By David Harrell
The CCC members and the other activists were so consumed with designing the park that they hadn’t given much thought to naming it–until last year, when they met Marguerite Brown. The 88-year-old Brown had been trying to get something named in honor of her son Henry “Mandrake” Brown, who died in 1996. She’d tried to get a city ordinance named after him, only to be told that wasn’t allowed. Then someone told her a new park was being built in the neighborhood and suggested she try to have it named Mandrake Park.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Harris and other friends sometimes accompanied Brown on his missions. “One night we went all the way down Madison and did about 25 billboards,” Harris recalls. “We were Robin Hoods. People would see us doing this sometimes and say, ‘Right on, man!’”
CCATAB used zoning laws to remove some 700 billboards. It also helped stop the marketing of a high-octane malt liquor, as well as Uptown and X cigarettes, which had been introduced to coincide with the release of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. The blackwashing tactic soon began to be used in other cities, including New York, Detroit, and Dallas.
When the members of the CCC and other neighborhood groups found out that the Park District was considering naming the park after Mandrake they felt betrayed. They assumed that after putting in so much work they’d at least have a say in its naming. “I feel like it’s the child I created,” says Stackhouse, “and these people from outside swooped in at the last minute and named it.” Preckwinkle agrees. “They short-circuited the process.”
According to its own regulations, the Park District must also inform the public by notifying the advisory councils of neighboring parks and by posting public notices at the nearest park’s field house. Then it must allow 45 days for comment. Early last fall it posted notices about the park.
As 39th Street was the border dividing dry Hyde Park from Chicago, it wasn’t long before the area around 39th and Cottage Grove–the future location of the park–had numerous liquor stores and drinking establishments. One building straddled the border, with the Hyde Park half serving as a pool hall, the Chicago half as a saloon. Over the years the neighborhood changed from white working class to black and white but segregated to poor and black. Thirty-ninth and Cottage Grove became notorious for its drug dealers and users, but in the last two decades, renewal efforts took root. A neighborhood development corporation was founded, and in the early 90s parts of Oakland and neighboring Kenwood were declared a conservation area.
