For further research
There is so much more of this story to tell--the larger fair housing, open housing, and civil rights legislation and activism in the surrounding suburbs, in Chicago and in the nation; organizations and activists who helped to integrate Chicago’s suburbs; and the lives of the Black families that lived in Skokie.
Below are a few starting points for further research.
Lestre Brownlee
Award-winning journalist, Lestre Brownlee, and his family moved to Skokie from Evanston in 1962. Brownlee briefly describes his family’s move to Skokie in his autobiography.
Les Brownlee: The Autobiography of a Pioneering African-American Journalist by Les Brownlee, Marion Street Press, LLC, 2007.
Richard Steele's WBEZ radio interview with Les Brownlee's widow Priscilla MacDougall, "Pioneering African-American Journalist Les Brownlee."
Dr. Gwendoline Y. Fortune
Gwendoline and Fred Fortune and their children moved from Hyde Park (Chicago) to Skokie in 1964. Dr. Gwen Fortune was a writer and educator and her family’s move to and life in Skokie, Outsider in the Promised Land, is available in this digital collection.
Outsider in the Promised Land: Black Family in Jewish Community by Gwendoline Y. Fortune. Manuscript, 2015. Also available in print at Skokie Public Library
Dr. Gwendoline Fortune Papers are archived by the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University. Finding Aid to the collection is available online.
Video interview with Gwendoline Fortune on North Carolina Bookwatch, 2007: Season 900 Episode 604.
Robert S. Basker
Robert “Bob” Sloane Basker and Hedda Basker were the Skokie couple who purchased the home in Skokie that they then resold to the Jones family in 1961. The Baskers were threatened and their own home was firebombed for their effort. The couple separated and the family moved away in 1962. Bob Basker later helped to found Mattachine West in 1965.
The Robert S. Basker Papers are archived by the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries. The Finding Aid to the collection is available online.
A brief biography of Robert Basker is in Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall in the Skokie Public Library’s collection.
Skokie Human Relations Commission
Don Perille and Herman S. Bloch, co-chairs of the Skokie Human Relations Commission during the drafting and enacting of the Fair Housing ordinance, were only two of the many Skokie officials active in changing laws and minds. Perille donated much of the material in this digital collection to the Skokie Public Library and the Skokie Historical Society. The physical papers are now part of the Skokie Heritage Museum collection. Bloch also fought for fair housing as a member of the Cook County Housing Authority.
Obituary of Don Perille from the Chicago Tribune.
Biographical profile of Herman S. Bloch from the National Academy of Sciences.
Fair housing in Skokie, Chicago, and Chicago suburbs during the 1960s
In addition to the list below, take a look at the list recommended by the Skokie Heritage Museum.
Barr, Mary. Friends Disappear: The battle for racial equality in Evanston. University of Chicago Press. 2014.
The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activism in the north, University Press of Kentucky, 2016.
Deerfield Public Library’s online exhibit Six Pivotal Points of "The Fight to Integrate Deerfield".
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Open Housing.
Ramsey, Chris, "Forgetting How to Hate: The Evolution of White Responses to Integration in Chicago, 1946-1987" (2017). Dissertations. 2844.
Rubinowitz, Leonard S., Crossing the class and color lines: from public housing to white suburbia, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Satter, Beryl, Family properties: race, real estate, and the exploitation of Black urban America, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2009.
Seligman, Amanda I. Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
History of housing discrimination policies
Though housing discrimination was already in effect prior to the Great Depression, a New Deal agency--the Home Owners' Loan Corporation--codified the practice by mapping neighborhoods by mortgage-loan risk. One of the variables of risk was the presence of African American residents. This practice is known as “redlining” because the maps were color coded and residents of red areas were denied mortgage loans.
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America is a project from the University of Richmond that provides background on this discriminatory practice as well as the maps themselves with descriptions. The 1940 assessments of real estate in Skokie (then called Niles Center) are part of the Chicago maps.
Lake Forest College’s Racial Restriction and Housing Discrimination in the Chicagoland Area presents mapping and data on redlining, racial covenants, and blockbusting
The Chicago Covenants Project has begun mapping racially restrictive real estate development policies (covenants) in Chicago.
The Skokie Public Library has books and audiobooks on housing discrimination in its collection. Additional titles on the topic are suggested by the Skokie Heritage Museum.
North Shore Summer Project
Videos and essay on the 50th anniversary of the North Shore Summer Project from public television station WTTW, 50 Years Later, Fair Housing Movement on North Shore Marches On.
North Shore Summer Project archives (1965-1966) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.