation.

"That's just the way it was. It was more or less an accepted fact," said Malcolm Green, 76, who was Burch Village's first manager, at the age of 26.

While Burch Village is considered substandard by today's standards and has had a notorious reputation at times, Green said that when it opened in 1951, it was a salvation for the poor and a stepping stone to independence.

"Everyone was excited with Burch. It was new and improved and so much better than where they came from," he said. "I had a great sense of satisfaction being able to help so many people with the privilege of living there."

Hite, the current manager, said that in some respects, Burch hasn't changed.

"I have some very good residents here trying to pull themselves up," she said. "I know you read about the crime, but that happens everywhere, even Cherry Hills. The location isn't relevant."

Green was one of many who got a step up because of the existence of Burch Village. While a manager there, raising his young family in Apt. 34, he got a chance to move to the new Crispus Attucks Place subdivision to the east. He and his father, Romeo Green Sr., a blacksmith for Illinois Central, dug the foundation by hand and raised the house.

Green went on to put on three additions, became a city housing inspector and later a housing administrator at the University of Illinois. He still lives in the same house, next to neighbors who also made the transition from Burch to single-family home ownership.

"There've been a lot of improvements in this area in my lifetime. Not that we can't do more," Green said. "There is a lot of sentiment attached to Burch Village. It was a very close-knit neighborhood at one time. But improvements are needed, and we can't rest until they are made."

Now Burch is substandard in part because it is not handicapped-accessible, and its windows and its washer-dryer hookups don't meet city codes. Those are pretty pedestrian violations compared with what it replaced.

Burch came about in part because of the work of an interracial committee of activists, including Green's late brother Romeo Green Jr., the Northeast Improvement Association, the League of Women Voters and other progressives concerned with the living conditions of the city's poor.

People were living in shacks, coal sheds and garages.

"We'd had a lot of migration here, and people were renting out anything they had," Green said. "There had also been some fires where some young people had died because of electrical problems."

Until Burch Village and Bradley-McKinley, the only public housing that existed was 20 units at Fifth and Columbia for black people and 20 units on Harvard Street for white people. Those units were temporary army barracks known as "tip-tops" for their tin roofs.

From the beginning, Burch had more applicants than it could house. As people moved in, the city began to crack down on substandard housing. Eighteen of the 20 shacks from which new Burch residents were moving were immediately de-clared "unfit for human habitation" and torn down by the city.

Most were in the old Oak-Ash area, on Poplar, Ash and Fourth streets south of Bradley.

About the same time Burch Village was getting under way, Charles Phillips, a civic leader in the black community, saw a need for quality single-family homes for blacks. Phillips put together a grass-roots coalition of friends and acquaintances to buy 10 acres of farmland, and Ozier-Weller Homes agreed to do the development. Families who wanted to build each put in $350, and soon a new subdivision of 70 homes grew into Carver Park, named for George Washington Carver, a famous black scientist and inventor.

The success of Carver Park was such that Ozier-Weller was hired in 1953 to build the 38-home Crispus Attucks Place subdivision, named for the first man - and first black man - killed in the Revolutionary War.

Burch is named for Nathaniel Burch, a Champaign High School football player who withdrew from school in 1943 to join the service. He became an airplane mechanic and was killed in an airplane accident in 1945 at Davis Field in Tucson, Ariz.

In the ensuing urban renewal following Burch Village's construction, the city would clear all the Oak-Ash area, replacing it with the Martin Luther King Subdivision, itself with a street named for Charles Phillips, and earlier versions of the public housing that exists today.

In recent years, the city and the housing authority have worked together to redevelop the old Parkside Manor into Oakwood Trace Townhomes. Crime-plagued Mansard Square has been cleared, and the city hopes to have ground broken this year on 15 new homes on the Mansard Square property.

Burch Village is the last piece of the neighborhood's renewal to get attention. Attention to other problems throughout the neighborhood is planned, too, from sidewalks to landscaping.

Kerri Forsyth, the city housing coordinator, said community participants made it clear the neighborhood's revitalization could not be successful without addressing Burch Village.

"This is the last piece of the puzzle to make this neighborhood an attractive place to live for everyone," Forsyth said.

New Burch won't look like old

CHAMPAIGN - Burch Village will not look like Burch Village of today when its replacement is complete.

There aren't a whole lot of specifics beyond the fact that Burch will be torn down later this year.

Larry Davis, director of the housing authority, said a mix of housing styles is planned. Though the ratios aren't set, it will include a mix of low-income housing, tax-credit-assisted or moderate-income housing, and market-rate housing. That translates into apartments, townhomes, duplexes and single-family houses.

Davis and city officials hope to acquire farmland to the north and perhaps a Champaign Asphalt Co. satellite plant to the east to expand the footprint of the Burch Village. The existing footprint would only allow about 50 units under current federal Department of Housing and Urban Development standards, he said.

Sixty-six units are currently occupied, and four have been declared unsuitable for housing.

"Reduced density is required by HUD," said Kerri Forsyth, the city's housing coordinator. "Reduced density, a mix of housing and attention to the broader neighborhood are all criteria we need to address to qualify for HUD funding."

Depending on the mix of housing styles, the land acquisition required and a host of other factors, the price of Burch Village's replacement could run anywhere from $7 million to $20 million. While most of the financing is anticipated to come from HUD's HOPE VI grants, the city has already committed $400,000 from its federal housing money to the project and could lend its bonding authority to the developer as well.

Officials are working with the development firm of Brinshore-Michaels Development of Chicago to do the redevelopment. Brinshore-Michaels did the redevelopment of Robert Taylor Homes and Henry Horner Homes in Chicago. Forsyth said the key staff member of the project also worked on redevelopments in Peoria and Springfield.

By contrast, in 1950, the housing authority hired the John Felmley Co. to build both Bradley-McKinley and Burch Village, each 70-unit complexes, for a total of $1.2 million.

J. Philip Bloomer

News-Gazette

January 5, 2003

Comprehensive Community Planning

Urban Planning, Campus-Community Relations

Master's Thesis in Urban Planning using Civitas, a graduate-led design center located in Champaign-Urbana around 2004-2005, as a model design center. Also mentions the Urban Exchange Center.

Genevieve Borich

http://www.genevieveclare.com/

2004

Officials pleased with station-adjustment management

Crime, Policing, and Gangs, Civil Rights

The Regional Planning Committee is making great strides in keeping youth out of the Criminal Justice system.

Mary Schenk

24 January 2010

Kathryn Humphrey Biography

African-American Women

This is the biography of a Central High school graduate, Kathryn Humphrey. She is invovled in a lot of community organizations and is the founder of the Gamma Upsilon Society which organizes the local cotillion.

27 October 2008

Nate Dixon Biography

African-American Men, Civil Rights, Urban League

This is the biography of a local man, Nate Dixon, who was very instrumental in the community with his involvment in The Champaign Park District and other community organizations.

Januaray 2001