Wear Some Armor in Your Hair: Urban Renewal and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Lincoln Park

With Wear Some Armor in Your Hair, Brian Mullgardt provides a thorough and multifaceted examination of Lincoln Park during the second half of the twentieth century, maintaining a keen eye toward Chicago's overall social and spatial evolution. In this work, and as advertised, the distinguishing insight is how changes in the neighborhood's demographic composition meaningfully intersect with the 1968 Democratic National Convention and its associated turmoil. Against the turbulent backdrop of external, convention-related unrest, an internal battle between opposing visions of Lincoln Park's demographic future took shape. Mullgardt guides readers through this saga with the careful inclusion of abundant primary sources and due attention to related, secondary scholarship. Within the context of urban historiography, Wear Some Armor contributes valuable nuance to the foundational arguments set forth by Arnold Hirsch, Amanda Seligman, Thomas Sugrue, Ann Thompson, Carl Nightingale, Frank Kusch, and others whose work has shaped profoundly the conversation around American housing and racial segregation. Specifically, in the cases of Lincoln Park and 1968, Mullgardt asks readers to consider another critical catalyst for white opposition to integration: fear of neighborhood disorder extending from activist and related street gang agitation.To that end, Wear Some Armor introduces readers to the residents who formed the Lincoln Park Conservation Association (LPCA), among other grassroots community organizations. While, initially, the LPCA claimed to promote a welcoming and diverse community—with respect to its existing Black and Puerto Rican residents—they ultimately reversed course after the events of 1968. At the same time, an opposing local coalition, the North Side Cooperative Ministry, extended out of the neighborhood's Catholic Church leadership and, as far as the provided evidence suggests, more faithfully pursued inclusion in the form of open housing policies. Mullgardt thoroughly unpacks both sides of the matter and illuminates how the LPCA's crusade for an exclusive “secure zone” emerged as the dominant position.It no longer comes as any surprise that Chicago's legacy of segregation and its stubborn color line are largely the result of what Adam Hirsch's second ghetto thesis identified as “white hostility” giving rise to government-backed segregation. Interestingly, in Mullgardt's rendering, those responsible for displacing poor, nonwhite residents started off not as white racist “youth athletic clubs” but as white liberal do-gooders who abandoned diversity and open housing practices. Although before 1968 Lincoln Park was never proportionately integrated, by Chicago standards, it held some promise, especially for a North Side neighborhood. Mullgardt shares census data from 1952 to 1960, which indicated that the area housed 1,256 Black residents and, by 1960, 1,800 Puerto Ricans, roughly 2 percent of the neighborhood's population. White, wealthy, and formally educated residents lived near the lake while their working-class, nonwhite counterparts lived west of them. The nonwhite, working-class presence was tolerated, for a time, until the 1968 DNC fundamentally shook the city to its core. As a result, Puerto Rican residents suffered by association as the more aggressive activities of the Young Lords produced negative implications overall. Diverse Lincoln Park enclaves could not endure the oncoming tide of skyrocketing property values that ultimately priced residents out of the area.Having successfully set the stage for 1968, Mullgardt leads readers into the year's drama with tremendous detail and momentum. Overall, this excellent book exposes how accompanying upheaval accelerated Lincoln Park's commitment to gentrification, definitively putting to rest any notions to the contrary. Although the DNC might not be the only reason that Lincoln Park became a notably affluent and overwhelming white community, there certainly is ample evidence here that shows a more determined commitment to exclusivity after 1968. In a kind of postwar about-face, driven largely by fear, the neighborhood's future entailed the abandonment of inclusive housing policies that influential residents construed as potential catalysts for chaos. In short, the heavy-handed police response to nearby Yippie protests and contemporaneous gang activity fulfilled a city-hall backed neighborhood destiny, devoid of high-rises and public housing.Mullgardt's exposé stands out among more traditional neighborhood histories, uncovering how the LPCA-specific campaign against violence may complicate the more familiar, openly racist rejection of integration. What's offered here is a novel study of “urban renewal, gentrification, liberalism, the counterculture, police violence, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and grassroots activism,” allowing readers to confront a unique facet of how race and space evolved beyond more commonly referenced factors. The broader and more recognizable forces that govern Chicago-style housing and segregation, such as violence, redlining, blockbusting, and mortgage denial, are not to be dismissed, but Mullgardt successfully expands the list of relevant considerations. Ultimately, Mullgardt's work challenges readers to consider the possibility that Chicago's pressing social problems—rooted in long-term residential segregation—could have been prevented.