West Side Christian Parish (Chicago, Ill.) records

Descriptive Summary

Repository: Chicago History Museum

Research Center

1601 North Clark Street

Chicago, IL 60614-6038
Creator: West Side Christian Parish (Chicago, Ill.), Benedict, Don, 1917-, Hargraves, J. Archie, Owens, Raymond Lee, Chicago City Missionary Society of the Congregational Churches, Community Renewal Society (Chicago, Ill.), East Harlem Protestant Parish (New York, N.Y.), Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities
Bib number: 00067264
Title: West Side Christian Parish (Chicago, Ill.) records
Dates: 1945-1968
Predominant Dates: 1952-1962
Quantity: 3.5 linear ft. (8 boxes)
Call number: MSS Lot W
Language: English

Restriction(s)

This collection is open for research use.

Terms governing use

Copyright may be retained by the creators of items, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law, unless otherwise noted.

Provenance statement

Received from Alan Anderson (accession #: M1977.0041). Materials collected and questionnaires administered by Raymond Owens.

Please cite this collection as

West Side Christian Parish (Chicago, Ill.) records (Chicago History Museum) plus a detailed description, date, and box/folder number of a specific item.

Collection Summary

Scrapbooks, questionnaires, interviews, meeting minutes, reports, speeches, press releases, newsletters, brochures, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, correspondence, and other records related to the West Side Christian Parish (WSCP), an interdenominational religious and social service organization. Includes materials collected and interviews of WSCP employees conducted by Raymond Owens, whose master's thesis on the organization is included in the collection. Also present are articles, speeches, and other papers pertaining to Rev. Donald Benedict, co-founder of the WSCP and head of Chicago City Missionary Society (CCMS), as well as administrative records and publications related to the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities (LCMOC), mostly on the subject of racial discrimination in housing.

Biographical/historical note

The West Side Christian Parish was an interdenominational, multi-service agency serving impoverished neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side. WSCP was founded in 1952 by Donald Benedict and J. Archie Hargraves as a subsidiary of the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York and was sponsored by the Chicago City Missionary Society (later known as the Community Renewal Society). WSCP offered religious services in storefront churches, as well as a variety of community and social services, including youth programs, and employment and housing assistance. Leaders of the WSCP were active in the civil rights and anti-war movements. WSCP was at one-time located at 1613 West Washington Street.

Related material

Related materials at Chicago History Museum, Research Center, include publications of the Chicago City Missionary Society, cataloged separately; and the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities records.

Other Finding Aids

Finding aid also submitted to the Explore Chicago Collections portal.

Indexed Terms

Organization and Arrangement of Collection

The collection is arranged in four series:

Series 1. General materials, 1945-1968 (box 1-4)

Series 1 consists of scrapbooks, brochures, pamphlets, programs, newsletters, articles, newspaper clippings, speeches, scripts, reports, financial statements, correspondence, and other records of the West Side Christian Parish (WSCP). Included are programs for services held at Roosevelt Community Church and Church of the Holy Trinity, the organizing statement of the parish council, and a script for a play presented by the WSCP. Also present are brochures, pamphlets, newsletters, newspapers, speeches, reports, and other publications related to community and religious organizations on topics including race, religion, and housing integration. Some materials pertain to Reverend Donald Benedict, co-founder of the WSCP and director of the Chicago City Missionary Society (CCSM), including correspondence, notes, and a manuscript draft. Some materials pertain to the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York, of which the WSCP was an offshoot. The majority of the series consists of scrapbooks (1950-1962) compiled by Raymond Owens; the scrapbooks contain organizational histories, newspaper clippings, reports, newsletters, minutes, by-laws, a hymnbook, and other materials documenting the WSCP.

Series 2. Leadership Council materials, 1959-1968 (box 4-5)

Series 2 contains correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, committee member lists, notes, questionnaires, reports, press releases, and other administrative records of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities (LCMOC), an organization that advocated for fair housing practices. Present are research materials, articles, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and newsletters, including some materials created and/or distributed by the LCMOC, chiefly pertaining to housing discrimination. Includes also speeches and papers by Donald Benedict and materials related to the Chicago City Missionary Society.

Series 3. Employee study materials, 1950-1963 (box 5-7)

Series 3 consists of questionnaires, tabulations, interviews, correspondence, notes, and other records from a study of WSCP employees conducted by Raymond Owens in fulfillment of his master's thesis at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Questionnaires (1950-1962) contain biographical information, measures of employee satisfaction, and evaluations of WSCP programs. Also included are transcripts of interviews with Dave Wright, Julius Belser, Bill Lovell, and J. Archie Hargraves.

Series 4. Thesis and drafts, 1962 & undated (box 8)

Series 4 contains drafts and a final copy of the thesis written by Raymond Owens in fulfillment of his master's degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, titled An Analytic History of the Sectarian Orientation in the Ministry of West Side Christian Parish. Also present are papers describing Owens' quantitative research methodology, as well as an autobiography by Donald Benedict, titled Rebel with a Cause.

Detailed list of contents of the collection

Series 1. General materials

1945-1968

Box 1-3

Title: General materials
Dates: 1945-1968

Box 4

Title: General materials and Leadership Council materials
Dates: 1945-1968

Series 2. Leadership Council materials

1959-1968

Box 4

Title: General materials and Leadership Council materials
Dates: 1945-1968

Box 5

Title: Leadership Council materials and Employee study materials, 1950-1968
Dates: 1945-1968

Series 3. Employee study materials

1950-1963