Scala proved herself not only a capable community organizer but also an intrepid crusader.
Scala and her group successfully persuaded the university’s trustees to preserve the original Hull House building as a museum and memorial to Jane Addams, and the strategy that the Harrison-Halstead Community Group employed in defense of the neighborhood became a model for future battles for neighborhood preservation. The campaign was not a complete defeat, though. The city bulldozed more than 800 houses and 200 businesses to make way for the new University of Illinois campus. In the end the group’s efforts proved to be insufficient. Scala reportedly stated that they were going to make the mayor “understand what it is like to live in a real democracy.” They pounded on furniture, threw materials around and accosted Mayor Daley, who they viewed as having betrayed a community that had supported his political agenda. In additional to initiating legal action, Scala led other protests, including a women’s sit-in which 50 women took possession of the mayor’s office for three hours. Their battle lasted for many months and went all the way to the U.S. This led to her founding the Harrison-Halstead Community Group, which led the fight to stop the proposed building campaign. In a few short days Scala gather over 150 people and organized a protest march on City Hall. “They were out to demolish our entire community,” she stated. In an interview with Studs Terkel, Scala reports that the news of the neighborhood’s imminent demise hit the community like “a bombshell,” and that what shocked them the most was how much land the city planned to take. From the moment that the city announced its plans to raze blocks of houses and businesses in Scala’s community in 1961, she committed herself to preserving her neighborhood and its culture. While working at Hull House, she was encouraged to study urban planning, which provided her with a foundation for combatting a proposal to build a new campus for the University of Illinois Chicago in Taylor Street’s Little Italy. She was so grateful for the education she received there that she worked as a volunteer up to six days a week until her marriage to Charles Scala in 1954. Growing up her family was too poor to send her to school, so she began attending lessons at Hull House, where she met and befriended its founder, Jane Addams. She and her two brothers were the children of Italian immigrants who had settled on Taylor Street, a predominantly Italian neighborhood on Chicago’s near west side. Anyone who clings to the image of the self-sacrificing Italian mother and wife confined to the domestic sphere, or the belief that Italians are afflicted with “amoral familism” that renders them unable to transcend the immediate material interests of the family in support of the common good, needs to study the life of this extraordinary woman.įlorence Scala was born Florence Giovangelo on September 17, 1918. She launched a campaign that swayed public opinion and effected institutional change, in the face of fierce opposition and even personal threat. In defiance of commonly held stereotypes, Scala served as an advocate for the rights and well-being of her fellow Italian Americans. One woman who stands out, and on whom I wish to focus today, is Florence Scala. But with or without the statues, Chicago is home to a rich and vibrant Italian American community comprised of individuals who have made positive contributions to and have had a much more direct impact on the city than the fifteenth century Genovese explorer. In my adopted home city of Chicago, all of his statues have been removed, and it remains unclear whether or not they will ever be returned. In the twenty-first century, though, Columbus’s legacy has come under scrutiny. As noted by scholars of the Italian American experience (Connell, Deschamps, Ruberto, Sciorra), Italian immigrants through their cultural association with Columbus found a means to publicly celebrate themselves as participants in the foundation of their adopted nation and to counter widespread prejudices and discrimination against them. October is Italian-American heritage Month, chosen to coincide with the federal Columbus Day holiday, which in recent years has become a flashpoint for conflict about how we understand the “American Dream” and the values we espouse as citizens of the United States. Carla Simonini, Associate Professor, Modern Languages
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