Yet despite this belief, I lived in African American neighborhoods my entire childhood, attended a black church, and had mostly black friends until high school. My parents socialized exclusively with other middle class African Americans: they attended Links cotillions, Delta Sigma Thetas "Founders' Days, and Christmas parties hosted by The Assembly, a black Chicago social club. So...what happened to that much vaunted integration?
Reading Tanner Colby's Some of My Best Friends Are Black reminds me that my family's situation was hardly unusual. We'll be discussing this provocative social history of persistent segregation in schools, housing, advertising and churches this coming Tuesday evening. You can get an overview of Colby's main points from awonderful discussion he had with June Thomas of Slate magazine, and find reviews and articles by Colby at his website.
Of course Colby isn't the first to write about integration, (or the lack thereof) in the U.S. Below are 3 major works on teh topic, all of which Colby cites in his notes...
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by Vann C. Woodward. The classic social history of legalized segregation in America.
Sundown Towns, but James Loewen. "Don't let the sun go down on you in this town." We equate these words
with the Jim Crow South but, in a sweeping analysis of American
residential patterns, James W.
Loewen demonstrates that strict racial exclusion was the norm in
American towns and villages for much of the
twentieth century.
Hidden Cost of Being African American, by Thomas M. Shapiro.Looks at the role even modest family wealth contributes to upward mobility in many white families, while a racially tinged real estate market devalues black home ownership, making it harder for black families to accumulate and pass down wealth. Shapiro offers some modest, extremely workable solutions.
See you Tuesday night, 7:00 pm. in the Small Meeting Room of Evanston Public Library!
