INTEGRITY AND INTEGRATION IN THE SUBURBS
Koven, Stanley A.
Integrity and Integration in the Suburbs by STANLEY A. KOVEN Residential racial integration—at least token integration—has come to Park Forest, a thriving, middle-income suburban community a dozen...
...I was one of the first to learn about the Wilson business," he recalls...
...her husband took on precinct work in Thornton Township, going from house to house...
...one woman asked, and then answered: "No...
...But the circumstances and the timing of Park Forest's venture into interracial living hold a valuable lesson for liberal citizens and for their liberal representatives in government...
...Bailey helped produce campaign flyers...
...The Baileys decided to act...
...That is the instinct God gave them...
...Growahl had already left the community, and when the initial reaction of outrage set in, Scariano bore the brunt of it...
...What prompted this militancy...
...There was a harmonious sequel to this encouraging election...
...It happened at the beginning of this election year, with the primary just a few months away...
...But I also told him I admired his courage and his stand, and would be more than happy to help out...
...Realizing the political implications of the transaction, Growahl urged Scariano to sever his connections with the sale...
...I called Tony and told him he was crazy politically, that he should have let some other attorney handle it...
...Later in the epistle, she left the pulpit to get down to cases: "You might get the colored vote," she informed Scariano, "but I'll assure you, you'll get only the crackpot white vote...
...If the racial issue wasn't settled in the primary campaign, it would be dredged up in the November election, and we knew it would be far dirtier then...
...Wilson, his wife, and their three pre-school-age children moved into the three-bedroom home at 375 Wilshire in Park Forest on December 28, 1959...
...I believe that your participation and your candid acknowledgment of your role in the [Wilson] matter," wrote a Republican attorney, "is going to cost you a few votes...
...There are quite a number of independent Republicans among my friends and acquaintances . . . whom I can persuade to vote for you...
...The stage was set for one of the more passionate, if unheralded, local election campaigns...
...Robert Plotkin, a young Park Forest attorney, was among the new recruits...
...An extraordinary and heartening pattern was already taking shape: f The liberal segment of Park Forest and the surrounding communities, so often passive, fragmented, and torpid in First District poliSTANLEY A. KOVEN, a Chicago newspaperman, hat been covering the Illinois political scene for the past four years...
...Today he's among us...
...There wasn't a handful of professionals among us," he recalls...
...It was the largest primary turnout in the precinct's history...
...Growahl decided to sell the $21,500 property to Charles Z. Wilson, a young assistant professor of economics at DePaul University, Chicago, a graduate of the University of Illinois, and a Negro...
...Integrity and Integration in the Suburbs by STANLEY A. KOVEN Residential racial integration—at least token integration—has come to Park Forest, a thriving, middle-income suburban community a dozen miles south of Chicago...
...During the campaign, Scariano had placed the issue squarely before the people, and had taken a bold position on it: "Negroes are coming into the middle classes in huge numbers...
...We simply wanted to settle it here and now...
...tics, was emerging as a militant and potent force...
...The outlines of the struggle ahead were foreshadowed in the volume of telephone calls and letters addressed to Scariano...
...Citizens who had never voted in a village election enlisted in the Scariano cause, not merely to paint posters or crank a mimeograph but to canvass precincts, to appear at parlor meetings, and to scuttle vicious rumors...
...We knew that the racists were out to get Tony," one volunteer explained...
...As a free lance writer, he has specialized recently in exploring the changing pattern of race relations in the Chicago metropolitan complex...
...This attitude, I think, represents a change of thinking out here...
...A liberal forty-two-year-old Democrat seeking his third successive term in the Illinois legislature, Scariano not only endorsed the principle of integration in the suburbs: he had chosen to play an active role in applying the principle in his home community...
...Plotkin became a precinct captain, and produced an emphatic endorsement of Scariano...
...Rumor-mongering and other smear tactics, however, served to stiffen resistance and close ranks among Scariano's supporters...
...The bare fact is of itself worthy of comment...
...On April 12, Scariano won renom-ination from the First Representative District with the largest number of votes he has ever received in a primary—23,000, compared with 16,000 in the unruffled climate of the 1958 primary...
...What are we going to do—build a fence around him...
...The bluejays stay together...
...Bailey's campaign contacts left him with several rather powerful impressions: "There were people who listened, disagreed with Tony on the racial issue, but voted for him because of his integrity...
...One week later, the villagers of Park Forest went back to the polls to select three trustees...
...f Perhaps of more significance, this emergent force represented an authentic and spontaneous bipartisan effort, forged in the heat of the racial issue...
...What does the Scariano triumph mean...
...The sparrows stay together, and so do all the animals...
...They re-elected three who had been on the board when it had affirmed the indisputable right of the Wilsons to take their place in the community...
...No one can pinpoint the source, but the mud-slinging had all the characteristics of an organized campaign...
...Do the birds that God made intermingle...
...Richard and Eleanor Bailey, an independent Republican couple from Homewood who had admired Scar-iano's legislative record, said, "We were very upset that he apparently was to be defeated for a show of integrity...
...I would like to offer whatever help I can in the coming election...
...It was an answer prompted by the loyalty and hard work of liberal citizens who were inspired by a liberal political leader unafraid to apply sound moral principles...
...Then there were those who said 'We don't like this sort of thing [integrated housing],' yet at the same time they recognized their civic responsibility to protect the rights of Negro citizens...
...Scariano refused...
...According to a typical rumor, Scariano received $5,000 from the NAACP to promote the Wilson purchase...
...Beginning in January, when letters poured in offering Republican support, the Scariano campaign became a community issue rather than a party affair...
...In the course of his law practice, Scariano had agreed to represent a neighbor, Bert Growahl, who was moving away from Park Forest, in the sale of his home...
...Twenty or thirty years ago, a Charles Wilson couldn't have been a professor of economics...
...The voters of the First District gave Scariano their answer...
...The village was stunned...
...Events proved the woman something less than a perceptive political prophet...
...Those who knew State Representative Anthony Scariano were certain that integration was to be a key issue of the spring primary campaign in the First Representative District...
...We couldn't take any chances...
...It was apparent from the outset that, by classic American standards, here was no ordinary political campaign...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
