Chicago West Side

Chicago West Side is presented as a predominantly Black neighborhood where a short-term missions program invited visitors to encounter community work already underway. The place is not merely a backdrop for the program: visitors’ responses to it expose the racial assumptions shaping their idea of service, while Austin’s decisions show the practical labor required to protect the people and organizations who live and work there.

Setting and Purpose

Austin worked for a year at a short-term missions site on Chicago West Side. The program aimed to teach students about the many ways God was already working in Black neighborhoods through Black people. Its emphasis was on recognizing existing local work, not treating the neighborhood as an empty place awaiting outside help.

The site hosted about fifty people each week during the summer and smaller groups through the rest of the year. Most white participants arrived somewhat nervous, having never spent time in a predominantly Black community. Austin’s college-student staff generally helped them settle in; groups soon learned to move around the city and ride the El as they explored the neighborhood.

Visitors and the Program

A typical group arrived ready to get off the bus after a long drive, bringing brightly colored bags, blankets, pillows, and matching T-shirts. Staff welcomed them into an opening service, led worship songs and icebreakers, introduced the program, and gave them a tour of the church. Austin then usually met separately with parents for an orientation before sending participants to visit scheduled nonprofit partners.

This sequence linked the program’s welcome and instruction to encounters with organizations in the community. Its visitors were not simply being shown a place; they were meant to learn about the work of its residents and local institutions. That purpose depended on participants being willing to enter the neighborhood and meet the people doing that work.

The Troubled Visit

One group arrived differently. Instead of spilling off the bus, the young people stayed seated until Austin’s staff coaxed them inside. During the icebreakers, the youth pastor asked to speak with the program director. When Austin identified herself as the director, the pastor’s visible shock made clear that the group had not expected its leader to be a Black woman.

At a meeting with all six parents, Austin again introduced herself as the director. Their questions, which continued for about thirty minutes, began by asking who was really in charge, as though a white person might still appear, and ended with concern that Black gang members might kill them. The exchange turned fear of the neighborhood into doubt about Austin’s authority: in the parents’ assumptions, both the place and the Black woman directing their visit were untrustworthy.

Protection and Aftermath

The parents’ orientation would normally have led to a schedule of nonprofit visits. Austin instead told them that, given their discomfort, she wanted to enlarge their travel groups from four or five people to ten or twelve. She needed time to consult the partner-program directors and confirm new arrangements. The parents welcomed the change, unaware that Austin’s first concern was protecting the organizations from their offensive assumptions.

Austin redirected the group to a massive homeless shelter with strong religious underpinnings, which she expected the visitors to appreciate. The tour left little time for them to interact with people experiencing homelessness. Some participants returned genuinely moved, but that response did not repair the visit: about an hour after returning from the shelter, and only twenty-four hours into a planned weeklong trip, the youth pastor announced that the group was leaving. Fear of a Black neighborhood had defeated the program’s purpose.

The episode gives Chicago West Side a role beyond setting. The neighborhood’s work was the reason the program existed, yet the group’s fear threatened to carry harmful assumptions directly to the local organizations. Austin’s rerouting of the visit became a form of protection; the early departure, in turn, showed how little exposure to a different place could overcome a group’s prior fears. The contrast underscores the program’s central distinction between learning about Black communities and treating them as objects of suspicion.