Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference

The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC) was formed in 1949 to stem growing physical decay of neighborhoods and to promote better race relations in the community. Following World War II, the South-Side Chicago neighborhood was one of many American communities affected by the nation's housing shortage. The housing problem was aggravated in Hyde Park and Kenwood by illegal conversions of single-family residences into smaller units, and by a general decline in the maintenance of properties. The rapid immigration of African Americans from the southern United States to Chicago complicated matters, fueling tensions between neighbors and precipitating "panic pedaling" and "white flight" in previously white, middle-class neighborhoods.

On November 8, 1949 concerned white and African-American citizens met at the First Unitarian Church of Chicago to discuss these pressing issues. The meeting was presided over by Rev. Leslie T. Pennington, and included forty participants representing local faith-based organizations, various human relations commissions, business leaders, and University of Chicago faculty members and students. Confident that white and African-American people could live peacefully together, and convinced that urban decay was a mutual problem, attendees called for a new community organization whose goal was "to build and maintain a stable interracial community of high standards."

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