We are not a slum, we are a family: Florence Scala and Courageous Community by Beatrice Craig
Ann Keating at Chicago Women’s History Conference, Photo credit Ronit Bezalel
Serenading us with the words and wisdom of female activists, past and present, keynote speaker Jamila Woods asked us to contemplate the conference’s topic and ask ourselves “what strategies still serve us and what needs to be burned down and reimagined.” As I attended my elected sessions throughout the day, what struck me was the way each of these presentations embodied Wood’s call to wrestle with the legacy and efficacy of what we have inherited.
In this post, I want to highlight the work of scholars Ann Keating and Rima Lunin Schultz and their presentation, “Before the Second Wave: Working Class Women Activists and City Planning: Florence Scala and Chicago’s Near West Side.” Though Scala is recognized for her courageous neighborhood activism, she is “often presented as a simple housewife.” As Keating and Schultz work to explode this narrative and reveal the dynamism and courage of this community leader, I believe they made tangible Woods’s question about what tools we inherit and what tools we must forge ourselves. This is the work of counter memory.
Rima Lunin Schultz at Chicago Women’s History Conference 2025
Photo credit Ronit Bezalel
Florence Scala herself also embodied this question, as she fought to preserve a community threatened by demolition. The daughter of Italian immigrants, Scala was a lifelong resident of Chicago’s West Side whose family was deeply entwined with Jane Addams’s Hull House and the flourishing immigrant community the settlement supported. Scala understood the hardships of urban life, but growing up in this context of reciprocity and care fostered within her a passion for fostering solidarity in her community to alleviate the strains of working-class and immigrant life. After graduating high school, she would transition from neighbor to resident of Hull House, where she would formally devote herself to advocate for her neighborhood’s autonomy.
Around this time, rhetoric of immigrant communities as “slums” proliferated, usually bolstered by stereotypical associations between ethnicity and cleanliness. This rhetoric profoundly impacted the architecture of Chicago’s neighborhoods as the Federal Housing Administration inaugurated decades of legalized housing discrimination and disinvestment in certain communities. In response, Scala helped to found and lead the Near West Side Planning Board to enhance the living conditions of her neighborhood, aiming to protect her community from the threat of slum clearance and advocate for its autonomy. In this way, as Scala came into her sociopolitical consciousness, the settlement would serve as a site of social planning specifically undertaken by and for the community.
Richard Schultz reading Rima Lunin Schultz’s paper at Chicago Women’s History Conference 2025
Photo credit Ronit Bezalel
However, when a 1940s land use survey delineated the near West Side a “blighted area” and proposed a full-scale “slum removal” of the Harrison-Halstead district, Scala was confronted with the potential destruction of the tight-knit community that taught her what it meant to stand for something greater than yourself. When James Downst, the urban affairs advisor to the mayor, proposed the demolition of Hull House to make way for the new University of Illinois campus, Scala refused to let this site of community empowerment be destroyed. It is important to note that despite the significance of this moment, Scala’s story does not start here. As Ann Keating argued in the presentation, Scala’s story illustrates that by the 1950s, “Scala was a seasoned community activist who for more than a decade worked…to move forward with a plan for rehabilitation and preservation of her working-class community.”
Scala led the crusade against Downst with a ferocity that rendered her the “David to Mayor Daley’s Goliath,” passionately employing her understanding of the neighborhood and media savvy to campaign against the settlement’s demolition. Her advocacy was so powerful and threatening to the mayor’s plans that her house was bombed, to intimidate her into silence. However, Scala was not one for submission. She would continue to protest both on the streets and in office, running for Alderman twice, losing each time but by a margin, a significant feat for a woman of immigrant heritage. Though Hull House was ultimately razed, Scala would remain an active participant in the Near West Side, elevating the voices of those otherwise pushed to the side.
Ultimately, Florence Scala’s legacy is one of resistance. Remembering Woods’s question—“what strategies still serve us and what needs to be burned down and reimagined”—Scala is a model in showing deference to those who make your work possible while understanding when to break the mold.
By Beatrice Craig
