Mary McDowell in Back of the Yards
Southwest Side
In 1894, Mary McDowell moved to Back of the Yards, an industrial neighborhood in Far Southwest Chicago. She spent over three decades living with the immigrant community and helping them improve their environment and quality of life as head resident of the University of Chicago Settlement House.
The community was made up of Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak, Czech, and other immigrants living near the Union Stock Yard, where many of them worked. A Romani community living in the area was documented in a photo album created by social reformer James L. Minnick when he visited the Chicago Settlement around 1900. Hispanic and African American communities joined the population and the settlement activities in the following decades.
Mary McDowell and the University of Chicago Settlement provided kindergarten education, English lessons, vocational schools, bathing facilities, and social programs for the neighborhood. As McDowell learned of the many challenges faced by the the community, she found that the best way to improve living conditions was to organize the people and educate them on their political rights. She coordinated men and women's clubs, encouraging them to put pressure on local officials to fix local problems. McDowell recognized the benefit of labor unions in improving working conditions and helped a group of 20 women form Local 183 of Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. She joined workers in the 1904 stockyard strike, earning the moniker, "Fighting Mary."
