Day in Our Village has been celebrated for 50 years. Oak Park was a different place in the 1970s. In the early days of open housing, it was uncertain if the village’s bold step toward racial integration would take hold or just be a moment in time between an all-white and an all-Black version of Oak Park.
Many defined the village as east of Ridgeland or west. The boundaries of the elementary schools were about to shift and the middle schools carved out as a way to avoid majority-minority schools. Downtown Oak Park was fading. Apartments and homes built 50 and 75 years earlier were in tough shape. White flight was real but was capped when older families dug in and young liberals got the best deal on housing ever.
A Day in Our Village was a declaration of home, of pride in diversity, of hope and determination to nurture a better Oak Park.
And Sunday was proof.