Given all the problems social-service groups have to battle–crime, drugs, neighborhood disinvestment–they shouldn’t have time to fight each other. But that’s just what board members for Hull House and board members for its affiliate the Clarence Darrow Center have been doing for the last year: squabbling over who should run the southwest-side center.
The Darrow Center was formed in the 1950s as part of the Unitarian Church’s efforts to help communities around the city. Then, as now, it was based in LeClaire Courts, a low-rise Chicago Housing Authority complex. Over the years there was some tension in the community as blacks moved in and whites out, but the center continued to earn high marks for its day-care, health-care, family-planning, and job-training programs. In the last decade, under the direction of former executive director Stan Horn, community residents affiliated with Darrow even opened their own catering businesses and a bus service for reverse commuters.
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“Stan and the board had a vision of Darrow being not just a place where people can get good day care for the kids, but a place where they can learn how to be economically self-sufficient,” says Malcolm Bush, a member of Darrow’s board. “You can provide social services until the cows come home, but if people aren’t self-sufficient it won’t matter.” He describes how Horn helped reinvigorate LeClaire’s tenants’ association, which eventually took over management of the complex.
By 1990 Hull House was taking roughly $150,000 in management fees, and tensions between the two organizations were growing. Horn had left Darrow for a new job, and the new director, Charles Jones, was not nearly as popular with the staff or community. The center was also in a precarious state. As its budget deficit rose, rumors circulated through LeClaire that Darrow might cut some programs or even close.
“I think Gordon Johnson has a different vision of Darrow than we do,” says Malcolm Bush. “I had lunch with him several months ago, and his main concern was how Darrow’s director could be brought more closely under his supervision. As far as we’re concerned, Darrow is a semi-independent entity. It’s not appropriate for the director of Hull House to have that kind of control over a satellite.”
“In the resolution the Darrow Center and the Darrow board are meant as the same thing,” Johnson replies.
“We’re providing the services, and they’re out of touch,” adds Johnson. “They should just give it up.”
