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Indeed, opposition to the council's valley program has come from an unexpected source: the Valley National Association of Colored People. Explains President Edward Kussman: "Buying a house in the valley is fine. But it is a oneway deal. Who is going to buy the man's house back in the city? There is no similar program encouraging whites to move back into the city. We favor a 'Don't Move, Improve' program. Otherwise, you are encouraging the cream of the black crop to move away from other places." Undaunted by the dismal results to date, the housing council is seeking funds for another ad campaign.
Oak Park: No Takeover
Chicago's black ghetto has been threatening for a decade to cross Austin Boulevard, the border the city shares with the tree-lined suburb of Oak Park (pop. 62,511). But by and large, the village's middle-class whites have not panicked or fled; they have stayed put and, for the most part, welcomed a small stream of new black neighbors. Last week Estelle Campbell, wife of a black minister who moved to the village in Something you work at. 1971, succinctly summed up Oak Park's integration strategy: "Blacks won't take over if the whites don't run."
The late radical community organizer Saul Alinsky defined residential integration as the interval between the arrival of the first black and the departure of the last white. For a time early in the 1970s, it seemed that Alinsky's definition would soon apply to Oak Park.
"It was scary," recalls Sue Cronin, a white housewife. "We had gangs of kids coming in from the black neighborhood of Austin, strong-armed purse snatchings, things like that." But Oak Park's leaders organized a series of successful counter-measures—aimed not at repulsing new black residents but at reassuring anxious whites. To discourage crime, a new street lighting system was installed, and 23 policemen were added to the local force —many of them assigned to the border area. To prevent real estate agents from spreading panic among homeowners, FOR SALE signs were banned. To demonstrate that property standards would be maintained, building inspections were increased. Recalls Sherlynn Reid, the village's acting director of community relations: "The community pulled together and people said, 'Hey, wait a minute, we're a pretty neat place no matter who lives here.' "
One of the most controversial of Oak Park's measures was—and still is—the Oak Park Housing Center, a nonprofit organization that induces house-hunting whites to settle in areas where there are blacks, and house-hunting blacks to settle evenly throughout the village. Says Chester McGuire, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: "There are some who still would say that there should not be any control or attempted management, that integration should just be a laissez-faire operation. But the market is currently stacked against that."