2. NEIGHBORHOODS OF ORGANIZED OPPOSITION
"Exclusive neighborhoods."—In neighborhoods which are exclusive on the basis of social class, whose restrictions apply to Negroes and the majority of whites alike, the high price of property is a sufficient barrier against Negroes; it is in the neighborhoods where property values are within the means of Negroes that fears of invasion are entertained. In many new real estate subdivisions houses are sold on easy payments. Almost without exception these sections are exclusively for whites, and usually it is so stated in the prospectus. Other sections longer established come to notice when some incident provokes the expression of opposition already organized and awaiting it.
Such a section is the neighborhood known as Park Manor and Wakeford. This neighborhood lies between Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth streets, and Cottage Grove and Indiana avenues. It is newly built, chiefly with small dwellings, most of them not more than five years old. Many of the residents had lived in a neighborhood to the north, nearer Woodlawn, whose growth of Negro population had caused some of them to move. Park Manor and Wakeford were startled by the following advertisement in the Chicago Daily News in July, 1920:
For sale—Colored Attention: homes on Vernon, South Park and Indiana Aves. Sold on easy terms; come out and look this locality over; Protestant neighborhood, Park Manor and Wakeford; good transportation. Blair, 7455 Cottage Grove Avenue.
Blair, a real estate agent, denied all knowledge of the advertisement and attributed it either to an enemy or to a practical joker. He sent notices to be read the following day in the nine churches of the district, so stating, deploring the occurrence and pledging himself to aid the other residents in excluding Negroes and in hunting down the author of the advertisement.
Meanwhile the entire district had been aroused, and a meeting called for the evening of July 12, in front of a church at Seventy-sixth Street and St. Lawrence Avenue. About 1,000 people gathered for this meeting, which was conducted by the presidents of the South Park Manor and Wakeford Improvement Associations. The former announced that he had visited the Daily News and learned that the advertisement had been handed to a clerk in typewritten form and with a typewritten signature, and paid for in advance, whereas Blair's regular advertising was done on a charge account. This and other information tended to show that the agent was not responsible for the advertisement. In its issue of Monday, July 12, the Daily News printed an explanatory statement.
Other speakers at the meeting were a real estate dealer and an alderman. Considerable indignation was expressed over the false light in which the community had been placed. Even the suggestion that Negroes might by chance become a part of this community seemed to be abhorrent. As far as Negroes were concerned there was no excitement, but they resented being used to frighten white residents.
PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION
1910
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS