Talk:Austin, Chicago
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[edit] history
I added/edited all this:
start quote
Austin suffers from a number of problems plaguing poor inner-city communities across the United States such as substance trafficking and abuse, a high murder rate and gang activity.[citation needed] Per capita violent crime rates in the neighborhood are amongst the highest in the city.
[edit] History
On December 1, 1958, the Our Lady of the Angels School fire killed children and nuns at the Our Lady of the Angels School, located in the Humboldt Park community. Some sources describe the school as "in Austin" [1].
Austin was a predominantly white neighborhood until the late 1960s (99.83% white in the 1960 census). It faced numerous infrastructure problems before the arrival of black residents. While white residents of Austin in the early 1960s generally thought negatively of leaving their neighborhood for the suburbs, a combination of events occurred in the years after to change this. The government of the city of Chicago was not responsive to the neighborhood's demands towards improving neighborhood infrastructure. Suburbs gradually became better supported through an increased transportation system between Chicago and its suburbs, and many jobs left the city for the suburbs and overseas locations. Significant riots began to occur on Chicago's West Side starting in 1965, and an especially damaging riot in 1968 (after Martin Luther King's death) prompted many white residents to leave. The west side experienced a further declining infrastructure and lack of local jobs after this.
Not all emigrating residents moved into suburbs - many moved into other areas of the city, especially the Northwest and Southwest sides. Not all emigrating residents were white - some black families, especially after the riots, began to leave the area as well, as it declined, to better perceived locations elsewhere.
By 1970, southern Austin (south of Lake Ave) was mostly black, and the neighborhood overall was 66% white and 33% black. Nearby neighborhoods such as East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, and North Lawndale, were experiencing white flight before Austin did. Decay and a declining population in these neighborhoods led to an influx of black residents in Austin. By 1980, North Lawndale was 96.50% black, West Garfield Park was 98.85% black, East Garfield Park was 99.00% black, and Austin was 20.76% white and 73.78% black. The population of these neighborhoods seriously declined in the 1970s (approximately 30-40% decline), except Austin, which increased from 128 thousand residents in 1970 to 138 thousand in 1980.
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With regards to the violent crime reference... I've seen the stats recently but don't know of a source. But the violent crime rate is very high in Austin currently. And the section I added about the demographic and infrastructural changes in Austin from 1960-1980... all that information comes from the book "Block By Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago's West Side" by Amanda I. Seligman, copyrighted 2005 by the University of Chicago. I don't know how to properly cite this source into the article, but I wanted to post this here to source my edit, and provide info for anyone else who might want to help on this article. Thank you!
Peoplesunionpro (talk) 02:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
