Katie Roland Bowen High School

Arnold Hirsch's book, Making the Second Ghetto, is an interesting in depth look into the housing problems that plagued Chicago. The most interesting peas of this book are that it can be related to Chicago today and also to any rural or urban part of the country. Hirsch's knowledge of the subject and ample sources enable the reader to see all sides of this "problem" that took place in Chicago in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.

The first ghettos in Chicago sprung up in relation to the Great Migration from 1915-1930. This large movement of African Americans from the South, across the Mason Dixon Line, to the North provided Chicago, as well as other major urban northern cities, with the problem of where to put all these people. Inadequate housing ensued and seems to continue still today. Ghettos, according to Hirsh, are inevitable because of politics and urban renewal. Because of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation, many people had to react to the integration movements that was spreading throughout the
United States.

African-Americans came to the South Side of Chicago for several reasons. Private arrangements through family and job opportunities are just two. When these new families began to settle in areas that were predominately white, they faced much resistance. Neighborhoods that were white wanted to keep that facade and did not want the block broken up or integrated. Hirsch presented several strong arm tactics done by the locals in response to this "problem" Neighborhoods formed committees to ensure that their neighborhood was not "infected" Watchful, stay-at-home mothers kept neighbors abreast with the latest developments in their communities. If an African-American family moved onto the block, several tactics were used to kick them out. The most popular for several communities was by scare tactics. Groups, which would turn into mobs sometimes would picket or taunt these new families. Violence was used as well as peaceful demonstrations, To avoid an incident like the riots in 1919, newspapers, both black- and white-centered, did little reporting of these confrontations.

Some communities did not want to resort to violence or barbaric tactics because of the stigmatisms that it developed and instead went through legal channels to stop the integration of their neighborhoods. They would buy up the property in the community that possibly could be used for housing, enforce strict building codes, evict tenants that did not adhere to building codes, and enforce eminent domain. They were able to push out local owned businesses by promising a local business district after the construction in the area. This, like many other promises were broken.

Both of these tactics, brutal and legal, were effective in pushing the housing problem out of their neighborhoods and into a condensed area of the city but only for a limited amount of time. With the growth of suburbia in the 1950s, many whites were leaving the city and the ability for the remaining to keep the all white neighborhood was almost impossible to hold on to. Today, it can be seen that Chicago is on its way to creating possibly a third ghetto. With the tearing down of the Cabrini Green Housing Projects and others similar to it, the problem of where to put these people still remains a major political and social question in the city.

Through the discussion of this book with other colleagues, it was interesting to find out that many displaced residents of today are not staying in the city but are branching out. The same questions of what to do with these displaced are now plaguing these new cities. The question of where to put the new Section 8 complexes and the effects that it has on the education system in the city seem to be evident again. The feeling of "not in my backyard" and other racial sentiments that are attached to this topic are still present today, but definitely not as harsh as in the past. The discussion that ensued based upon this book was very interesting and educational but some questions still plague my mind relating to this topic Why do people continue to have the idea of "there goes the neighborhood" when African American families move into the community, what is the economic impact on neighborhoods after this change, and what are the crime and social effects these neighborhoods?

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