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Posted on @rawstates
Oak Park passes its own fair housing law and then manages integration
1968
Oak Park, Illinois
Dennisyerger84 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
In May 1968, a month after the federal Fair Housing Act, Oak Park's village board passed an ordinance of its own banning discrimination in sales, rentals, advertising and lending, and outlawing panic peddling by estate agents. The village then spent decades deliberately managing integration rather than letting block by block turnover run its course. It had reason to. Percy Julian, the chemist who became Oak Park's first Black resident in 1950, had his house firebombed twice.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: city-level
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