Monday, September 24,

Obit: Florence (Giovangelo) Scala, 88, 'Heroine' led fight against Chicago City Hall in '60s

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Florence Scala was kind of a Rosa Parks of the Italian-American neighborhood, "Gutsy" is a word friends and family used to describe Scala. It all came down to the basic philosophy she lived by. "She had a great sense of compassion, of wanting people to be treated fairly, She had a vision of the community and city that centered around caring for one another."

 

In February 1961, the city announced plans to build a new campus for the University of Illinois on the Near West Side with a blueprint that would wipe out blocks of homes and businesses in the Italian American community. More than 800 houses and 200 businesses were effected.  

 

 In the prologue of  StudsTerkel's book "Division Street: America,"  he described the neighborhood's reaction as  "It was a bombshell,  What shocked us was the amount of land they decided to take. They were out to demolish our entire community."

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Florence Scala: 1918 - 2007

 

'Heroine' led fight against City Hall in '60s

 

Chicago Tribune

By Emma Graves Fitzsimmons

Tribune staff reporter

August 29, 2007

 

Florence Scala earned a place in Chicago lore in the 1960s, when she led the fight against Mayor Richard J. Daley's plan to demolish her Near West Side Italian neighborhood for a university campus.

 

Scala lost that battle, but she came to embody the struggle of regular people trying to preserve their communities.

 

She also became a recurring character in the work of Studs Terkel, who told the city's story through her eyes.

 

"She was my heroine," Terkel said on Tuesday. "She tried with intelligence and courage to save the soul of our city. She represented to me all that Chicago could have been."

 

Scala, 88, died of colon cancer early Tuesday, Aug. 28, in the same Taylor Street apartment where she grew up the daughter of an Italian tailor.

 

Downstairs from the apartment was her family's restaurant, Florence, which for a decade served some of the city's best grilled veal and pasta.

 

Though she lived most of her life on the same block, Scala led a exuberant life and was an essential part of the city's fabric. She got her start in community activism at the legendary Hull House, the social settlement started by Jane Addams.

 

She organized boisterous sit-ins at Mayor Richard J. Daley's fifth-floor City Hall office. Her home was bombed; she survived. She ran for alderman in the notoriously corrupt old 1st Ward, and lost badly.

 

"She was kind of a Rosa Parks of the Italian-American neighborhood, and she was just filled with joy and spirit," said syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, a reporter on the civil rights beat at the Chicago Daily News in the early 1960s. "She awakened that whole neighborhood."

 

Born Florence Giovangelo on Sept. 17, 1918, Scala and two brothers were raised by immigrant parents in what was for years a predominantly Italian neighborhood.

 

She visited Hull House six days a week until her marriage to Charles Scala, a bartender at downtown hotels. It was at Hull House that she learned about city planning and became committed to preserving her neighborhood and its culture.

 

In February 1961, the city announced plans to build a new campus for the University of Illinois on the Near West Side with a blueprint that would wipe out blocks of homes and businesses. In the prologue of Terkel's book "Division Street: America," Scala described the

neighborhood's reaction.

 

"It was a bombshell," she told Terkel. "What shocked us was the amount of land they decided to take. They were out to demolish our entire community."

 

Two days after the city's announcement, Scala organized more than 150 people in a march on City Hall. It was the beginning of her campaign as leader of the Harrison-Halsted Community Group, which for months fought the city at every step.

 

That April, about 50 women attended a three-hour sit-in at the late mayor's office. They pounded desks, threw council journals and hurled insults at Daley,according to a Tribune account. Scala told the angry crowd that the mayor was "going to understand what it is like to live in a real democracy," the Tribune's story said.

 

Decades later, Scala reflected on those days.

 

"We had no political savvy at all," she said in a 1992 Tribune story. "We did it mostly by intuition and anger." In the end, that wasn't enough. More than 800 houses and 200 businesses were razed to make way for the campus.

 

Among the victories claimed by Scala and her cohorts was persuading the university's trustees to preserve the original Hull House building as a memorial to Jane Addams.

 

Her battle also provided a model for future fights by threatened neighborhoods, Geyer said.

 

In October 1962, a bomb went off at Scala's home, wrecking three floors of porches and shattering bedroom windows. Who did it remains a mystery. She told the Tribune at the time, "I don't want to quit the fight, but I'm scared and sick and afraid for other people in the neighborhood."

 

In 1964, she ran as a write-in candidate for alderman of the old 1st Ward and got walloped by the Democratic machine's candidate. She worked as a picture editor at the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the IllinoisDepartment of Mental Health.

 

In 1980, Scala opened "Florence"  with her brother in the building where they grew up. It became a favorite spot for everyone from college students and professors to politicians over the next decade. Even Mayor Richard M. Daley become a frequent customer.

 

Mayor Daley said in a statement on Tuesday: "Florence Scala brought passion to everything she did and was committed to her community in a way all Chicagoans can emulate. She left her mark on our city."

 

Scala closed the restaurant in 1990, saying she was tired of working six days a week. Her husband had died five years earlier.

 

She remained a part of the dialogue when neighborhoods were in peril. When the old Maxwell Street market was threatened by the University of Illinois at Chicago's expansion in 1991, she wrote in the Tribune it should "be saved in some decent form -- not just a token,

chic little street shopping area. It should be just the way it is -- wild, crummy and gutsy."

 

"Gutsy" is a word friends and family used to describe Scala. It all came down to the basic philosophy she lived by, said nephew Steven Giovangelo, an Episcopal priest in Indianapolis.

 

"She had a great sense of compassion, of wanting people to be treated fairly," he said. "She had a vision of the community and city that centered around caring for one another."

 

Scala leaves no immediate survivors. Her family is planning a public memorial service.

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