Created by the Roosevelt Administration, the New Deal and its Works Progress Administration create jobs and provide work for unemployed artists.

South Side businessman Golden B. Darby organizes the Community Art Center Committee to compete for a center through the Federal Art Project. Darby selects 3831 S. Michigan Avenue as the center’s desired location.

         - On October 25, the first official meeting of the Community Art Center Committee takes place at the Chicago Urban League office. George F. Thorp, director of the Federal Art Project of Illinois, and Peter Pollack, an official with the Federal Art Project of Illinois and an art dealer, attend the meeting. Metz Lochard, an editor at the Chicago Defender, introduces Pollack to Pauline Kigh Reed, a social worker who introduces Pollack to artists at the South Side Settlement House. Pollack serves as a liaison with community groups supporting the development of the center and becomes its first administrative director. Members of the Arts Craft Guild, the sole group of African American visual artists in the community, attend the meeting. Members included artists Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor, Bernard Goss, Charles White, William Carter, Joseph Kersey and Archibald Motley, Jr.

         - Committee members begin to raise funds for the center. Bronzeville residents give generously through fundraising events like performances, parties, lectures and exhibitions held throughout the community. Margaret Burroughs holds a famous “Mile of Dimes” fundraiser on South Parkway, now Martin Luther King Drive.

"We had no place to exhibit, so some of us got together, and we decided what we would do was try to get a place. We decided that we needed to get the money to buy the [SSCAC] building, so I and quite a few of the other young artists … we got collection cans.”

-Dr. Margaret Taylor Burroughs — SSCAC founder, visual artist, writer, poet, educator, and arts organizer

The South Side Community Art Center acquires its building at 3831 S. Michigan Avenue — a large house commissioned in 1892 by George A. Seaverns, Jr. and designed by architect Gustav Hallberg. Renovation planning begins, and designers Hin Bredendieck and Nathan Lerner, from the New Bauhaus School of Design, remodel the mansion’s interior with classrooms, lecture and performance halls, and a gallery. WPA craftsmen create furniture specifically for the space. On December 15, SSCAC opens its doors. The inaugural exhibition includes paintings that were displayed at the American Negro Exposition held in Chicago earlier that year, including the works of Henry Avery, William Carter, Charles White, Archibald Motley, Jr., Joseph Kersey, Margaret Burroughs, Bernard Goss and William McBride.

All federal funding for the Federal Art Project ceases, eliminating the administrative director position at SSCAC. Despite this, programs continue at the center thanks to the support of donors.

During the Cold War and the Red Scare, there are rumors of “un-American” activities taking place at the center. The executive board bans artists and their associates from the center in order to end the rumors. Artist Fitzhugh Dinkins and fellow artists protest the board’s decision by sitting on the center’s steps prior to establishing a workshop across the street.

         - During this decade, a few dedicated board members and emerging artists uphold the mission of the center and are able to keep it open on a part-time basis. The center is the only place in Chicago where minority artists can regularly exhibit their work.

A 'Black Artists Doing (BAD) Costume Ball is held on Saturday March 25th.

On November 7, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named SSCAC a National Treasure.

With help from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and the Fund II Foundation, SSCAC receives masonry cleaning work and original window restoration.