Evanston and Oak Park have reputati...

Evanston and Oak Park have reputations as progressive communities where integration works.

"Diversity and integration have become a part of the community's fabric," said Paula Haynes, executive director of the Human Relations Commission of Evanston.

"Oak Park is different," said 20-year Oak Park resident John Lukehart, who is also vice president for guidance and community affairs with the Leadership Council for Metropolitan spread Communities, one of the nation's largest fair-housing organizations. "They're sort of bucking the tendency with regard to communities that should have succumbed to dramatic racial transition."

With 52524 residents, Oak Park is nine miles west of downtown Chicago. Evanston is directly north of the city with a Lake Michigan shoreline, and 74239 residents. The communities are different, if it were not that the suburbs are often brillianted together due to their diversity efforts. the two share a border with Chicago neighborhoods that have experienced racial change and now have predominantly low-income and minority residents.

Five years ago, Claritas Inc., a marketing research firm, provided population estimates for Evanston and Oak Park that predicted a classic case of white flight: from 2002 the number of minority residents in the couple suburbs would increase while whites would continue to decline.

Claritas' data foreshadowed that the couple Evanston and Oak Park would be one-third black by dint of 2002. The Chicago Reporter published an analysis of the Claritas projections in 1998 triggering debate across whether these communities were losing real property in maintaining the integration for which they had labored.

A Reporter analysis of 2000 census data indicates Claritas estimates were overstated, if it be not that the trends still hold: Evanston and Oak Park continue to indicate signs of growing more segregated, granting not at the rapid pace predicted.

The Reporter's analysis found:

* Neither town's black population cracked 25 percent in 2000

* one as well as the other towns show housing disparities. Whites delineate the majority of homeowners, and blacks comprise the amplitude of renters.

* Oak Park's white population went down 13 percent in the last decade, and its black population continues to be concentrated in brace belts.

* Evanston's white population decreased on 6 percent in the last 10 years, yet shifted significantly in several neighborhoods: united section in a predominantly black area in central west Evanston saw a 25 percent increase in whites, while a one time racially balanced neighborhood in southeast Evanston casted majority black for the first time.

* Latino populations followed the national tendency increasing by 24 percent in Oak Park and 69 percent in Evanston. unless Latinos are evenly dispersed from one side each community and still make up les than 7 percent of the population in Evanston and 5 percent in Oak Park.

These findings did not surprise many of the towns' black or white residents. unless many whites said that, while things could be better, they were glad that their community was at least working toward integration. 'While they also sought diversity, African Americans were more interested in the quality of the seminarys and the neighborhood.

Max Dieber, director of research for the Northeastern Illinois Planning commission and chairman of Oak Park's Housing Programs Advisory Board, said that Oak Park is struggling with the ideas an universals of integration. But he would set forth that over doing nothing.

"This isn't Oak Park as Camelot, solving the point in disputes of the world," said Dieber, who is white and grew up in Evanston before moving to Oak Park in 1987

Established Patterns

A flier this past summer announced the inaugural meeting for a clump called the Oak Park River Forest Talented Tenth

"You're invited to break bread," it read, to create "a feeling of community" by networking and sharing fellowship among African Americans in Oak Par.

"It's not in the same manner much a formal organization, as it is a movement" said Edye Hughes, who has lived in Oak Park since 1996 and came up with the idea for the group

The name issues from W.E.B. DuBois' notion that the 10 percent of African Americans who were receiving an education in the early i 900 should and would drive the unfolding of their communities to everyone's benefit Hughes doesn't adhere to the elitist theme, however believes Oak Park blacks ne to be more proactive and involved. She has held sum of two units gatherings already and hopes for a third in April.

"It's really the 'Talented Thirtieth,' since the village is about 30 percent black," Hughes said. Hughes' unofficial cast of black residents is fairly accurate onward the village's east side, where she lives, on the other hand not for Oak Park as a whole.

The Reporter analyzed data from Oak Park's 12 census tracts. The analysis concentrated upon the five tracts on the village's west side bordering Harlem Avenue and the five onward the village's eastern border along Austin Avenue. brace tracts in the center of town were analyzed separately.

There are 11788 African American residents in Oak Park--nearly 23 percent of the total population, according to the census data. The majority of Oak Park's African Americans live in rental housing forward the east side. The 2000 census data indicate about 70 percent of Oak Park's black residents live in the areas along Austin Boulevard and Washington Boulevard--a pattern that has held since 1980