Published: March 1, 1995

Connections: There's Always Hope

Hope is also the fuel that has driven Oak Park, Ill., in its 30-year effort to integrate successfully its affluent neighborhoods and schools (page 32). As black families began to migrate from Chicago to the suburbs in the 1960s, the residents of solidly white Oak Park set an extraordinary example for the nation by working to assure the peaceful assimilation of their new neighbors. Town officials, real-estate agents, community organizations, and individuals collaborated to avoid the block-by-block influx of blacks that inevitably led to white flight elsewhere. One professor says: "People in other places defined themselves as threatened and got the hell out; people in Oak Park got together...