Black housing on the campus of the University of Illinois is a controversial issue that is not talked about enough. It is also one that has persisted over the course of a century and has had many complex causes and significant effects on the Black community. The issue of Black Housing is what the staff at the Illinois Leadership Center would classify as a Wicked Problem. A Wicked Problem is defined by the UN as a problem that is difficult to define and is inherently unsolvable. The main components of a Wicked Problem are first that it is unsolvable, and this can usually be witnessed when there have been multiple ideas that have been implemented in an attempt to solve the problem, yet the problem has continued to persist. Black housing discrimination and segregation have been issues since the founding of this university. There also is no stop rule when it comes to Wicked Problems. This means that there is no point at which it can be predicted that the problem will stop being a problem. The last characteristic of a Wicked Problem is that solutions are not true or false, but good or bad. This means that there can be multiple good solutions for this problem and that there are multiple things that can be implemented that could possibly make the situation better. All these traits of a Wicked Problem describe the situation of Black housing at the University of Illinois. This problem is also one that I see affecting the Black community in very subtle ways today.
Through My Eyes
With the strides that Black people have made on the campus of the University of Illinois in the age of Chancellor Jones, many of us feel pride and great joy for those who have paved the way before us and have made getting an education at the University of Illinois possible. With the strides that we have made on campus that have made us as people on campus very proud of our race, it is easy to ignore or not notice the subtle housing segregation going on that most people actually witness much more than we realize. My freshman year I was placed to live in a dorm in the 6-pack called Scott. Though I didn't mind my dorm much, I did mind that my roommate and I were the only Black residents that we were aware of who lived in my dorm. I came to find out that we were some of the only few Black residents that lived in the 6 pack. Most Black students were housed in the dorm Florida Avenue residence (FAR) halls and Pennsylvania Avenue residence (PAR) halls. Though I didn't think much of this my freshman year, I came to realize that this was a form of housing segregation that separated a lot of the Black students away from their white counterparts. On top of this both PAR and FAR are residence halls that are very far away from the main institutional buildings of the university, such as the classroom buildings and the recreation center, making it harder for Black students to access the same resources that white students have across the street from them. This type of segregation is harmful to the Black community and to the campus of the University of Illinois as a whole, but to understand this type of housing segregation, it is crucial to understand the history behind Black housing at the University of Illinois.
History
Black students, although allowed to attend the University of Illinois, were not allowed to live on campus until the year 1945. This was a tactic used by the university to discourage Black students from wanting to attend the University of Illinois and make it harder for them to receive an education. This did not deter Black students, however. Many Black students sought housing in the local Black communities in Urbana-Champaign. Particularly, many of them sought refuge in the North Champaign end of the area, “commonly referred to as the ‘North End’” (Cobb, D., 1997). If the Black community was not willing to accommodate most of these Black students, many of them would not have gotten the chance to be able to attend the University of Illinois. The housing situation for Black students was a very long battle that was fought and protested for decades. On top of there being no on-campus housing for Black students, the living condition of African Americans in the area was detestable. Many “lived in shacks with no indoor plumbing and had to use outdoor privies. In most cases their privies were very unsanitary and caused many people to contract communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis.”( Cobb, D., 1997). These conditions not only made housing dangerous for African American students but also the African American families who they resided with. Several meetings were held with African American students and the people in the communities about this topic, but often to no avail. Sorority and Fraternity Organizations such as Kappa Alpha Nu (now Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.), Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. were some of the first Black organizations to seek housing for Black persons near campus. These organizations and the greater Black Community were many Black students only hope of attending the University (Wang, J, and Steward-Hutton, D., 2023).
In the Residence Halls
In the year 1945, Black students were finally permitted by the University to seek housing within the residence halls. The first Black students to reside in the residence halls on campus were Quintella King and Ruthe Cash, both permitted to live in Busey-Evans Hall. This was a landmark event as it showed the determination of Black student efforts and the progress that was being made for Black students. However, with that progress, came a new set of discrimination and obstacles that the Black student community still had to overcome. Rooms were segregated; they didn't allow Black women and white women to share rooms in these dorms. Also, very few housing contracts were available for Black students. In 1950, a Black student named Vivan Adams experienced a very notable instance of racism in the dorms when she was accused of stealing various items from students in her dormitory after several white women made derogatory comments towards Vivian, calling negros “gullible” and “easy prey” for white people when engaging in a conversation about real estate and gentrification processes.
What Can We Do Now?
This current problem of housing segregation is one that I have already classified as a Wicked Problem. In the Illinois Leadership Center sustainability workshop, participants learn more about Wicked Problems, and my hope is by speaking about Wicked Problems and bringing more awareness to the problems that this campus faces, it helps them to reach a broader audience. Like climate change, this is not a problem that can be solved by one person. It is a problem that the entire campus, community, and nation must come together to try to solve, so that this campus can create a more tolerant and diverse living arrangement on this campus, and so that Black students are not pushed to the outskirts of campus anymore like they have always been. Though this Wicked Problem is hard to solve, it doesn't mean that we should stop talking about it and try every day to make more progress as a people and as a campus community. The University Housing Leaders on this campus need to be the ones spreading awareness of this issue. It is an issue that should never stop being talked about. Leaders on campus should read more about the topic and history of housing discrimination in the Champaign-Urbana area and encourage others to do so as well. University Housing Leaders should also try to spread this massage and advocate for the elimination of modern-day housing segregation.
