Pastor Jeffery Campbell has deep ties to Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. He was raised in the South Side neighborhood, and has served as pastor at Woodlawn Baptist Church for 22 years.
And for the past decade, he’s attempted to protect its residents from displacement and gentrification. He’s seen rising rents, residents squeezed by university development and life becoming more unaffordable. Now, there’s a new challenge: the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center – part of a 19-acre, $850m campus – that has transformed life in the neighborhood, as well as the adjacent South Shore and Hyde Park, long before this Friday’s opening to the public.
