This is the sixth installment of a series on Oak Park housing history as it relates to diversity and equity:
During and after World War II, there was hope here and across the nation that racism and antisemitism in housing might come to an end. U.S. war propaganda had embraced an unprecedented vision of multicultural understanding (1). The country had united against Nazism and fascism and as Americans learned more of the horrors of the holocaust, American Jews were hopeful for a more accepting mindset here and around the country (2).
In face of an epidemic of racist violence in the postwar years, Black leaders pushed forward with ending Jim Crow segregation in all aspects of American life. Foreshadowing a national push for racial integration, President Truman in 1946 ended racial segregation in the Armed forces. In 1948 the Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants unconstitutional and unenforceable. With growing pressure from Black leaders and their allies (3) Truman established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Most promising for all veterans were the extraordinary benefits guaranteed all who served the nation in World War II.
The G.I. Bill of Rights
With passage of the federal Selective Service Readjustment Act, commonly called the G.I. Bill of Rights, World War II veterans anticipated securing low interest, low down-payment home financing and gaining access to higher education with tuition grants, payment for books and fees and stipends for monthly living costs. Unfortunately, the landmark legislation barely benefitted Black veterans seeking to own homes. In metropolitan New York and Northern New Jersey, historian Ira Katznelson documents that less than 100 of the 67,000 G.I. loans went to African Americans. More than any other federal legislation on housing, the G.I. Bill accelerated the generational racial wealth gap across the nation and further strengthened racial exclusion in Oak Park (4).
1947 zoning reform
With guidance from Harland Bartholomew, the nation’s leading consultant on municipal zoning, in 1947 Oak Park rewrote its zoning ordinance to cover every dimension of residential, commercial and industrial development. The document would continue, with occasional modifications, right to the present to define housing development (5). However, many legal, social historians and housing advocates, including current Oak Park free market supply advocates, agree that the revisions of the 1947 ordinance aimed to strengthen socio-economic and racial exclusion in the village (6).
With the goal of preserving Oak Park’s “suburban character,” the 1947 ordinance banned, unless exempted on a case-by-case basis, any new multi-unit apartment buildings. It codified most of the village as single-family housing zones.
The ordinance stood without challenge until 1951. Then the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of a developer’s civil suit challenging Oak Park’s refusal to approve a 3-story apartment building on North Harlem Avenue. The key finding was that the village zoning ordinance had “no substantial relationship to the public health, safety, comfort, morals, and general welfare of the village of Oak Park” (7).
A village epiphany
In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Subsequent events like the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and the Emmet Till lynching in Mississippi emboldened those seeking to end segregation across American life. These national events fueled the fervor of the rapidly growing Civil Rights Movement and the willingness of more Oak Parkers to openly confront the moral contradictions of racist, exclusionary housing.
When the world-renowned African American scientist Dr. Percy Julian moved to Oak Park in 1950, his house at 414 N. East Ave. was the target of firebombs by arsonists on two occasions. In response, 300 villagers rallied in front of the Julian home, asserting the right of Blacks to live and be safe in Oak Park. They temporarily prevented more heinous violence against the Julian family. Then in 1951, unknown racists threw dynamite at the Julian home. Luckily, the family was not physically harmed. Members of the community offered more support.
The racism directed at the Julian family was mirrored among the most powerful people in the Chicago region. In the summer of 1951, Dr. Julian had been invited to speak at the Union League Club of Chicago to honor a notable white scientist. The club’s membership was a “who’s who” of Chicago’s leading business, legal, cultural and civic elite. It included many Oak Parkers as well.
Before his scheduled presentation, Union League officials, following the club’s racist by-laws, denied Julian entry to the club. Chicago historian Ron Grossman relates how Julian connected the violence in Oak Park to the exclusion of Blacks at the Union League Club. In an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter, Julian said, “When individuals, supposedly in high places, behave as the Union League Club has behaved, ordinary citizens of lesser intelligence follow suit” (8).
The pain, fear and violence that came with the Julian family’s move to Oak Park provided an opening for the village and many villagers to break with the systemic racism Dr. Julian experienced.
In the 1960s, the national Civil Rights Movement turned its energy to directly backing Chicago efforts for open housing (9). In response, more villagers began to understand the reciprocal relationship between racial justice in America and inclusionary housing in Oak Park.
A battle royale loomed.
Episode 6 citations
1. Eric Foner, The Story of Freedom, 1999.
2. Dana Dash Moore, G.I. Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation, 2004.
3. John Edgerton, Speak Now Before the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1994.
4. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America, 2013.
5. Justia Law, Pioneer Savings Bank v. the Village of Oak Park, 1951.
6. https://www.oakpark.com/2025/03/10/joshua-vanderberg-technology-executive
7. Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank v. Village of Oak Park, 408 Ill. 458, (1951).
8. Ron Grossman. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2019/02/15/chemist-percy-julian-pushed-past-racial-barriers-amid-attacks-on-his-oak-park-
9. John Duffy. “Critically challenging liberal interests in school integration.” Public Spaces, Politics, and Policy: Historical Entanglements with Irrational Momentism, 2025.