"White flight"

When I was 14, we moved from a vibrant Chicago South Side neighborhood, Hyde Park, to a suburb 35 miles south of the city.

The suburb, Park Forest, was a planned community of some 25,000 souls residing in cookie-cutter houses that went up 500 at a time. Five years previous, “PF” had been red-dirt farmland.

I felt like I’d been kidnapped.

If my folks had indeed kidnapped me, at least I knew why. My beloved Hyde Park had started to “change.”

Back then a “changing” neighborhood meant one undergoing racial change. Hyde Park – prosperous, comfortable Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago and nearly all White – was turning Black. Here’s why.

Up to this point in time -- the early '50s -- nearly every Black resident of Chicago lived crammed into Bronzeville, a disastrously overcrowded South Side neighborhood. They had to. Landlords elsewhere simply wouldn’t rent to them.

The landlords got away with this due to a peculiarity known as the restrictive covenant -- an agreement to exclude residence by this group or that. In certain Chicago suburbs, restrictive covenants kept Jews out. But in the city proper, restrictive covenants almost always were aimed at Blacks.

These were mere private agreements, you say? No: they were covenants. There’s a difference. Covenants are agreements with legal seals. Thus, while not actually laws, they have the force of law.

But someone sued.

The case (Shelley v. Kraemer) wound up at the Supreme Court which, in May 1948, held:

“Although racially restrictive real estate covenants are not void, a court cannot enforce them because this would constitute state action under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

To many Black residents of Bronzeville, forced to live with street crime and send their kids to crappy schools, Shelley v. Kraemer was a get-out-of-jail-free card. They began moving out.

And the nearest neighborhood with good schools and safe streets was … Hyde Park.

Starting along the western edge, Blacks gradually moved eastward toward Lake Michigan, giving prosperous White families – families like mine – the heebie-jeebies.

“White flight” ensued. Hyde Parkers started leaving in bunches. We stayed put though. For one thing, I’d graduate from my grammar school, Kenwood, in two years. For another, my parents were pretty broad-minded for the era. They tried to be color-blind, and taught me and my sister Judy to be color-blind too.

Even so, they were uneasy about sending me to Hyde Park High School. Hyde Park was arguably the best high public high school on the South Side. It was my mom’s alma mater. But like the neighborhood, Hyde Park High also was “changing.”

Old postcard of Hyde Park High School. © Cardcow.com

We hung in until my graduation, then we fled too – to “PF," a place with top-notch public schools and ultra-safe streets. My “inconsiderate” parents actually were protecting me and my sister. They thought so anyway.

There must have been conversations though – late-night locked-door conversations in hushed, charged tones. I imagine such conversations in my novel To Walk Humbly, Book II of the “Chicago Trilogy.” Here’s what it sounds like:

I start freshman year at Hyde Park High School next Tuesday. I hear it’s full of hoods like those guys who jumped me [in Farmers Field, a nearby park]. Hoods and coloreds, colored hoods. Rickie calls it Hood Park.

Schwartz’s brother is a junior at Hood Park. Coloreds beat him up in the boys’ bathroom. They’re sending Schwartz anyway. Schwartz, Rickie, Lennie, Lug, we’re the ones going to Hood Park from Kenwood School. All the others are moving to those ritzy North Shore suburbs, Winnetka Glencoe Highland Park. Steve Sokol moved to Winnetka after Kenwood graduation, he’ll start at New Trier. Harry Weinstein too, he moved to Glencoe last week. Whatshername, the one who’s Minerva Stein’s girlfriend, she’s going to Wilmette. Minerva isn’t moving but she might as well, she’ll go to the University of Chicago Lab School and be a U of C rich kid. Hannah Koenigsberg’s going to Skokie, not ritzy but she’ll go to Evanston High which is. There’s colored at Evanston but not hoods Hannah says. No colored at New Trier at all. Hood Park.

Mom and Dad won’t move north though. Dad’d have to drive another hour to work plus come up with money to buy a house, no apartments in Highland Park. They could move south, Homewood or Flossmoor, but then Beth and I would have to go to Bloom in Chicago Heights and it’s full of hoods and colored. Dad says Might as well stay in Hyde Park for God’s sake.

Mom asks what about going west? Oak Park’s OK but not many Jews Dad says. She says What about those others? He says Forest Park with the polacks? River Forest with the wops? Let’s just go to Cicero and live with the Mob. She says I can do without the sarcasm Charles. Hyde Park High was fine when I went there, I had lots of friends, got a perfectly good education. He says That was a long time ago Jean. She says Where are these people’s principles? They live here all their lives then scoot to the suburbs on account of a few colored. What kind of Jews are they anyway? He says The kind who want to get their kids through high school without landing in the hospital.

I ask what about the Lab School. Dad says Who’s going to pay for it? Mom says it’s not my business then tells Dad sha mit der kinder and gives him that look of hers.

If we stay I won’t see half my friends, if we move I won’t see the other half. Mom and Dad can’t make up their minds though so it doesn’t matter. Beth will go to Kenwood for seventh grade and I’ll start at Hood Park tomorrow. Better not tell them about Farmers Field.

To Walk Humbly comes out in a few months. As a Loyal Reader you qualify for a 20% discount on the paperback version. Just shoot me an email reserving your copy(ies).

Frank S Joseph Author

P.S. And while you're at it, get the paperback of To Do Justice, the award-winning Trilogy Book III, at a 20% discount too! Same deal.

P.P.S. And speaking of To Do Justice, the Chicago Writers Assn. has deemed it a finalist for Indie Fiction Book of the Year! "Justice" already has been named an IndieReader Best Book and garnered 5-star reviews from Reedsy Reviews, Readers' Favorite® and Midwest Book Review ... as well as being declared winner of the Chicago Writers Assn. novel contest. The CWA Book of the Year winner will be named in December. Watch this space.