Meet Your Neighbors

Naomi Davis: growing green practices

Naomi Davis has a grand vision for the Calumet region: to connect people to the land, celebrate the area’s natural and cultural heritage, and turn it around economically for the residents.

Davis, an attorney, spent six years examining what it would take to create self-sustaining African-American communities. “Somewhere along the line,” she says, “I resolved that the new green economy should play a fundamental role.”

A native of Queens, New York, and a granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, Davis is a child of the 1960s and still holds to those grand ideals. She launched Blacks in Green, a “global green practices collective,” on Earth Day 2007. BIG aspires to get African-Americans nationwide involved in green economic development. It holds monthly educational and networking events, and offers a green curriculum and green job training programs for schools and community organizations. Davis hosts The BIG Show, the Chicago region’s first green-focused television program, on CAN-TV, which programs five public access cable channels in Chicago.

The Calumet area is a potential showcase for BIG ideas, including the redevelopment of the 50-acre Ton Farm, on the Little Calumet River, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves fleeing to Canada. Davis has been working since 2006 with the Chicago/Calumet Underground Railroad Effort (C/CURE) to make the site a focal point for a 1,000-acre green community that would feature a museum, a theater, restaurants and lodging, as well as a greenhouse and horticultural academy.

The development would stoke the economic prospects of the surrounding neighborhood, Riverdale, a blighted area where the median income is just $13,500. Where many would see only problems, Davis sees opportunity. She has her eye on the possible 2016 Chicago Olympics as a deadline for having a bustling “green tourism” destination in the area, surrounded by affordable green housing. “This is about open space, people having jobs and careers they can walk to, and creating the possibility of a deep connection with the land and the cultural heritage,” she says. “And poetically, it’s the neighborhood where President Obama began his community organizing.”

Blacks in Green has begun working with Our Lady of the Gardens School in the neighborhood to offer resources for environmental learning, and has been invited by the Golden Gate Homeowners’ Association to help them green their neighborhood. Renowned architect, planner, and author Doug Farr has agreed to partner with BIG and C/CURE in their educational outreach. In 2008, BIG partnered with the school to host a successful Green Jobs Now event, and the City of Chicago Department of Environment approved a small grant for community visioning for the area.

— Stephanie Folk