Cornell, St. Paul's host speaker who led Chicago neighborhood's revival
March 29, 2001
MOUNT VERNON -- A woman who helped lead a congregation's revival of its
Chicago neighborhood, which was victimized by riots and white flight in
the 1960s and 1970s, will speak Sunday, April 29, for an annual program
sponsored by Cornell College and St. Paul's United Methodist Church in
Cedar Rapids.
Mary Nelson, founding president and CEO of Bethel New Life Inc., a faith-based
community development corporation on Chicago's West Side, will speak at
St. Paul's and Cornell for the Small-Thomas Lecture Series, "Dreams
of Peace: Visions of the Future." The series addresses diversity
and community from a faith perspective. Public events are:
- 9:25 and 10:55 a.m. worship services at St. Paul's. Nelson will deliver
the sermons, on the role of churches and congregations in community organizing.
- 7 p.m. lecture in Hedges Conference Room, The Commons, Cornell. Nelson
will speak on her career in community organizing and community development.
Her appearance serves as the final installment in another Cornell lecture
series, "Community, Agency and Action: Social Change in the New Century."
Bethel New Life began in 1979 as a community ministry of Bethel Lutheran
Church, where Nelson's brother served as minister. Church members wanted
to fight the poverty and despair that plagued West Garfield Park in the
wake of the riots of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Homeowners, landlords,
banks, businesses and investors had fled the neighborhood. Church members
purchased an abandoned three-flat apartment building to renovate for housing.
More projects followed that built on the people, physical assets and faith
base of the community.
Today Bethel New Life employs several hundred people in programs that
include special-needs, single-family and multi-family housing development;
child and senior care; and employment training and placement services.
The largest project to date is the opening of the Beth-Anne Campus on
a 9.2-acre rehabilitated hospital site. The campus includes day care centers,
living facilities for low-income elderly, office space and a performing
arts center.
Nelson was born in Duluth, Minn., one of four children in a family headed
by a Lutheran minister and his activist wife. She was raised in Washington,
D.C., where her father led an inner-city church. Following graduation
from Gustavus Adolphus College she served two years as a schoolteacher
in Tanzania before moving to Chicago. She holds a doctorate from Union
Graduate School and a master's degree in urban education from Brown University.
In addition to serving on several community boards, Nelson sits on the
board of the National Congress for Community Economic Development, the
trade association for organizations working with distressed communities.
She has received numerous awards including the 1994 Century of Women Special
Achievement Award from Turner Broadcasting System/Sprint and the Humanitarian
Award from the Chicago chapter of the NAACP.
The Small-Thomas Lecture Series, now in its second year, was conceived
and funded by Richard Small, a past chair of the Cornell board of trustees
and a 1950 graduate, and his wife, honorary alumna and trustee Norma Thomas
Small. The lecture series honors Norma's father, Cecil Thomas, who was
Cornell buildings and grounds superintendent (1956-1973) and consultant
(1979-1991), and her mother, the late June Thomas.
Cornell is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Nelson replaces the previously announced speaker, Dolores Huerta, co-founder
of the United Farm Workers. She has cut back speaking engagements for
health reasons.
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