Death by Abandonment: Understanding North Lawndale's Historically High Homicide Rate

Drawing on twenty-seven interviews with community stakeholders in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, this research attempts to add context to the neighborhood’s historically high homicide rate. North Lawndale serves as an example of how neighborhood abandonment creates an environment that increases the possibilities of homicide. This abandonment comes in 4 larger forms: physical abandonment, abandonment of care, state abandonment and disinvestment, and the dissolution of traditional gangs. Through an in-depth qualitative study, this dissertation examined how these forms of abandonment of and in North Lawndale can best be understood as results of the dominant racial project. It finds that North Lawndale’s high homicide rate is significantly connected to the racial project of abandonment, including the idea that Blackness is violent and deserving of incarceration, poverty, avoidance, and abandonment.