Residential Integration: The Case of Hyde Park in Chicago

In 1952—a short six or seven years ago—our neighborhood in Chicago was in a state of panic. What had grown from the village of Hyde Park into a fine urban community of 75,000 seemed doomed. Thousands of poor Negroes were moving in; large apartments were being reconverted into small ones, turning middle-class buildings into rows of tenements along streets rapidly becoming slums. There were strange people in blocks where neighbors were all familiar faces. There was a rash of new crimes: burglaries, purse-snatchings, and occasional rapes. People could not safely walk the streets in the evening except in groups.