OLD TOWN — There's a nearly 50-year gap in the Chicago History Museum's knowledge of East Garfield Park, a predominately black, poverty-stricken neighborhood on the city's West Side.
The museum wants to change that by partnering with social service agency Breakthrough Ministries on "Forty Blocks: The East Garfield Park Oral History Project," which will train students to tell oral histories of the neighborhood.
"Our major challenge lies in the lack of historical research covering East Garfield Park's history since 1970. The Forty Blocks project, however, will overcome this and create a historical understanding of the community in the last nearly fifty years," the museum said.
To fund the project, the museum has launched a Kickstarter campaign in the hopes of raising a total of $3,000 by Feb. 27.
The money raised will go toward new audio records, professional oral history transcriptions and staff the project, the museum said. It will also allow for the project to be posted on the museum's Collection Online.
If enough money is raised, middle and high school students in Breakthrough's Arts and Science Academy will meet with video, sound and photographic professionals to create documentary films, as well as other video and audio pieces. After the initial training session, which is scheduled for March, students will conduct oral history interviews with East Garfield Park residents.
East Garfield Park has undergone "enormous shifts since World War II," and experienced racial changes during the late 1950s and early 1960s, according to the museum.
In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to East Garfield Park during the Chicago Freedom Movement.
"Since the 1970s, East Garfield Park has become synonymous with poverty and violence. More recently, the area has emerged as a possible zone of gentrification and redevelopment. Yet, the community is much more than this. That's why the Chicago History Museum and Breakthrough's Film Crew are working together to document its history," the museum wrote.
Want to learn more about the idea behind the project? Read about Breakthrough Ministries and its role in East Garfield Park.
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