My hometown of Oak Park, IL., is all in for Black Lives
Matter and I’m not at all surprised. Because the nearly all-white suburb where
I went to high school became a rarity in America: a racially integrated
community.
Oak Park is the first suburb west of Chicago, birthplace of
Ernest Hemingway and workplace of Frank Lloyd Wright: an attractive community
of around 50,000 with graceful vintage houses and apartment buildings. It
became a social experiment in the 1970s when it bucked the trend of
resegregation to embrace intentional integration.
Saul Alinsky, the legendary community organizer, defined integration as the time between when the first black moves in and the last white moves out. That’s what was happening in Chicago in the 1960s: Unscrupulous real-estate agents fanned racial fears with blockbusting tactics to buy houses at bargain prices from frightened white families and resell them to blacks on lucrative installment contracts. I saw this happen on the West Side and covered it as a reporter for a community newspaper. Urban experts were predicting that much of Oak Park would be all-black in a few years.
But Oak Park had some things going for it. As a separate
municipality it had an honest, nonpartisan village government — unlike Chicago
neighborhoods neglected for decades by corrupt politicians. Its public school
system was one of the best in the country (which is why my parents moved there
in the 1950s). In 1968 the village enacted a fair housing ordinance that
committed the community to racial integration.
When Kathy and I bought our first house in Oak Park in 1969
people were a little nervous. The fair housing ordinance had prompted a few
people to move. When we moved in some of the neighbors were relieved that we were
white.
The fair housing ordinance quickly evolved into a stated
community strategy: If you want to live in an all-white or all-black neighborhood, you have
plenty of choices. Oak Park is going to be a place where people value
integration.
How it worked
Making integration happen entailed a dizzying list of
initiatives supported by widespread citizen participation. We were immediately
immersed in what amounted to a movement to transform the entire community.
- To counter real estate misconduct the village government banned for-sale signs and prohibited steering white buyers to one neighborhood and blacks to another. An innovative equity insurance program offered to reimburse homeowners if racial change reduced the value of their property.
- The police force was increased to counter the crime beginning to spill over from Chicago and assure residents that racial change would not diminish public safety. The schools adopted a voluntary integration plan to ensure racial balance in every school.
- A nonprofit referral service for apartment rentals — half of the village’s housing units — used reverse steering to encourage blacks to move into mostly-white neighborhoods and whites to move to integrated areas. The village stepped up enforcement of housing codes and purchased blighted apartment buildings for renovation and resale. A beautification program gave awards to homeowners who fixed up their houses.
- A flurry of public works projects included a new village hall, new street lights and cul-de-sacs to reduce traffic on residential streets. The village government organized block parties, community festivals and a farmers’ market. An economic development program attracted new shops and restaurants, converted a downtown street to a pedestrian mall and used Oak Park’s Frank Lloyd Wright architecture to attract tourism.
- Citizen participation went on steroids because every initiative involved a commission, committee or task force. Hundreds of people were working on village projects and new residents, black and white, were quickly recruited and engaged.
- Kathy joined a women’s group that developed the equity assurance program and posed as a house-hunter to test realtors’ compliance with the anti-steering law. I served on a planning committee, a street lighting task force and the economic development board. We both were active in a citizens group that pushed to expand the police force.
None of these improvements happened automatically. Every new
program was debated, often argued, at village board meetings that routinely ran
for hours. Nor were Oak Parkers a bunch of wild-eyed radicals: Most public
officials in those days were moderate Republicans. But the village government
was stubbornly nonpartisan and the commitment to integration transcended
politics.
Living with integration
Within a few years Oak Park became an exciting place to live
where good things were happening. In 1972 the experts still were predicting
that Oak Park would resegregate, but Kathy and I had enough confidence in what
was going on to buy a bigger house. Best investment we ever made.
Even though Oak Park’s black population was only around 10
percent at that point (18 percent today), we got acquainted with African-Americans
as neighbors, fellow committee members and participants in informal strategy
sessions that quickly became social gatherings. Our kids went to school with
black kids and had black teachers. Virtually every neighborhood in the village
was integrated: The block-by-block resegregation people had feared never
happened.
Shortly after we
bought our second house, we got a visit from an unenlightened relative who immediately
asked: “How close are the N_____?” “Three doors away,” I replied. The
look on his face was priceless.
Oak Park residents, especially the many who were involved in
community activities, quickly developed a comfort level with integration
because the African-Americans we encountered were middle-class homeowners who
had moved to Oak Park for the schools, just as we did. The community’s
commitment to integration made it a magnet for like-minded people: university
professors, community activists who had been displaced from resegregated city
neighborhoods and ordinary folks, black and white, who thought integration was
a good idea.
