Oak Park has an important story to tell — about showing grace under pressure, finding the courage to become a more open, welcoming and inclusive village, filled with people of all backgrounds. We still have wide lawns, as Ernest Hemingway probably didn’t say, but we stretched our minds — and opened our arms.
Oak Park has been called “The Middle-Class Capital of America.” Our story is important because if it could happen here, it can happen anywhere. And for this country to thrive, it needs to happen everywhere.
Happily Ever After is never guaranteed. We need to keep telling our story because some people forget and some haven’t heard it yet, and because the story is not finished. It’s still being written, and you and I are writing it.
The story is distilled in Oak Park’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement — that’s right, DEI and proud of it! — which serves as our village creed and whose origin dates back 61 years, to 1964, to a newspaper ad of all things, signed by over 1,000 Oak Park and River Forest residents. In January of 1964, less than a year after a racial incident involving the Oak Park Symphony (a good story for another time), local residents attended a series of three public forums on race issues at First Congregational Church (now First United Church of Oak Park).
At the end of the third session, people were asking, “What do we do now?” A core group met and decided to put an ad — a double-page spread — in the local press. Activist June Heinrich wrote the text, which appeared in the Oak Leaves and the Village Economist on April 16, 1964. The title is simple, direct and unpretentious: “The Right of All People to Live Where They Choose.” That ad drew a lot of attention. It led to a series of Open Housing marches on Lake Street, protesting unethical real estate practices. That led to the Fair Housing Ordinance, which put Oak Park on the DEI map. And that led to our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement in 1973, read aloud every two years when new village board members take their seats. Here is a condensed version of that statement, using some of the language of later versions in order to bring it up to date:
We believe in the essential oneness of humankind, and seek to foster such unity in our community by declaring:
That we want residence in our village to be open to anyone interested in sharing our benefits and responsibilities, regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, age, religion, sexual orientation, language, gender, economic class, mental/physical impairment or disability, or any of the other characteristics that too often are used to divide us from one another;
That we believe both our commonalities and our differences are assets;
That we commit to breaking down the barriers of the systems of oppression that limit and divide us;
That we reject bias toward any group of people because no group of people is superior and no group is inferior;
That we affirm all people as members of the human family, deserving of equal treatment;
That we believe in equal opportunity for all in education and occupations, in harmony with constitutional guarantees of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
That mutual understanding between people can best be attained by an attitude of reciprocal good will and increased interaction;
That creating a mutually respectful, multicultural, equitable and welcoming environment does not happen on its own. It must be intentional;
That all citizens, in a spirit of justice, dignity, and mutual kindness, should accept the challenge that still faces all Americans 249 years after the Declaration of Independence: embracing diversity and achieving equity and inclusion for all — in word, thought, deed and law.
I am a proponent of reading our village creed aloud in a public setting — such as this Sunday’s Day in Our Village — every year at high noon.
Oak Park is like no other place on Earth. And yet it is universal. What happened here can and should happen everywhere.
What distinguishes us is that, once upon a time, at a critical juncture in our history, we reinvented ourselves. This mostly white suburb consciously, intentionally, deliberately became a more open, welcoming and fair-minded community. We did it not only because it was right, but because it was the smart thing to do. We took the road less traveled and proclaimed the right of all people to live where they choose. And we did more than just say it. We walked the talk.
Do we still have a long way to walk? Yes.
Do we nonetheless deserve to celebrate how we got here and who we are now? Yes. In fact, celebrating who we have become is essential to becoming better.
And because becoming an even stronger community will get us through this dark night of our nation’s soul.