Chicago Boys and Girls Club records

Scope and Content

This description does not include unprocessed additions to the collection.

Scope and Content

Correspondence, minutes, memoranda, reports, announcements, maps, surveys, financial records, phonograph records, newsclippings, and other administrative files of the Chicago Boys and Girls Club's central office, primarily relative to fundraising, policy making, expansion and equipping of the neighborhood Boys and Girls Clubs, and coordination of their activities. Topics include recreation and team and individual sports; camping at Camp Lucerne and Winona Lake Camp in Indiana and Kemah-Crane Camp in Wisconsin; juvenile delinquency, gangs, social group work; race relations; cooperation with other social service organizations, particularly the YMCA, the Chicago Area Project (1930s), and the Chicago Council of Social Agencies (later the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago); neighborhood needs assessments, and in the 1960s, participation in federal anti-poverty programs. Correspondents include administrators of CBGC, particularly John H. Witter, Irving Rudolph, Joseph N. Clemens, and Fred Lickerman; Boy's Clubs of America and other national and professional organizations with which the staff was associated; and many Chicagoans who have been CBGC supporters, including Ralph A. Bard, the Crane family, William H. Regnery, William M. Spencer, W. Clement Stone (president of the CBC in the 1960s), and Robert E. Wood.

The neighborhood clubs have been particularly active in several Chicago communities: Near West Side, Lower West Side, South Lawndale, East Garfield Park, Bridgeport, Woodlawn, Avondale, Logan Square, Lincoln Park, and Uptown. The constituency of the clubs reflected neighborhood population changes, including youths from white, immigrant and ethnic groups in the early years and beginning in the late 1940s, more Latino and African American youths. Also present are materials on the Off-the-Streets Club (1960s), which was not one of the CBC's clubs.