I was raised in Hyde Park and the summer of my fifteenth year we moved to Highland Park, Illinois. How we ended up there was most curious.
I loved Hyde Park. We moved to the Woodlawn-Hyde Park neighborhoods when I was four in 1949. We had everything a kid could want. Parks to play baseball and tennis. The Museum of Science of Industry and the awesome University of Chicago (UC). The hotels that housed the White Sox and the visiting American League teams. My friends and I went to the beaches in the summer, hung out at The Point, and peered into the coffee houses on 57th Street looking at real beatniks.
At Hyde Park High School about 85% of my classmates were black.
In 1960 my mother was pregnant and it was time to buy a house. My parents decided on Evanston. It was on Lake Michigan, and while Northwestern University was not the UC, it did provide an intellectual atmosphere and it was the most integrated of the suburbs.
In June an offer was accepted on a small house three or four blocks from Lake Michigan. Two weeks later the sellers found a reason not to sell to us, though the realtor explained that it was because we were Jewish.
My parents were desperate. Debbie and I had to be in a school, the baby (Ari) was due in less than three months.
On the Fourth of July Dad opened up the paper and found a listing in Highland Park two blocks from the beach and three blocks from the downtown. That was important since my mother did not drive.
He and I hopped into the car, made the 25 mile trip, inspected the house, returned to Hyde Park to pick up my mother and Debbie, toured the house again and had an accepted offer in a matter of days.
I knew a little about Highland Park and what differentiated it from the other North Shore suburbs. In terms of religion, it was more diverse than the others. (In celebration of the 1960 Olympics we had our own Jewish-Italian Olympics - golf, swimming, poker, and bowling,) It was more liberal, though you could not tell from the faces of my high school classmates - there was one black student in Highland Park High School (HPHS).
Our companion suburb, Deerfield was somewhat notorious for halting a subdivision where the developer intended to sell to both blacks and whites. But Not Next Door
In 1965 the North Shore changed forever. From Rich Samuels, who produced Civil Rights on the Northshore: Bringing the Movement Home:
Along the way, North Shore residents answered Dr. King's call, demonstrating and volunteering in the South and then bringing the struggle to their own neighborhoods where they sought open housing in previously all-white communities.
What motivated residents of one of the nation's most affluent communities to reach out to the disadvantaged? Why, after roughly four decades, has their drive for racial diversity on the North Shore achieved such limited results?
Those are the questions I raise in the documentary. But I don't answer them -- because I want to renew the debate sparked years ago by the North Shore activists.
A lot has changed over the years. While still not reflective of the demographics of this nation, these suburbs are more economically, racially and culturally integrated.
Now Highland Park High School decided that its outstanding girls basketball team should not travel to Arizona. The point being, that it would not be responsible to take these teenagers to a state where some could be detained and unable to return home.
Go Giants.