{488} They Wanted White Neighbors For Their Kids

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]One Sunday, I interviewed pioneer Nenah Jones, a 30-year-old first grade teacher at Lombard.

[00:00:05]>> Pay attention because we're going to hear what Nenah had to say in just a bit.

[00:00:08]>> On her day off, she was wearing a colorful headscarf to protect her hairstyle until she was ready to go out.

[00:00:14]She is now married and has a baby son.

[00:00:17]But like many black women in Park, she first purchased her home when she was still single. In general, the pioneers are distinct from the second wave of black Parkmont residents because they arrived in Parkmont with the knowledge that it was an integrating neighborhood that was recently all white, >> which is the very thing that made the neighborhood attractive to many.

[00:00:36]>> Many like Nenah reported that the prospect of racial integration was a key feature that attracted them to the community.

[00:00:42]>> In 2024, we went car shopping and we ended up buying a new hybrid Honda Accord.

[00:00:48]Reliability and great gas mileage were key features that influenced the purchase.

[00:00:56]When Nenah and many other black pioneers went home shopping, the fact that whites lived in the neighborhood was a key feature that attracted them to the community.

[00:01:08]That was one of the main selling points that nudged them to buy there.

[00:01:13]Now, listen to what Nina said. I don't want to just be in an all black neighborhood.

[00:01:19]>> Wait, what did Nina say?

[00:01:20]>> I don't want to just be in an all black neighborhood.

[00:01:24]>> She didn't want to be around only black people. Here we go.

[00:01:30]>> I guess from me just growing up coming down here for school where we were at the time west side was all black and then you come up here it was nice.

[00:01:39]>> Which says what about how she felt about the all black west side?

[00:01:44]that it was bad.

[00:01:47]All black westside was bad. And then you come up over here to Parkont where more whites lived and it was nice. That's what she's saying.

[00:01:56]>> It was a nice mix. And then I went to a mixed college.

[00:02:00]I definitely want my son to be in an integrated area because that's the way of the world. When he gets older, he needs to be able to interact with everybody and it's all different types of people. But Parkmont didn't have all different types of people.

[00:02:15]It wasn't mentioned having Mexican-Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian-Americans, or Native Americans.

[00:02:23]She says everybody, but what it sounds like she really means is that she wanted her son to be around more white people.

[00:02:29]>> You can have the nicest white person and you get the nastiest black person.

[00:02:34]>> Look at the standard example that she used. white as nice and black as nasty.

[00:02:42]Now, what's the first thing that should pop up in your mind when you hear something like this?

[00:02:47]Your zoomed out lens should automatically think colonizer and colonist.

[00:02:53]The white is supposed to represent the good and the black the bad, right? Those are statuses.

[00:03:03]That's why they use those as racial labels to identify people and that's why we have to move ourselves completely away from those to get out of that matrix that they created.

[00:03:16]Now, zooming back in, the white community had no shortage of nasty people, just like the black community had no shortage of nice people. So, she could have easily just said the nastiest white person or the nicest black person, but she didn't do that because her mental programming made it difficult to do so. Okay, now let's hear it again.

[00:03:43]>> You can have the nicest white person and you get the nastiest black person, but he needs to be able to know how to deal with all of them. And I want him in a place that's like that.

[00:03:52]>> From the beginning, Nah wanted to live in an integrated community. She was excited about moving to Parkmont, a neighborhood she has known since she was 11 years old when she was bust in as a student to attend Lombard from 5th through 12th grades.

[00:04:06]>> 11 years old, dreaming about moving away from all blacks. This stuff was serious to her.

[00:04:11]>> Nah's mother, also a teacher, carefully watched over her and made special efforts to send her to Lombard.

[00:04:17]>> My mom didn't let me play outside. I was in the house in the books doing crafts.

[00:04:22]Nah was eager to start her career and teach at her alma mater, but finding an affordable home in an integrated community was difficult. As a public school teacher in the city, she was forced by the school district's residency requirements to purchase a home in a city neighborhood. For a single black woman just beginning a career as a teacher, few affordable integrated neighborhoods were available to Nina in the city. And other than none was located near Lombard.

[00:04:49]>> Let's keep it moving. Joy Parker, a 42-year-old Jamaican dietary hostess at a hospital, moved to Parkont from a nearby black segregated area to achieve social mobility, which to her meant integration.

[00:05:01]>> It meant living next to white people.

[00:05:04]That's what integration meant to most of these pioneer blacks.

[00:05:08]It didn't mean moving into a Native American, Vietnamese American, or Mexican-American neighborhood.

[00:05:16]Integration to them was just another way of saying that they wanted to be mixed in with whites.

[00:05:22]Right now, here's what Joy said.

[00:05:24]>> I was living with my mama at that time, so I grew older and I got out on my own.

[00:05:31]Nobody want to live in that same neighborhood. They want to go higher.

[00:05:34]>> Listen to the language. They want to go higher.

