In 2011, with racial segregation off the radar as usual in the mayor’s race, we interviewed the candidates on the subject.
See our related story: “The most important issue no one’s talking about in the mayoral race.”
Dock Walls was nine when his family moved into the South Chicago neighborhood in 1966, from nearby Park Manor. The second black family on the block, at 81st and Euclid, they weren’t cordially welcomed. “We fought battles every day,” Walls remembered. White neighbors threw garbage in their yard and, when Walls was riding his bike in the street, menaced him with their cars.
He thinks the mayor should work with the governor and general assembly on regional strategies to desegregate neighborhoods and deconcentrate poverty. He said suburban mayors could be persuaded to provide more affordable housing if Chicago’s mayor were more vocal about it. “The mayor has to use his office as a bully pulpit to persuade people to do the right thing.”
How should Chicago address racial segregation now? “I don’t even know where to begin,” he told us. He said most politicians—white ones especially—are wary of talking about race.
He later made himself into a millionaire by acquiring McDonald’s franchises and starting a medical supply company.
Jesus Garcia’s family was the first Mexican-American family on their block—Pulaski near 28th—when they moved into Little Village in 1969. More Latino families soon joined them, and the eastern European families moved out, grumbling as they left about the neighborhood’s decline.