Oak Park also attracted racially mixed couples and white
families who had adopted black children. In later years the commitment to
racial integration extended to LBGTQ tolerance and we saw an influx of gay
couples, some of whom started businesses.
By the end of the decade integration in Oak Park was
considered a success even though Chicago’s crime-ridden ghetto was literally
across the street. The real estate market figured out that the village was not
going to resegregate and property values increased. The equity assurance
program was never used because everybody who sold a house made money. As did
we, when we left Oak Park in 1992 for a suburban ranch house that accommodated
Kathy’s disabilities.
Aftermath
I continue to follow Oak Park events and the community still
is a work in progress. People appear to be as involved as ever and arguing
continues to be the most popular pastime. There are some challenges we had not
anticipated in the 1970s.
Oak Park’s integration started as a middle-class
proposition. Black residents were middle-class for the most part — nobody
moved there from the housing projects — and economic differences were not part
of the equation. In those days the threat of resegregation made Oak Park houses
a bargain. Today’s prices are much higher and so are property taxes. There may
be a wider class diference today between homeowners and apartment renters and
more concern for economic diversity.
At the same time Oak Park, like other close-in suburbs, is
urbanizing. The quiet downtown shopping district has been transformed with
high-rise buildings and heavy traffic. Many apartments have been converted to
condos.
The high school, as shown in a recent documentary series, is wrestling with differences in academic achievement between black and white kids. They’re working on it — really hard — but there’s no easy solutiion.
Today’s residents and community leaders appear to be as
committed to integration as ever but, inevitably, view it from a different
perspective. Oak Park’s generation of integration pioneers saw Chicago
resegregate and many had experienced it first-hand. Their attitudes toward
civil rights had been shaped in the 1960s, and they took decisive action as a
matter of community survival. Today’s leaders inherited a successful community
and may be tempted to consider integration a done deal.
Oak Park is a more political place than it was 50 years ago, like the rest of the country. Moderate Republican and Democrat public officials have been supplanted by ardent progressives. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass pokes fun at what he calls the People’s Republic of Oak Park.
Today’s hyper-racialized culture did not exist in the 1970s. For all the arguing that accompanied Oak Park’s transition to integration, people rarely accused each other of racism. Perhaps we assumed — naively, in retrospect — that the act of living in Oak Park was a commitment to racial justice and that everyone was trying their best not to be racist. We also had seen actual racists attacking Martin Luther King on Chicago’s Southwest Side a few years earlier. I suspect attitudes are different today.
Integration worked in Oak Park because residents were
willing to embrace social engineering to make it happen, sometimes at the
expense of individual rights. When for-sale signs bans were declared
unconstitutional, local realtors continued to observe the ban voluntarily
because they were willing to suspend their right to post signs for the greater
good of integration. The practice of steering black and white newcomers to
different neighborhoods to preserve racial balance, while not mandatory, could
be viewed as an affront to the right to live wherever you choose.
So far Oak Park’s commitment to integration appears to be intact. The village continues to be an attractive place to live despite soaring housing prices, complete with Covid-precaution rules for block parties. And new generations of Oak Parkers are addressing old and new issues with passionate argument.
Experiment in integration
My hometown of Oak Park, IL., is all in for Black Lives Matter and I’m not at all surprised. Because the nearly all-white suburb where I went to high school became a rarity in America: a racially integrated community.
Oak Park is the first suburb west of Chicago, birthplace of Ernest Hemingway and workplace of Frank Lloyd Wright: an attractive community of around 50,000 with graceful vintage houses and apartment buildings. It became a social experiment in the 1970s when it bucked the trend of resegregation to embrace intentional integration.
Saul Alinsky, the legendary community organizer, defined integration as the time between when the first black moves in and the last white moves out. That’s what was happening in Chicago in the 1960s: Unscrupulous real-estate agents fanned racial fears with blockbusting tactics to buy houses at bargain prices from frightened white families and resell them to blacks on lucrative installment contracts. I saw this happen on the West Side and covered it as a reporter for a community newspaper. Urban experts were predicting that much of Oak Park would be all-black in a few years.
But Oak Park had some things going for it. As a separate municipality it had an honest, nonpartisan village government — unlike Chicago neighborhoods neglected for decades by corrupt politicians. Its public school system was one of the best in the country (which is why my parents moved there in the 1950s). In 1968 the village enacted a fair housing ordinance that committed the community to racial integration.
When Kathy and I bought our first house in Oak Park in 1969 people were a little nervous. The fair housing ordinance had prompted a few people to move. When we moved in some of the neighbors were relieved that we were white.
The fair housing ordinance quickly evolved into a stated community strategy: If you want to live in an all-white or all-black neighborhood, you have plenty of choices. Oak Park is going to be a place where people value integration.
