The Guest Editor's Pages

In December 1998, the idea for a special issue of the Journal focusing on Race and Housing in Post-World War II was born when Amanda Seligman and I sat down for coffee in Springfield at the Illinois History Symposium. Both students of Northwestern University professor Henry C. Binford, albeit a quarter-century apart, Amanda and I chatted about her research on racial transition on Chicago's west side and about other graduate students, who were also increasing our understanding of residential segregation in the city after the Second World War. This issue is the result of that discussion two-and-a-half years ago. It aims at bringing Journal readers some of the freshest research on racial polarization in Chicago housing with three articles by historians who received the Ph.D. in the late 1990s: D. Bradford Hunt from the University of California at Berkeley, Wendy Plotkin from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Amanda Seligman from Northwestern University. With special pleasure, the Journal also recognizes all three as past recipients of the Society's King V. Hostick Award which supports dissertation research on Illinois history. In addition to securing the contributions of these young scholars, I have also turned to two old hands to provide a broader perspective. In their books, edited collections, and scholarly articles, Raymond A. Mohl and W. Roger Biles have explored how cities, including Chicago, changed demographically, physically, politically, and economically since the Great Depression. In this issue, Ray Mohl provides a national context for patterns present in Chicago. By contrast, Roger Biles offers a Chicago-focused overview. In their respective studies of racially restrictive covenants, blockbusting, and public housing at the Robert Taylor Homes, Plotkin, Seligman, and Hunt paint a picture of white and black Chicagoans unwilling and unable to transcend the barrier of race to live together. Indeed, as Mohl and Biles note here and elsewhere, this phenomenon has been a central facet of Chicago's 20th-century history. In the decades beyond those examined in this special issue, despite legislative and judicial action against discrimination and civil rights victories, racial polarization has hardly weakened. Instead, it continues the 21st century as an issue with which Chicagoans will likely long contend. Chicago policy makers grapple with the consequences of decisions made decades ago. In 1997, the wrecker's ball claimed its first Robert Taylor Homes1 building at 3919 S. Federal Street, a structure judged impossible to renovate.' Since then, demolition at Taylor and at other Chicago Housing Authority complexes has continued. By December 1998, 1,800 public housing units had been destroyed, setting former residents in motion.2 Most recently, in February 2001, the CHA gave preliminary approval to a plan for the redevelopment of the remaining Taylor buildings into mixed-- income communities.3 Will a rebuilt Taylor, or any Chicago neighborhood, draw a mix of black and white residents? The Census of 2000 indicates that the prospect remains questionable. Although racially restrictive covenants can no longer be used to exclude African Americans and others from Chicago's neighborhoods and suburbs, white and black Chicagoans still do not live in close proximity. …

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