GHETTO

After World War II (1939–1945), millions of African Americans sought to escape poverty in the rural south by moving to northern cities where they hoped to find better paying jobs. But, they encountered housing discrimination that forced them into racially separate neighborhoods known as ghettos. Ghetto populations soared during the 1950s, when the black population of major cities grew quickly. During that timeframe Detroit's black population increased from 16 percent to 29 percent, while Chicago's grew from 14 percent to 23 percent. Boston's increased from five to 10 percent, and the District of Columbia's rose from 35 to 55 percent. At one time during this period, more than 2,200 African Americans moved to Chicago each week. This rapid population shift severely strained housing and urban services and created a set of circumstances that made ghettos, which had first appeared in the early decades of the 1900s during the Great Migration, an entrenched feature of almost every major city in the United States.

One of the most significant factors in the creation of ghettos was the mass movement to the suburbs of middle-class whites. At the same time, expansion of highway construction and the growth of the automobile industry enabled companies to move away from cities to areas where they could operate more cheaply. Thus, just as millions of blacks were moving to cities, jobs there were disappearing, as were tax revenues that could support decent services such as schools and sanitation. Housing in ghettos deteriorated badly, and high unemployment and limited social services combined to create blighted areas where crime rates soared. Yet blacks found it extremely difficult to escape from these areas because they were consistently denied the opportunity to purchase homes in white neighborhoods. Even after passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, which prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, or financing of housing units, most African American families in urban areas had no choice but to live in ghetto neighborhoods. By the late 1960s ghetto residents were extremely frustrated by the slow pace of change as advocated by civil rights leaders. In 1965, the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violence as thousands of African American residents burned stores and looted the area. The riots, which lasted from August 11 to August 16, caused 34 deaths and injured more than 1,000. Devastating riots also broke out in Detroit. These riots traumatized the nation and brought significant public attention to ghetto conditions. Though ghettos were beset by poverty and other problems, however, they also fostered racial pride and provided an important base for black businesses.

See also: Discrimination, Suburbs