[00:05:40]Meaning, she understood the black neighborhood to be low at the bottom. In fact, I'm trying to go to the suburbs now. Oh, I would love to. I want to go to different neighborhoods, better neighborhoods.

[00:05:54]After a while, it's going to be all black around here.

[00:05:58]>> So, Joy used to live in an all black neighborhood and then she moved to Parkine, but now she planned to move again because her prediction was that Park would eventually be all black, which was something that she was not looking forward to at all. Now, watch this. When I asked Joy to elaborate on her concerns about Park becoming an all black neighborhood, she explained her suspicion that racial segregation leads to crime and a lack of neighbor involvement, which she fears could eventually take over in Parkmont.

[00:06:29]>> She thinks that if blacks are left only to themselves, then there will turn a perfectly good neighborhood like Park into a breeding ground for criminals and people who don't care about the neighborhood. That's what this means.

[00:06:43]So, just like the whites, she planned on leaving ahead of time instead of waiting around to see what happens.

[00:06:50]>> During my interview with 42-year-old Sonia McCall, a postal worker and single mother, five family members sat around a large screen television, enjoying the discussion of the changes they have observed in Park.

[00:07:03]Sonia purchased her home from a young white couple with a child. She now lives in Park with her daughter and her elderly father who moved in after his wife passed away and he was diagnosed with cancer and diabetes. Like many pioneers, Sonia sought to raise her daughter in an integrated environment which she equates with better schools.

[00:07:23]Even though Sonia originally lived very close by in a black segregated community, Park once seemed a world away to her.

[00:07:30]>> Let's listen to what she says.

[00:07:31]>> I thought it would be a little better than my old neighborhood. I have one daughter and I thought the school system would be better. As far as raising her up, I thought it would be better to just bring her up in a racial integrated neighborhood instead of just all black.

[00:07:49]>> Uh-oh.

[00:07:51]>> Everything seemed so far cuz I had never been up here and I was like, "Oh, this looks like a nice neighborhood." My friend said, "It's out of the way. I think you need to move up there. And when she moved, that's when I seen like a couple of blacks and I said, "Okay."

[00:08:11]>> Seeing all black would have given her a signal to not move to that area. But seeing mostly whites and a couple blacks gave her comfort and it gave her confidence that it was the right neighborhood that she was looking for.

[00:08:24]>> On the topic of white flight, all of the pioneers I interviewed said they were disturbed by Parkmont's rapid loss of white population. It was heartbreaking to them. Heartbreaking that the whites were moving away because that was a key feature for them moving into the neighborhood in the first place.

[00:08:40]>> However, for some, like Irma Williams, the older nurse mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, race was more incidental.

[00:08:48]Like so many pioneers, Irma knew very few facts about the attractive integrated neighborhood. She was bothered by the racial change, but reported that her advanced age and lack of schoolage children made it less of a concern than was true for other pioneer families.

[00:09:03]>> So, Irma cared about the racial change, but it didn't bother her to the extent that it did most of the younger black pioneers, right? It wasn't life-changing to her because she was older and all of her kids, if she did have kids, were not schoolaged. Much of the research on black housing in cities emphasizes the role of institutional discrimination as a cause of segregated housing outcomes.

[00:09:29]But the findings in Parkmont add to our knowledge by pointing to the importance of the dual processes of white flight and pioneers conscious but constrained decision-m meaning institutions are mostly blamed for forcing blacks to live in black neighborhoods.

[00:09:43]But Dr. But Woodoff is saying that there's more layers than that to this because from her research in Parkmont, she discovered that housing segregation is the outcome of blacks making a conscious effort to move into a white neighborhood and then whites making the same effort to move out. And then from that dual process, a newly segregated black community is born.

[00:10:09]>> Many pioneers have jobs that force them to live in the city. And to the best of their knowledge, they have selected a neighborhood that meets their criteria as far as convenience to family and work, safety, schools, and affordability.

[00:10:23]Those who have jobs that allow them to live in the suburbs either believe that they cannot afford such a move, find the commute to the city to be too cumbersome, or in many cases, they simply prefer to be closer to their social networks in the city. The importance of social networks is notable for working-class blacks and striving blacks in general who are more likely than similar whites to have lowincome family members and elderly parents needing their assistance on a regular basis.

[00:10:50]>> That's for sure. So, it does put a strain on the relocation options and how much progress they can make. With their work constraints, family obligations, and greater sense of collectivism, pioneers often make decisions that are distinct from those that whites with similar incomes might make. Like the pioneers, the whites who remained in Park have their own story to tell.

[00:11:12]Within their social circles, the choice to stay in an integrating neighborhood was not a popular one. In this way, pioneers and stayers share a common experience. They selected Park with purpose, watched it change, and then adapted.

[00:11:27]>> Which leads us to learning more about the story of these white stairs in the next commentary.

[00:11:34]All right, I thank you for your time and attention.

[00:11:38]My name is Brooklyn St. Michael and I'll see you in the free