I just found the attached despite its having been published in 1988. It’s by far the most plausible explanation of the origins of term “Juneway Jungle” I’ve heard.

The last paragraph I take issue with. The area was widely and affectionately known as the “Juneway Jungle” or just “the jungle” in ’68, at least by NU students and the Loyola students I knew. Probably well before too, although that predates my first hand knowledge.

No doubt some “Archie Bunker types” appropriated the name “Juneway Jungle” for racial reasons. But they didn’t resurrect it and did so at a later time. The area was quite diverse in the late 60’s / early 70’s and the black population was in no way disproportionate. In fact, it was relatively small. I’d guess maybe 10% based on personal observation. No one could have reasonably characterized the area as anything even remotely approaching “ghetto” as late as ’72. True, it’s hard to notice gradual change, but I didn’t even notice a change in the general character of the neighborhood in the years I lived there.

From http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/who-killed-jay-brunkella/Content?oid=871829

To some people it's the Jungle, or the Juneway or the Jonquil Jungle. Most people seem to assume that this designation is somewhat racist. But a woman who lived in the area for more than 50 years explains that the name originated with a hobo camp that sprang up when a railroad was pushed through the area in the late 1800s. The hobo jungle moved on. The name lingered.

During World War II the name surfaced again. Evanston and most of the other towns on the North Shore were dry. The area around Howard and Paulina held the first legal drinking spots south of Waukegan. The North Shore railroad stopped at Howard Street, just west of Paulina. It also stopped at Fort Sheridan and at the Great Lakes naval base. The results were not surprising. During the war the area ran wide open. More than 40 bars lined the two streets. The woman remembers that the MPs and shore patrol took to keeping a few railroad cars waiting on a siding. When things got out of hand, as they often did, the unruly were loaded onto the cars for an unscheduled trip back north. She remembers that a visiting serviceman was supposed to have said he'd felt safer in the jungles of Guadalcanal than he did in the one along Howard and Paulina.

The war ended and college students replaced soldiers on the bar stools and again the name was all but forgotten.

In the late 1960s blacks started to move in. It was then, the woman says, that Archie Bunker types resurrected the old name. Nobody who loves the neighborhood calls it the Jungle, she says.