Some real estate companies grew rich from this race-based trading in hope and fear. Some actually identified neighborhoods and instigated the whole cycle in order to profit from the terror-driven turnover of properties. One of my friends remembers when her white neighborhood was inundated with flyers exhorting whites to get away from the coming dark hordes. Neighborhoods had brief, uneasy periods of “integration,” marked by racial tension and police brutality, before the last of the whites would move out.
This practice is called “block-busting,” creating a crazy, predictable cycle—whites move out, lured by real estate interests to leave for white communities; blacks move in and fear is escalated; whites become panicked and, egged on by the realtors and block associations, sell at ever lower prices in order to hurry and “get out.” This also happened when blacks moved into communities paying higher rents or land-contract prices than the whites before them. The more whites that moved out, “dumping” houses onto the market, the more blacks were able to move in; many of them were on a lower economic rung than those who preceded them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The result—a neighborhood that had solidly middle class or even affluent blacks and whites now had, in a few short years, a preponderance of poorer families. These were families who were often less able to maintain the lifestyle previously enjoyed in that neighborhood, and brought with them the problems their children often had in rough projects or poorer communities. Many of my black friends from harsher backgrounds had a difficult time adjusting to the quiet, tree-lined life on their new blocks. In each neighborhood, they used the drugs that were flooding into the communities to deal with their anxieties of being planted in these short-lived “mixed” communities, where they were often not wanted by blacks or whites. This accelerated the neighborhood’s crime and disruption—the final death knell for many communities.
Another factor I remember that prompted moves to the suburbs was violence, whether threatened or carried out, against white kids, who were often tormented by black kids in outbursts of retaliation for wrongs real or imagined. Later, there was the busing of children to schools as a tactic to address the re-segregation of the community, with the rise of agitators who whipped up a frenzy of racial fear and hatred, driving whites further across 8 Mile. A group of us stared down Klan sympathizers on the east side, singing “We Shall Overcome” in the streets during chilling episodes of anti-busing turmoil.
As people left, so did businesses; the suburbs, an appealing, all-white commercial for modern living, were a vacuum sucking life and enterprise across 8 Mile. Many of the largest industrial enterprises had gone first, finding in the undeveloped suburbs the acres of land needed for the modern, stretched-out production facilities that could not be built in the property-dense city. Companies left behind the tight neighborhoods where residents could and did join organizing efforts of all kinds, and by the 1960s, there was a freeway system to move out workers and supplies. Detroit’s infrastructure, dependent upon the former booming tax base and not the new, shrinking one, was less able to maintain services. With joblessness that became epidemic, and the ruination of great sections of the social fabric via the scourge of crime and drugs, the urban community spiraled ever downward.
This circular, self-fulfilling, nasty game of musical chairs perpetuated itself in the Detroit area, as in other “changing” communities nationwide. As whites departed en masse, the problems they most feared came to pass. In many areas, blacks moved into communities that they were suddenly allowed to afford, yet they were unable, in the long run, to maintain this new life. Or, blacks with means moved into communities with aged housing stock, making the next years of living a fait accompli of devastation. Later, the mortgage crisis sealed the deal of destruction in many neighborhoods.
Even so, after white flight, there were still many communities full of dedicated residents who were paragons of homeownership, with houses and lawns maintained in consummate displays of steadfast residential pride, despite the challenges of living in the midst of flight and escalating blight. Detroit still has exquisite blocks in affluent neighborhoods, and handsome, solid homes on working-class blocks—maintained by those who remained. My own neighborhood, Lafayette Park, was built in 1960 to staunch the flow of white Detroiters outward. It is still a model of diverse urban living, with those who live there committed to the city.
During the departures in the late sixties, my next-door neighbors were among the last whites to leave our block; we had lived next door to them all of our lives. He was president of a bank on Woodward Avenue, and on the verge of retirement, but I guess the changing times had become too much; whites were now moving at the sound of the drumbeat of the Black Power era. The banker’s
