I grew up in a white neighborhood in Chicago. Chicago was a city of ethnic neighborhoods and for many years, each ethnic group had their own neighborhood. My neighborhood was predominately Polish and Lithuanian. My father was from Ireland and although there were Irish in the neighborhood, you still needed to speak Polish or Lithuanian to shop on Archer Avenue, our main neighborhood shopping district.
Our neighborhood was not “tolerant.” If a black person dared to walk into our neighborhood, he was beaten with a baseball bat (or bats) and run out quickly. The throng of young white boys salivating as they ran to “beat the n_____” was frightening, so it was a rare occasion that a black person was found on our streets. Click to Continue Reading…
