The Old Neighborhood

I don't remember the colored folks being as far as Western Ave. in those days, but I do remember that the neighborhood started changing about there. Like you said, it got shabbier as you went east, but I don't think it got really bad until you crossed Halsted.  Some of the kids at Gage Park High came from east of Western and, while none of them were colored, they were generally a different breed of cat. They were more into the hoodlum attitude, but I think it was mostly an act that was in fashion at the time, like the Hippie look that later displaced it. Of course there were the real Hippies like yourself, and then there were the copy cat wanabees that I have heard called "summer Hippies". I'm sure there were real hoodlums too, but most of the ones we dealt with were just walking the walk and talking the talk. Sometimes they did get a little too carried away, like the incident at Cornell Park, but I think most of it was just posturing.

Some of the residents of our own neighborhood must have lived further east at one time because they referred to it as "the old neighborhood", just as they called their grandparents' country of origin "the old country". I don't know if they moved west to escape the black tide that was washing over the city, or if their moving west created the vacancies that enabled it to get started. There were more rental properties east of Western, whereas our neighborhood was mostly owner occupied houses. I read once that Stony Island Ave. used to be pretty swanky in its day, maybe the late 19th or early 20th Century. I don't remember why it went downhill like that, but I suppose the people who lived there went somewhere else and were replaced by you-know-who. I remember it was generally believed that, when the colored folks moved in, the neighborhood went to hell. Looking back on it now, however, I wonder if it wasn't the other way around. As people's financial situations improved, they  moved to a "better" neighborhood, leaving their aging buildings behind to be occupied by the next wave of immigrants looking for a cheap place to rent.

If you remember my story "The Only Time We Were Robbed", you know my family's attitude about the colored folks. Looking back on it now, it might have been somewhat patronizing, but it was pretty tolerant and enlightened compared to the prevailing attitudes of the time. It was only after the riots of the 60s and 70s that my family started to become a bit "prejudiced", which is what they called bigotry in those days. Although I was long gone from Chicago by then, I was reading the same newspaper stories and starting to drift the same way as my parents. To their dying days, however, my parents believed, and I still believe, that you should relate to people as individuals rather than as members of some class or race. Nevertheless, you should be careful when you have to go into a "bad neighborhood" for some reason, and you shouldn't go there at all unless you have a compelling reason to do so. It is unlikely that the people who live there are as enlightened and tolerant as you and, even  if they are, they have no reason to believe that you are.