Title

"We Just Can’t Afford to be Democratic": Liberals, Integrationists, and the Postwar Suburb of Park Forest

Department/School

History

Date

2020

Document Type

Article

DOI

DOI: 10.1093/jsh/shz007

Abstract

Park Forest, Illinois, emerged as a prototype suburb in the post–World War II era. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to Park Forest but have not thoroughly explored the efforts of the American Friends Service Committee to integrate this village outside of Chicago in the 1950s. Philip Klutznick, the lead developer of Park Forest, advertised the suburb as a melting pot for a new America, drawing the interest of open housing advocates wanting to include African Americans in this mix. Klutznick and most villagers resisted racial integration, but activists persisted, and by the mid-1960s, the suburb became an interracial community. The exhausting and intricate efforts to realize and sustain integration, however, demonstrated the struggles of the open housing campaign.

Volume

54

Issue

1

Published in

Journal of Social History

Citation/Other Information

Cooley, Will. "'We Just Can’t Afford to be Democratic': Liberals, Integrationists, and the Postwar Suburb of Park Forest." Journal of Social History 54 no. 1 (2020): 330-57. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shz007.

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