More like the third coast.
As we know from Steve Bogira’s cover story last month, Chicago is to segregation as wet is to water.
The city’s racial demarcations continue to keep blacks and whites and Latinos cloistered in their own enclaves. Keeping the races apart began as a by-product of the Great Migration and the early days of the Chicago Housing Authority, when the CHA gave up on plans to integrate public housing, often because of violent riots perpetrated by white residents.
Historically white neighborhoods like Cabrini-Green became almost solely black, as whites opposed integrated public housing, fleeing not only the new projects built after World War II, but the very prospect of having black neighbors. Some black politicians like William Dawson opposed integration. The south-side committeeman and state representative preferred to coast on the Democratic Machine’s coattails, offering jobs and favors in exchange for a grip on power.