Shel Trapp

Shel Trapp with his dog, Big Guy

Template:TOCnestleft Shel Trapp (born 1935, died Oct. 18, 2010) was a community organizer in Chicago for thirty-five years. He served as director of two of the best known Alinsky-style organizations: Organization for a Better Austin (OBA) and the Northwest Community Organization (NCO). He later organized a powerful coalition in Chicago known as the West Side Coalition. He has also served as national coordinator of the National Training and Information Center which provides training, information, consultation and technical assistance for organizers, community leaders and grassroots organizations, and as director of the Chicago Area Services Program.^[1]

Community Organizing

Trapp explains how he became involved in community organizing,

"I went into the ministry thinking that the church was a vehicle for social change. In 1964 I went down south and as a Methodist minister was arrested for attempting to go to worship at a Methodist Church in Jackson MS, because I was with a black person. After a week in jail, when I got back home my District Superintendent said to me, "Shel if you keep doing these things you will never get a suburban church." Having never equated the Gospel or success with "getting a suburban church", I left the ministry."

Shel Trapp was then trained as a community organizer by Tom Gaudette, and stated that the civil rights movement was very influential upon his organizing career.^[2]

Trapp listed some of his key organizing accomplishments as follows:

Winning of busing of 500 black kids from class rooms with 70 kids per room to the all white Northwest side of Chicago classrooms of 27 kids per room, in 1968. That was the first time a Black Community in the city of Chicago had ever beat the Chicago Board of Education.
Wining 3000 jobs for Hispanics from Illinois Bell, in 1971.
Starting the National Training and Information Center and National People's Action in 1972.
Training at least 14 directors of community organizations, that I can remember, and many, many organizers.
Being of assistance in the forming of ADAPT, a disabled organization out of Denver Colorado.