Woodlawn contains a large portion of Jackson Park, including the site of the under-construction Barack Obama Presidential Center.

[2] Up until 1948, Woodlawn was a middle class, white neighborhood, which grew out of the floods of workers and commerce from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Like other communities bordering the ghetto, Woodlawn experienced intense bouts of white flight when the first African Americans moved into the neighborhood (especially the Washington Park Subdivision).

However, older members often felt put out by the demographic and "cultural" changes that came with integration, and by the mid-1960s, the Church's finances and membership rates were in trouble.

The community escaped the riots that devastated the West Side after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. mainly because of the works of the Black P. Stone Nation in 1968.

The University of Chicago, a large land owner with vested interest in the character of the neighborhood, fought through many avenues against what it saw as the encroachment of blight.

As Arnold Hirsch argues in his chapter "Neighborhood on a hill" in Making the Second Ghetto, the university, through the SECC and, at times, with brute force, made Hyde Park the site of one of the first "urban renewal" projects in the country.

In an attempt to maintain the number of white families, the university tore down "slum" areas, often employing eminent domain powers.

[citation needed] At one time, the University of Chicago Law School raised more than $10,000 each year for charitable support for the children of Woodlawn.

Several years earlier, the Alliance had called in Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, to discuss plans to organize the community.

Brazier started out as a mail carrier, became a preacher in a store front church, and then, through TWO, burgeoned into a national spokesman for the black power movement.

As Fish argues in Black Power/White Control TWO picked issues that mobilized resident participation, and at the same time built power for the organization to take on large outside entities like the university and the city (i.e. Mayor Daley).

[6] WECAN quickly became a neighborhood and citywide advocate for rescuing at-risk and abandoned buildings, preserving an estimated 5000 units of housing in Woodlawn since its founding.

As the focus of development in Woodlawn has shifted toward new construction and condo conversion, WECAN is seen as a vocal advocate for affordable housing for low-moderate income residents and especially seniors.

That stance has on occasion brought the organization into conflict with other groups in Woodlawn, particularly TWO, who have pushed for new development at what WECAN sees as the expense of current residents.

[9] For example, in 1966, in the midst of a violent drive to consolidate power and intimidate rivals, the Rangers provided security as Dr. Martin Luther King and the Congress On Racial Equality marched through hostile white neighborhoods like Cicero and Marquette Park.

It even received funding from the US Office Of Economic Opportunity to run a job-training program in Woodlawn, the pilfering of which led Fort to another prison sentence.

Between 60th and 61st Streets (with Stony Island Avenue to the east and Cottage Grove Avenue to the west) are several of the university's South Campus buildings including: University of Chicago Press, the law quadrangle and law library, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the National Opinion Research Center, the Center for Research Libraries, Chapin Hall, and Granville-Grossman Residential Commons.

Some of the university's faculty and several hundred of its graduate and undergraduate students live south of 60th Street in University-owned real estate and dormitories, as well as in privately owned residences.

The area was originally a "rough, tangled stretch of bog and dune" until it was transformed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect of New York City's Central Park.