SouthSide-Lawless

[Eyecee]

Whats Sup - ChiCity? This is your homeboy shouting all the way back from DC. Me and Obama (Hyde Park) are holding this place down.
There is so much I could talk & ask about, having been away from the South Side for some years now.
Here is my inquiry: Can anyone tell me anything about a photo of 4 to 5 young Black Boys (clean to the max) sitting on the hood of a 1940 Car. The picture is very popular and everyone has seen it at some time or another.
The picture has been known by various names: Easter Sunday - Sunday Morning - SouthSide Chicago- I personally call the picture "Boyz on the Hood"
Holler Back.

[Eyecee]

Whats Sup - ChiCity? This is your homeboy shouting all the way back from DC. Me and Obama (Hyde Park) are holding this place down.
There is so much I could talk & ask about, having been away from the South Side for some years now.
Here is my inquiry: Can anyone tell me anything about a photo of 4 to 5 young Black Boys (clean to the max) sitting on the hood of a 1940 Car. The picture is very popular and everyone has seen it at some time or another.
The picture has been known by various names: Easter Sunday - Sunday Morning - SouthSide Chicago- I personally call the picture "Boyz on the Hood"
Holler Back.
AKA - SouthSide Lawless (feel me?)

[Ed Zotti]

I'm guessing you must mean this photo:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...q8LZ3WNJ-qmOwM

It's got five kids, admittedly. I found a similar Easter Sunday picture with four kids but no car here:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...q8LZ3WNJ-qmOwM

Same photographer (Russell Lee), same day, might even be some of the same kids. (Is the kid in the middle on the car the kid on the left on the fence?) Either one of those what you had in mind?

[Eyecee]

Ed Z - You got it. This is the photo I am talking about, however I am trying to go deeper. Where exactly was the photo taken? and any other details known.

[Ed Zotti]

You can see a landscaped parkway in the background, so presumably this is a South Side boulevard. I don't recognize the building, though. Nicholas Lemann talks about the photo here:

http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1051

... but you can see he doesn't have much info.

[MikeS]

Here's a description from Google Books concerning Lee's Easter 1941 photographs:

The pair [Russell Lee and Edwin Rosskam] began their day at a Church of God in Christ congregation, where they took pictures before the worship service. They then moved down the street to catch Elder Lucy Smith preaching at All Nations Pentecostal Church. By the time they got to St. Edmund's Episcopal, the mass was over and the choir had begun the recessional. The photographers' last stop was Pilgrim Baptist, where they arrived only in time to take picture of worshipers leaving the church.

In a footnote, the author explains that "this narrative was constructed from internal evidence from the photographs and from church traditions on the South Side."

There's a Church of God in Christ on Garfield, between Indiana & Michigan. The building looks newer than 1941, but it's possible that they just moved next door or down the street from an older building. Google doesn't give me an unambiguous result for All Nations; St. Edmund's is at 61st & Michigan; and Pilgrim Baptist is at 33rd & Indiana. If I had to bet, I'd guess that the photo was taken in front of COGIC, but where the building stood exactly is unclear.

Also, props to those guys for wearing full suits in 82-degree weather.

[Ed Zotti]

My initial thought was that the photo was taken on Garfield Boulevard looking east. The parkway looks similar, and the light appears to be coming from the right, which in late morning in April would be to the south. I don't see anything recognizable using Google, which isn't surprising considering how many buildings are now gone. On looking at the photo more closely, though - here's a larger version:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KWR_gvxCig...h/scan0024.jpg

... a couple things strike me as odd: (1) the car is parked adjacent to the parkway, in what you'd think would be a through lane, and (2) if you look at the cars on the other side of the parkway, they appear to be headed toward the viewer. In other words, if this were Garfield Boulevard, they're going the wrong way. This got me wondering if this were a Logan Boulevard-type street with three roadways, a through road in the middle plus local access streets on either side. Offhand I can't think of any boulevards like that on the south side. OTOH, perhaps I'm overthinking this and the explanation is simply that traffic routing on Garfield Boulevard in 1941 was much different from now.

[MikeS]

Huh, you're right, Ed. The only place I know of on the South Side currently has the right kind of road configuration to match that photo is 55th St., between Drexel & University. A lot of things have changed in Hyde Park in the last 70 (!) years, though, especially via the U. of C.'s "urban renewal" efforts in the '50s and '60s. If this was where the picture was taken, I wouldn't expect any of the background buildings to match; that side-road shown in the map may not even have existed at the time.

[Mr Downtown]

Looks like 48th & King Drive, looking south on the east access road. Those are the towers of Corpus Christi Church in the background, a little shorter now than they were then.

[Ed Zotti]

Man, good eye. I feel stupid for not recognizing King Drive, but even now I'm having a hard time getting a fix on the exact location. You're thinking maybe a half block north of 48th? That would put the building with the Romanesque arches at the corner of 48th, where there's a vacant lot now. The buildings to the north of that would be the high-rise and parking deck. Too bad Google doesn't have a street view from the east access drive.

[jnglmassiv]

Originally Posted by Ed Zotti

Too bad Google doesn't have a street view from the east access drive.

This Northsider has limited familiarity with the area in question but I can offer this tool that all may not be aware of.

Bing.com maps has a function called 'Bird's eye" that shows an aerial oblique that might be useful.
Bing link I hope works
Let the map load, then mouseover 'aerial' and select 'Bird's eye'. There's some extra zoom and the rotation tool is neato.

[Ed Zotti]

Huh. You can get a street view with Bing as well, and they sent the camera down the east access drive. I can't get an exact match on the perspective, but I think that's because the Bing camera elongates things and is some distance off the ground. BTW, here's the best version of the Lee photo I've found so far:

http://theinvisibleagent.files.wordp...hicago1941.jpg

[thomas2708]

Originally Posted by Eyecee

Whats Sup - ChiCity? This is your homeboy shouting all the way back from DC. Me and Obama (Hyde Park) are holding this place down.
There is so much I could talk & ask about, having been away from the South Side for some years now.
Here is my inquiry: Can anyone tell me anything about a photo of 4 to 5 young Black Boys (clean to the max) sitting on the hood of a 1940 Car. The picture is very popular and everyone has seen it at some time or another.
The picture has been known by various names: Easter Sunday - Sunday Morning - SouthSide Chicago- I personally call the picture "Boyz on the Hood"
Holler Back.

[threeorange]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Looks like 48th & King Drive...

Or South Park Boulevard as King Drive was known until 1968.