Description
Seligman’s study reveals that the responses of white West Siders to racial changes occurring in their neighborhoods were both multifaceted and extensive. She shows that, regardless of rehabilitation efforts, deterioration in these areas started long before the color of their inhabitants changed from white to black. And in the long run, the riots that erupted on Chicago’s West Side and across the country in the mid-1960s stemmed not only from the tribulations specific to blacks in urban centers but also from the legacy of accumulated neglect after decades of white occupancy. Seligman’s careful and evenhanded account will be essential to understanding that the “flight” of whites to the suburbs used to be the eventual result of a series of responses to transformations in Chicago’s physical and social landscape, occurring one block at a time.