“Good history is good storytelling,” says Frank Lipo, executive director of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. And he describes the saga of African-Americans living in Oak Park as “a messy, very American story. There are so many things to be proud of and so many embarrassing things. There were ups and downs, but always momentum forward. Things could have gone in a different direction, but they didn’t.”
Freelance filmmaker and Wednesday Journal contributor Stan West, documentary filmmaker Yves Hughes Jr. (West’s partner with the annual Oak Park Film Festival), in collaboration with Lipo and Peggy Tuck Sinko, a Newberry Library historian/librarian and board member of the Historical Society, have just published a book, Suburban Promised Land: The Emerging Black Community in Oak Park, Illinois, 1880-1980, which attempts to tell that messy story. All of the co-authors are from Oak Park. West first approached the historical society with the idea back in 1999.
It is a story that may surprise some, especially those who think scientist Percy Julian was the first black resident of Oak Park when he and his family moved here from Maywood in 1950.
According to census figures, there were 64 black residents in Oak Park in 1900. That figure rose to 169 by 1920 when the overall village population more than quadrupled. The number of black Oak Parkers dropped after that to a low of 57 in 1960. By 1970, the figure reached 132, and by 1980, it jumped to 5,942 or 11 percent of the population.
That was the decade when panic would have set in if it were going to happen here, which is why, Lipo said, they decided to make 1980 their cutoff point.
“Oak Park had just elected their first black trustee,” Lipo said. “And for the first time, the village reflected the national black population percentage.” It was also the point of no return for a progressive village. “Those who were going to move out had moved out,” said Lipo, “and those who moved in wanted diversity.” They were literally buying into Oak Park’s experiment in stable integration.
But getting to that point wasn’t always smooth. Mt. Carmel Colored Baptist Church on what is now Westgate, burned to the ground in the 1930s under suspicious circumstances, making way for a business district.
The Julian home was fire-bombed twice, once before the family moved in and once after.
“It’s still unsolved,” said Lipo. “The perpetrators might not have been Oak Parkers, but it was still a wake-up call. People wondered, ‘How could that happen here?'” As a result, neighbors made a more concerted effort to be welcoming.
In 1963, a racial incident barring a black violinist from playing with the Oak Park Symphony brought considerable media attention, but the a village Community Relations Commission was one of the positive results, Lipo noted, and the incident served as a springboard for the open housing movement that led to Oak Park passing a landmark Fair Housing Ordinance in 1968.
Good things, he said, often came out of the bad.
This book took 10 years to pull together partly because of busy schedules, but even the delays produced benefits. A couple of years ago, the archives of the Chicago Defender and the daily Chicago newspapers became more readily accessible, electronically, which streamlined their research.
That research was eye-opening at times, he said. “At times we did double-takes. ‘Did people really talk that way?'” Lipo loved the outraged letter to the editor Percy Julian wrote to the newspaper during “the Lew Pope incident,” when a star football player on Oak Park and River Forest High School’s nationally ranked team was prohibited from attending a game at the Orange Bowl in segregated Miami.
Such incidents, Lipo said, led Oak Parkers to ask, “What does it mean to be progressive? What does it mean to be a diverse community? Is this what Oak Park stands for?” All of which, he noted, were healthy questions for the community.
Though the project took 10 years, Lipo said, he’s glad they persevered. “Worthwhile things are worth working through.”
But there is more of the story to tell, he said. “Our footnoting will assist others in researching further. This is a starting point.”
And the story isn’t finished, as indicated by comments West and Sinko gathered from local residents, looking to the future.
Randall Albers, chair of the fiction department at Columbia College, for instance, observed, “I loved Oak Park, blemishes and all. Yes, there are problems here: the main problem is smugness. There is a tendency for Oak Parkers to feel that they have been working on racial issues for many years and they are a cut above everyone else. … It’s important for people to be constantly vigilant about that – to push and prod kids to mix, to treat everybody with respect, and to set an example.”
The authors of Suburban Promised Land have a panel discussion scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 1, at Pleasant Home, 217 Home. On Sunday, Dec. 6, during Pleasant Home’s Holiday Open House, 1-4 p.m., the foursome will be on hand for a book signing.
In addition to the historical society office (located on the second floor of Pleasant Home), the book is available at The Book Table and the Oak Park Visitors Center for $25. Historical society members can pick it up for $22.50. For more information, call 848-6755.