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What the story missed, however, and what is the most outrageous aspect of the Chicago Review incident were the university’s ugly smears against the Catholic community and Catholic Church. These were embodied in the complaint that the church was critical of the university in those days over the then new Hyde Park urban renewal plan. According to the Reader article, U. of C. chancellor Larry Kimpton explained his discomfort with the Chicago Daily News columnist’s expose that the Chicago Review was publishing pornography because it might strengthen the influence of some angry Catholic priests from Back of the Yards who were critical of the urban renewal plan. They opposed the plan, Kimpton maintained, because they feared it would lead to “thousands of displaced blacks streaming into nearby white neighborhoods, especially the largely Catholic Back of the Yards not far from Hyde Park.” The porno issue might cause some Catholic aldermen to vote against the university’s urban renewal plan, Kimpton explained, and its defeat would be a disaster for the university and Hyde Park.
Egan’s criticism triggered one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the university and Hyde Park. Instead of dealing with the substance of Egan’s criticism, he and the church were attacked on the grounds that they had no right to speak on the issue and that they were motivated by simple racism, i.e., the desire to keep blacks from moving into white parishes. Apparently, the university did not regard the “whitening” impact of its own plan with the same critical eye.
As the years passed and it became clear to the university that TWO and Alinsky were no pushovers, the university’s plans for land clearance in Woodlawn were quietly shelved and the foundations for today’s more friendly relations with Woodlawn were laid.
