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Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing And Home Ownership In Evanston, Illinois, Before 1940 - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1999 by Andrew Wiese

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(22.) A selection of fifty-three obituaries of black Evanstonians from 1946 to 1987 (most after 1960) revealed that 32 percent of decedents were living with relatives--typically an adult child--at the time of their death. Eighteen (almost all of them migrants to Evanston) had living brothers or sisters in town. Families' choice of final resting place also suggests the extent to which Evanston had become home for these black southerners. 86 percent of those who listed a place of burial (38 of 44) were buried locally. Obituaries, Evanston Review, 1946-1987.

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(23.) By 1920, Evanston institutions ranging from hospitals to the Boy Scouts excluded or segregated black patrons. In response, black Evanstonians established separate institutions of their own, often with financial support from local whites. Leonard, "Paternalism and Deference," 30-33; Bruner, "A General Survey," 31.

(24.) For "informal zoning" in the South see, Howard Preston, Automobile Age Atlanta: The Making of a Southern Metropolis, 1900-1935 (Athens, 1979); Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing: Block Statistics, Evanston, illinois (Washington, 1942).

(25.) A sample of 33 Evanston subdivisions recorded between 1903 and 1947 uncovered just two racial covenants. Torrens Deed Dockets 239A, 239B, 239D, 239G, 240, 240A, 241, 241B, 242B, 242D, 242E, 242F, Cook County Recorder of Deeds, Chicago, Illinois (Cook County Building, Chicago, Illinois). Whites on at least one additional block adopted a racial covenant in the 1940s as the black community began to expand beyond its older boundaries. 1700 block of Asbury Avenue, Document 12799099, Deed Microfiche, Cook County Recorder of Deeds. Oral histories suggest more informal boundaries. Geraldine Cooper recalled, "there were no signs such as 'whites only,' but everyone knew where they were allowed and not allowed to be." Geraldine Cooper, Buelah Avery and Ruby Alexander interview by David Owusu-Ansah, May 4,1983, transcript (EHS).

(26.) Evanston passed a zoning ordinance in 1919, which zoned for commercial uses almost every block where blacks lived outside the west side. Over time, public and private redevelopment demolished dozens of black occupied housing units in these areas. See Map 2. David Bruner, "A General Survey," Map V.

(27.) Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Housing: Black Statistics, 5-12; In 1960, the index of segregation in Evanston (87.2) was only slightly lower than in Chicago (92.6). Karl Taeuber and Alma Taeuber, Negroes in Cities: Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Change (Chicago, 1965), 59.

(28.) Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality, 161.

(29.) Henry L. Taylor, Jr., "The Building of a Black Industrial Suburb"; Henry L. Taylor, ed., Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820-1970 (Urbana, 1993); Andrew Wiese, "Places of Our Own: Suburban Black Towns before 1950," Journal of Urban History 19:3 (May, 1993): 30-54.

(30.) Robert Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (New York, 1948); Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: a Study of Prejudice in Housing (New York, 1955); Karl and Alma Taeuber, Negroes in Cities, 25; Allan Spear, Black Chicago; Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, 1890--1930 (New York, 1966); William Tuttle Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York, 1970); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago (Cambridge, 1987); Edward Orser, Blockbusting in Baltimore: the Edmondson Village Story (Lexington, 1994).

Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing And Home Ownership In Evanston, Illinois, Before 1940 - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1999 by Andrew Wiese

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