How it worked
Making integration happen entailed a dizzying list of initiatives supported by widespread citizen participation. We were immediately immersed in what amounted to a movement to transform the entire community.
None of these improvements happened automatically. Every new program was debated, often argued, at village board meetings that routinely ran for hours. Nor were Oak Parkers a bunch of wild-eyed radicals: Most public officials in those days were moderate Republicans. But the village government was stubbornly nonpartisan and the commitment to integration transcended politics.
Living with integration
Within a few years Oak Park became an exciting place to live where good things were happening. In 1972 the experts still were predicting that Oak Park would resegregate, but Kathy and I had enough confidence in what was going on to buy a bigger house. Best investment we ever made.
Even though Oak Park’s black population was only around 10 percent at that point (18 percent today), we got acquainted with African-Americans as neighbors, fellow committee members and participants in informal strategy sessions that quickly became social gatherings. Our kids went to school with black kids and had black teachers. Virtually every neighborhood in the village was integrated: The block-by-block resegregation people had feared never happened.
Shortly after we bought our second house, we got a visit from an unenlightened relative who immediately asked: “How close are the N_____?” “Three doors away,” I replied. The look on his face was priceless.
Oak Park residents, especially the many who were involved in community activities, quickly developed a comfort level with integration because the African-Americans we encountered were middle-class homeowners who had moved to Oak Park for the schools, just as we did. The community’s commitment to integration made it a magnet for like-minded people: university professors, community activists who had been displaced from resegregated city neighborhoods and ordinary folks, black and white, who thought integration was a good idea.
Oak Park also attracted racially mixed couples and white families who had adopted black children. In later years the commitment to racial integration extended to LBGTQ tolerance and we saw an influx of gay couples, some of whom started businesses.
By the end of the decade integration in Oak Park was considered a success even though Chicago’s crime-ridden ghetto was literally across the street. The real estate market figured out that the village was not going to resegregate and property values increased. The equity assurance program was never used because everybody who sold a house made money. As did we, when we left Oak Park in 1992 for a suburban ranch house that accommodated Kathy’s disabilities.
Aftermath
I continue to follow Oak Park events and the community still is a work in progress. People appear to be as involved as ever and arguing continues to be the most popular pastime. There are some challenges we had not anticipated in the 1970s.
Oak Park’s integration started as a middle-class proposition. Black residents were middle-class for the most part — nobody moved there from the housing projects — and economic differences were not part of the equation. In those days the threat of resegregation made Oak Park houses a bargain. Today’s prices are much higher and so are property taxes. There may be a wider class diference today between homeowners and apartment renters and more concern for economic diversity.
At the same time Oak Park, like other close-in suburbs, is urbanizing. The quiet downtown shopping district has been transformed with high-rise buildings and heavy traffic. Many apartments have been converted to condos.
The high school, as shown in a recent documentary series, is wrestling with differences in academic achievement between black and white kids. They’re working on it — really hard — but there’s no easy solutiion.
Today’s residents and community leaders appear to be as committed to integration as ever but, inevitably, view it from a different perspective. Oak Park’s generation of integration pioneers saw Chicago resegregate and many had experienced it first-hand. Their attitudes toward civil rights had been shaped in the 1960s, and they took decisive action as a matter of community survival. Today’s leaders inherited a successful community and may be tempted to consider integration a done deal.
Oak Park is a more political place than it was 50 years ago, like the rest of the country. Moderate Republican and Democrat public officials have been supplanted by ardent progressives. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass pokes fun at what he calls the People’s Republic of Oak Park.
Today’s hyper-racialized culture did not exist in the 1970s. For all the arguing that accompanied Oak Park’s transition to integration, people rarely accused each other of racism. Perhaps we assumed — naively, in retrospect — that the act of living in Oak Park was a commitment to racial justice and that everyone was trying their best not to be racist. We also had seen actual racists attacking Martin Luther King on Chicago’s Southwest Side a few years earlier. I suspect attitudes are different today.
Integration worked in Oak Park because residents were willing to embrace social engineering to make it happen, sometimes at the expense of individual rights. When for-sale signs bans were declared unconstitutional, local realtors continued to observe the ban voluntarily because they were willing to suspend their right to post signs for the greater good of integration. The practice of steering black and white newcomers to different neighborhoods to preserve racial balance, while not mandatory, could be viewed as an affront to the right to live wherever you choose.
So far Oak Park’s commitment to integration appears to be intact. The village continues to be an attractive place to live despite soaring housing prices, complete with Covid-precaution rules for block parties. And new generations of Oak Parkers are addressing old and new issues with passionate argument.
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