28 Days of Black Liberation 2025 series
The first three chapters of People Wasn’t Made to Burn set the stage for the housing conditions that were killing tenants in Chicago in 1947 — the conditions that killed James Hickman’s four children.
The eight-person Hickman family lived in an overcrowded one-room attic “kitchenette” on the Lower West Side of Chicago. Months before the deadly fire, city inspectors, the fire and police department inspected the building and claimed it was “too dangerous a place to live.”
Other descriptions of housing conditions at the time quoted in the book were “Everything was allowed to fall apart: roofs leaked, broken windows weren’t replaced, and faulty wiring and broken water pipes were never repaired… no electricity, no gas, and only one window… overcrowded, dilapidated, rat-infested housing.”
Housing conditions and slumlord practices in 1947 have overwhelming similarity to 2025. But don’t be surprised. Because for landlords the function of housing under capitalism is the same as ever: an investment.
Where large property management companies and landlord barons control the majority of rental properties (such as in Ypsilanti with Beal Properties owning some 60% of rentals), a regime of landlord despotism arises: Terrible conditions, lack of basic utilities, poor general management, arbitrary punitive measures on tenants and, finally, evictions. Housing conditions are indeed rapidly deteriorating as fast as rents rise. For example, in the Ypsilanti Tenants Union we receive reports of ceilings caving in of apartments with $1,000+ rents, broken appliances and moldy infrastructure.
Under capitalism, housing can kill.
Chapter three also describes the conditions that tenants organized under. It’s in this chapter we meet Mike Bartell and Edith Bernstein, Socialist Worker’s Party tenant organizers, who sprang into action after learning of the West Washburn fire — writing articles, organizing public meetings, and making contact with the family and the neighboring tenants.