TIME'S Sam Iker lives in Wilmette and works in Chicago. Directly in between lies Evanston, which he explored for this portrait:
MANY Chicagoans talk of the suburb of Evanston as the straitlaced capital of the North Shore—national headquarters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the stodgy bastion of proper matrons and upright WASP gentlemen, all of them scarcely more liberal than the Chicago Tribune's late Colonel Robert R. McCormick. In fact, as City Planner Richard Carter says, Evanston is "a microcosm of a larger city, diversified in income, ethnically, racially and every other way." It ranks high in affluence: a $12,200 a year median income in 1968. Yet Evanston's 80,000 population includes over 1,600 people on welfare, as well as top-salaried executives and professional men. The ethnic majority is still basically Northern European—English, German and Scandinavian—but there are Poles, Luxembourgers, Russians, Canadians, Armenians, Orientals, blacks.
The new ethnic groups have combined with another new kind of migrant to change Evanston from a Republican Carcassonne into a city that Nixon barely carried in 1968, and Adlai Stevenson III won last November. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, younger, activist families have moved in, attracted by Evanston's lack of resemblance to a caricature suburb. Nancy Sheck moved with her husband, a printing executive, and two young sons from Chicago's South Side to Evanston four years ago. "It is the only suburb that allows for individuality," she says. "There aren't the same pressures for conformity here. There are so many kinds of people and kinds of circles to choose from." Republican Alderman William Nott, 61, who represents established northwest Evanston, says scornfully: "These independents and liberals want to change things. I'll tell you that a lot of old-time Evanstonians resent them."
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The momentum of change built in Evanston until it nearly split the town in two last year. Evanston has a black population of 16%: some are fourth-generation Evanstonians, descendants of blacks who moved there as domestic servants a century ago. The blacks were at the center of a battle over school integration, allied with liberal whites behind School Superintendent Gregory Coffin's implementation of a plan to distribute blacks equally among the city's 16 elementary schools (TIME, March 9, 1970). Coffin became anathema to conservatives and was forced out after integration was completed. Evanston's grammar schools survived, however, as a model of quality and racial integration.
One reason that black-white relations in Evanston are relatively calm is that the black community has a strong middle-class orientation. Its members like to boast: "In Evanston, the black ghetto is black owned." But there is a growing black consciousness. "Blacks can't find a better place to live" than Evanston, says Mrs. Jessie Smith, a welfare mother. But she adds: "We don't want to be pushed down any more." Whites complain of black-white student friction in Evanston Township High School, and there is a tinge of race in rising local taxes. Says Alderman Nott: "Every year more services are demanded for the poor and the blacks. It seems there's no end to it."