First Quarter Report, 2005
on Jay Ruby's Oak Park Research

Helena's Family - her mother, Jane Weyburn Saxby and brothers, Robert and Lewis

Distribution - One Step Forward Two Steps Back

I had assumed that the first two Oak Park Stories - Rebekah and Sophie and The Taylor Family - would be in circulation by now but they are not. I am told they will definitely be in distribution sometime in April. I will send out a notice via the OAKPARK listserv I manage. The question of who will review them has puzzled me. Authors can only suggest possible reviewers but their suggestyions are often accepted. This issue also begins up the question of marketing. Who would be interested in these digital ethnographies. There are a few visual anthropologists who would wish to critique the experimental format I utilized. Scholars interested in gay and Lesbian studies would be attracted to Rebekah and Sophie's Story and those involved with African American studies to the Taylor Family story. I have designed each of the CDs as separate entities based upon the assumption that few if any will be interested in all four of the ethnographies. This assumption caused me to build in some redundacies into each ethnography. Hopefully my assumptions will prove accurate.

Progress on Helena's Story

I have completed all of the transcriptions of the video interviews - took a long time but doing them myself was a way to really think about the content. I am now gathering material for some of the text modules and viewing the tapes that are not interviews such at the family at the famous Oak Park Market's Market. Helena's Story is about the culture that at one time dominated Oak Park - WASP. Considering that this culture constituted the power structure of the U.S. for a long time, I am astonished at the almost total lack of ethnographic work people like this. In place of ethnographies of middle-class culture - urban or suburban - we have studies middle-class pathologies such as the racism of "white" culture. I plan to critique this lack in some detail.

The Twilight of the WASP in Oak Park

In the now classic exploration of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture, E. Digby Baltzell (1964) contends that the Protestant establishment was the original U.S. ruling class.   They created a true aristocracy in that they accommodated others who demonstrated their abilities and willingness to adopt lifestyle of WASP culture regardless of their religion or ethnic origins.   Sometime around the end of the nineteenth century when the U.S. was flooded with Eastern and Southern Europeans, the world of the WASP became a caste closing its doors to all outsiders regardless of their potential or talent.   This closure eventually caused the Protestant Establishment to lose its cultural and political power by the end of the 1920s.  

I believe that Baltzell's hypothesis is useful to understand the history of change in Oak Park.   The founders of the village were indeed WASPs from New England.   They "ruled" Oak Park until the 1950s.   They were able to resist the city of Chicago's attempt to annex them at the end of the nineteenth century and thus resist outside control.   However, they could not fight off the Cook County political machines.   By the mid-twentieth century Oak Park officials became corrupt and mistrusted. Oak Parkers were fed up and created a new political structure to govern the village.   They instituted a village manager system where a professional manager was hired by an elected trustee council.   The VMA (Village Managers Association) was established to offer the electorate a slate of candidates for each local election.   The VMA was completely free of any outside attachments both Republican and Democratic.   It was not a ongoing organization but only emerged for elections.   For fifty years the VMA candidates won 90 percent of the elections.   What is interesting is that the WASPs who created the VMA realized they needed the support of the Catholics and Jews who had up to this point had been excluded and invited them to became part of the village aristocracy.   It worked.   Today the VMA seems to have run its course and will undoubtedly be replaced with other VMA-like organizations.

In the 1970s when Oak Park was trying to deal with issues of integration, the decision to create a managed integration system that Oak Park is now famous for caused many to flee to the lily-white western suburbs.   Realizing that this loss of a white population could spell disaster, ads were placed in places like MS magazine urging white liberals to move to Oak Park.   It worked and in the process Oak Park became less and less WASP.   These new Oak Parkers were welcomed and encouraged to participate in local politics.   Thus again opening up the ranks of the aristocracy to anyone with talent and interest.   Today the village council has a Greek-American trustee and an Italian/Jewish lesbian as council president A few WASPs remain.   Like the U.S. in general, the power of WASPs in Oak Park is fading but not because they became a closed caste but because they remained an aristocracy open to all who had the potential to lead causing a somewhat graceful transition.

Baltzell, E. Digby

As always I welcome your comments, criticisms and suggestions. Email me at ruby@acsworld.com