Kind of, But Not Exactly

Uncle Ken's description of Blacks taking over White neighborhoods was pretty much the way I remember it, except for a few details.  There was the perception that it was dangerous to go into a Black neighborhood.  I can't attest to the accuracy of that perception because I seldom went into a Black neighborhood.  The only incidence of head busting that I remember was the time a Black guy was attacked with a hammer while waiting for a bus, I believe it was on 63rd Street.  I think it was mentioned in the book, but I also remember it being reported in the news at the time.  I also remember, years after I had left Chicago, reading that a family of tourists including a dog, riding in a station wagon that was loaded with luggage and had a boat strapped to the roof, got off I-94 at the wrong exit in a Black neighborhood and was never heard from again.  No trace of the family, the car, the luggage, the boat, or the dog was ever found.  How's that for anecdotal evidence?

I think the Black neighborhoods were just as dangerous for the Blacks who lived there as they were for any White guy that might be passing through.  There were a bunch of Blacks who worked at the INTAG factory across the street from us.  Some of them used to shop at my father's store, for which he caught some flak because he was the only business owner on our block who welcomed their business.  On payday, they would deposit their signed paychecks with my dad, who would keep them safe until the men or their wives would come back in the daylight hours to shop.  They said that it was too dangerous to carry money home in their neighborhood after dark.

The book also talked about what we used to call "blockbusters".  A White real estate agent would buy a house on a White block and sell it to a Black Family.  This would motivate all the White families to sell their houses before their values went down, and any holdouts ended up having to sell out cheap.  The book also called MLK's effort to integrate Chicago a failure, and blamed White backlash and also the Black Power movement.  I understood the White backlash part, but the Black Power part puzzled me.  I thought they were all in it together, but apparently not.  Uncle Ken once talked about racial "hawks" and "doves", which clarified the issue for me.

In my opinion, gentrification is certainly a form of "taking over".  That may or may not be the gentrifiers' intent, but the results are the same.