"White Flight" was a real thing from the late 1950's to the 1980's

Get the Point!

Lord willing, I will be 53 years old this coming May and as the years roll by and I look back on life, I am often amazed by the cyclical nature of history and how we may not notice in the moment the very pivotal nature of certain events, but hindsight provides great insight into where we were, where we are, and where we, individually and collectively, are going.

Earlier this morning I had a chance to read an article written for the Chicago Sun by A.J. Sanders, a retired school teacher who grew up and has lived her life in the Windy City. In her piece, she discussed the early days of integration in Chicago in the late 1950’s; now, when we think about Jim Crow segregation, we often imagine the Deep South states that were openly hostile to Black civil rights back then—and to certain extents—still today!

But the truth is that major cities like Chicago, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles and the like all had their share of hostile bigoted customs that made it difficult to desegregate schools no matter what the law required their school systems to achieve with respect to racial demographics. More pertinent to today's piece, when I look back on my own life, I realize that this part of the civil rights story isn't something that I merely read in a book, but one that I lived with my family in REAL time—even if I didn't know it at the time!

First, an excerpt from Ms. Sanders’s article:

The Chicago Public Schools district had drawn an attendance line down Michigan Avenue, so several other children and I walked west across 83rd Street and old Dearborn Avenue, unaware that it would be the Dan Ryan Expressway in three years.

I arrived early and excited at Hookway Elementary School at West 81st and South La Salle streets, where I was one of a minority of Black children in a fourth grade class of 30 baby boomers.

The Black kids were me, Mary, Anthony, Henry, Kenny and Donald.

Mary was sweet, but we both ignored the boys. Boys were “icky.”

I had happy times in school.

I was a good student who loved learning and enjoyed my classmates.

On the playground before school, at recess and even during class, I had a ball. I scooped jacks, jumped rope and played tag with my wonderful new friends.

Our crew consisted of me; G.G., a German girl with waist-long braids; frilly Francine of French descent; Nickie of Greek descent with jet black hair; and cinnamon freckled Mary, who lived a block from the school.

Then there was my favorite: sandy-blond T from Ala-baaa-ma.

We all used the stretched out “a,” as she insisted.

Most West Chatham families had jobs in meatpacking and factory work.

Nickie loved to bring us all extra ham for our lunch. She also brought interesting fruits, like her grandma’s pomegranates and dates. We all feasted on Nickie’s contributions, then went back to jumping rope until the bell forced us inside.

Our group put the “f” in fun!

T sat behind me in class. We had two seats at the end of the fifth row.

On rainy days, the teacher made us stay in our seats for recess. But that was no problem for us.

We loved to make intricate designs in our coloring books. We improvised, inserted squiggles and circles and turned bland outlines into mosaic-style pieces.

One rainy day, T and I were working on a masterpiece. It might have been a horse.

Then, in her Southern drawl, T said, never looking up from her coloring:

“You know what, Andrea?”

“What?” I asked.

“Me and my family, we’re moving to Ala-baaa-ma.”

“When?” I asked.

“Oh, real soon. We got to get away from these ... n------. I hate n------, don’t you?”

I paused, picked up my crayon, wrinkled my brow and, without a clue, I answered, “Yeah!”

“Come on T, let’s make this horse’s mane purple!”

I graduated from Hookway Elementary four years later in June 1963.

There were three white students in a class of 90.

Wow!

So, somewhere circa 1976, my family moved to Northern Virginia when my father was reassigned to Fort Belvoir by the U.S. Army. After a year living in Alexandria, we moved to the Apple Grove neighborhood in Oxon, Hill Maryland where I and my closest sister in age, Traci, began kindergarten and fifth grade, respectively, at Apple Grove Elementary School.

Apple Grove Elementary is still going strong!

When we arrived in Apple Grove, we had white neighbors on every street and my class was about 50-50 regarding the white to Black ratio. While I am still in contact with several of my Black friends from the old neighborhood due to the wonders of Facebook, I can still remember the names of some of my white friends like Greg, Stephen, Jennifer, and Margaux, even though I haven't seen or heard from them in over 45 years!

Two years ago, I returned to Maryland to attend funeral services for one of my old friends, Kenny Clark, who lived across the street from me and went to school with all of my friends depicted above…

But pertinent to today's post, what I remember is that by the time my family left Maryland to move to Tallahassee, Florida in 1980, one by one, my white classmates Jennifer, Stephen, Margaux and finally Greg—who also was my next door neighbor—ALL moved away!

Second baseman Chuckie Hobbs prior to getting in the on deck circle in a baseball game circa ‘79. My neighbor/classmate Greg, our right fielder, is standing nearby…

Now, as military brat who was accustomed to families being reassigned, I was already used to that reality by the time I was five years old but here was the catch—the Apple Grove neighborhood was not a military post, like the former Fort Benning or Fort Bragg, so these were civilian white families moving not because Uncle Sam said so, but because they chose to move elsewhere.

Mom, my sisters, and me holding a baseball in our Apple Grove backyard on Easter Sunday 1980…

Apple Grove circa 1968, Apple Grove circa 1974, Apple Grove circa 1980 shows white flight from the neighborhood and school! The last picture, from the 1980-81 school year, is of my actual class without me due to my family's move to Florida, and a host of other white kids who moved away at the end of the previous term…

Surely, I will always wonder whether those decisions to move were due to the fact that more and more Black people were moving into the area? I don't know…

But as time goes by, when I remember how my white friends Stephen and Greg suggested that I assume the role of Darth Vader when we played Star Wars because my “skin was Blaaaaack…”

Can you see the physical similarities between young Hobbs and Lord Vader? 🙄 🙄 🙄

Or, certain stories of slights that my sisters experienced at the hands of parents of their white friends or white school officials who less than a decade earlier, had been working at segregated all white schools? Or, a memory that my mother keenly remembers of my father cutting our lawn on Saturday mornings at the same time as my white “friend” Greg’s father next door and how they didn't hardly say ONE WORD to each other—I realize that nominal racial politeness and adjacency in that early integration era didn't mean racial acceptance or equality at the time and in the present age, it doesn't assume racial acceptance or equality today!

Lest we forget…