The Cabrini-Green residents peering from their windows back in 1991 were suspicious. Outside, in a vacant lot surrounded by high-rises, a white man in khakis was scratching around in the dirt. He was slightly overweight, appeared to be in his early 40s, and had two little black kids hanging on his legs.
But to their suspicious parents, he seemed like some pied piper, explains Thomas Murdock, a pastor at a storefront church in the housing project. “The parents figured this guy was something like a Dahmer or something.”
Davis–who fancies himself a visionary, believing that if conditions don’t improve in impoverished black communities “we’ll have a civil war in 10 to 15 years”–has an abrasive manner. And he didn’t express much sympathy for the parents, believing they’d made conscious choices that hurt themselves and their children. “There are people who want to help the parents, but I’m not one,” he says. “If your arm is cut off and you’re bleeding to death because of your choice of activity, I can empathize. But so be it.”
On some paydays the children would surround Davis, distract him, and then steal his money. They tore up some of the equipment. Some of them spit at him, cursed him, and threatened him. “Kids would say to me, “I’m gonna get my brother’s gun and come down and shoot you.’ I’d say, “Better hurry up, ’cause I’m leaving in 20 minutes.’ I’d be as bold as they were. But there were some I didn’t say that to because they would have done it.”
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“Jack was working with undisciplined, one-parent-household, throw-kids-out-of-the-window kids,” Murdock says. “And he had no sense of how to interact with them. When you’re dealing with people down here who kill each other and shoot each other, a dollar in the hand is worth all them in the bush–because, hey, I could be gone tomorrow. And any suburban white guy down here is good pickin’s. Kids figure, he’s just down here for a little while. They seen his do-gooder kind before. So they beg him, threaten him, and get what they can while he’s passing through.”
Midway into the 1993 season Davis gave Underwood the job of gardening assistant. And Underwood, who still holds the position, became the authority figure the kids had to answer to. He hired, fired, and oversaw the children, while Davis managed the gardens and raised money. Underwood kicked the troublemakers and gangbangers out of Cabrini Greens, even though Davis petitioned to let them back in.
Davis, who’s 43 and single, lives in a small basement room he rents in a house in Northfield. Yet he’s the director of marketing at the Northbrook accounting firm Edwin C. Sigel. He says his austere lifestyle “is the reason I have a few bucks.”
