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>> 11 1 The Roots of Contemporary Move-In Violence Though many Americans may imagine that racially segregated housing in the United States is a direct descendent of slavery, in actuality the history of the integration of housing by race is more complicated. Blacks and whites were much more likely to be housed in the same neighborhood in the nineteenth century than they are in the twentyfirst century. Starkly racially segregated neighborhoods are a relatively recent phenomenon . Until the twentieth century, the vast majority of blacks living in the North lived in close proximity to whites in “racially-mixed neighborhoods, usually on blocks with many white neighbors.”1 Prior to 1915, “Negro housing [in the North] did not differ from that of any other race.”2 This did not mean that primarily black areas did not exist; rather, blacks were not confined to black neighborhoods, and at that time many blacks lived in racially mixed neighborhoods. This chapter explores integrated living arrangements during the antebellum period and after the Civil War. It then analyzes the onset of violence associated with housing integration, which began to occur decades after whites and blacks began to live in the same neighborhoods. Mixed-Race Neighborhoods before and after the Civil War Though the living arrangements were significantly different in the antebellum North and South, for blacks and whites in both regions of the country there was a history of proximity in housing before the Civil War. In the pre–Civil War South, black slaves lived on plantations with whites. In southern cities, slaves lived in urban compounds in close proximity to 12 > 13 In the postbellum period, truly integrated neighborhoods frequently developed from necessity. Poorer whites such as widows or unskilled laborers lived among blacks because they could not afford to move out of the neighborhoods in which blacks lived.11 It was not just the South where blacks and whites lived in close quarters after the Civil War. In Detroit, on the Near East Side, blacks and whites lived side by side in the postbellum period. In some cases semiskilled or unskilled immigrants lived in houses next door to blacks and in other cases lived even closer, as boarding places on the Near East Side housed people of a variety of backgrounds. The 1880 US census of Detroit reveals that even in areas with the highest number of blacks, blacks and whites lived in adjoining dwellings.12 Similarly, in Cleveland, prior to the 1880s there was significant integration of blacks, with no section of the city being more than 5 percent black.13 Even though most of the blacks in the city lived in just three neighborhoods, they were nevertheless integrated throughout each of these neighborhoods.14 Expulsion, on the Road to Segregation Racially integrated housing may have been an outgrowth of antiracist idealism after the Civil War. James Loewen, who has documented the expulsion of African Americans from white spaces after 1890, insists that for a time immediately after the Civil War, antiracism played a significant role in American political life. Loewen maintains that the period between 1865 and 1890 was somewhat of a “springtime of race relations,” during which many towns and counties throughout the northern United States demonstrated their antiracism by welcoming African Americans from the South.15 Freedom provided empowerment and the space to occupy a new place in society. Describing this era, Loewen reminds his readers that in the period between the end of the Civil War and 1890, African Americans had “voted, served in Congress, received some spoils from the Republican Party, worked as barbers, railroad firemen, midwives, mail carriers, and landowning farmers, and played other fully human roles in American society. Their new rights made African Americans optimistic, even buoyant.”16 Unfortunately, by the 1890s the springtime of race relations had begun to subside into a cold, harsh winter. In towns and cities across 14 > 15 population. Using a range from 0 to 100, the index of dissimilarity is used to assess the degree of segregation of two groups from each other in a particular location. Zero signifies complete integration, while 100 represents total segregation. In 1870 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, data at the ward level showed a dissimilarity index between American-born whites and blacks of 56.9.21 This means that for blacks to be evenly distributed among the white group, 56.9 percent of blacks in the city would have to move to a white ward. In 1910, the index of black-white dissimilarity had...

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