[1] A tenant council, which serves similar purposes within a single building or complex, is sometimes called a "vertical block club".
Block clubs have been used by white communities to combat racial integration, as for example by Francis X. Lawlor in West Englewood.
[1] Urban League workers in Pittsburgh refined this by organizing mothers at the block level, and the practice soon spread to St. Louis, Chicago, and beyond.
[1] During World War II, the Office of Civil Defense likewise organized some urban areas into "block units".
Chicago Urban League president Alva Maxey, writing in 1957, described how several block club-initiated programs had been adopted by the city government as official initiatives, including neighborhood "clean-up parades" and the practice of clearing vehicles from a street before the city street sweepers arrived.