Opinion

Divine purpose helped bring Chicago’s most-dangerous block back to life

Project H.O.O.D. and faith replaced gangs and violence on the south side of Chicago

By Corey Brooks Fox News

Published June 23, 2026 7:00am EDT

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For years, I have watched so-called experts look at the 6400 block of South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — O Block, Chicago's most dangerous block — and write it off. They prescribed programs, funding and initiatives. The funerals kept coming. Not much changed. They were wrong not about the problem but about the solution.  

What was dying on that block wasn't something a program could cure. It was hope.

I have seen children come into this world with a brightness in their eyes. That spark of life that you see in the big ole eyes of a baby. God-given, undeniable, unmistakable. Every one of them. And as the baby grows into a child or teen, I have watched that spark deaden into coal blackness. What happened in between? What killed that spirit? Was it hopelessness? Hate? The slow, grinding daily message that the world had already decided the child’s limits? 

Once that spark goes out, is that it? Is it over? The hope forever gone?

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