Skip to content
  • Subscribe
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Email
  • Home
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • Features
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Clumns
Suburban Chicagoland

Suburban Chicagoland

Original News, Features & Opinion on local and regional news you won't find anywhere else

  • About
    • About
    • Advertise
    • Our Writers
      • Ray Hanania
      • Bill Lipinski
      • Biography: Aaron Hanania
      • Steve Metsch
      • Steve Neuhaus
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Policy
    • Reach Out
  • Sections
    • Events
    • Opinion
    • News
    • Features
    • Seniors
    • Comic Strip
  • Library
    • “MIdnight Flight” Online Book
      • Midnight Flight Book Overview
      • Midnight Flight Introduction
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 1
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 2
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 3
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 4
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 5
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 6
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 7
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 8
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 9
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 10
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 11
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 12
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 13
    • Villages, Cities & Towns
    • Federal Office Holders
    • County Officials
    • Legislators
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
  • Comment
  • Podcast
    • Ray Hanania on Politics
    • Two Guys on Politics
    • Hanania on Tiktok
  • News Wire
  • Toggle search form
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Leving team’s court victory protected dad’s daughters from reported danger Dads' Rights
  • Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
    Madigan sentenced to stiff seven and a half years in prison on corruption case Chicago
  • Attorneys Jeffery Leving Arthur Kallow
    Honoring Fathers: A Father’s Day Reflection Arthur Kallow
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    Understanding Cook County Property Taxes: A Guide for Homeowners Blogger
  • Pekau diatribe expels residents Feb 5 2024 board meeting on ceasefire
    Chicago Union bosses embrace anti-Arab & anti-Muslim racism to fuel Fire District takeover Baby Boomers
  • 06-04-25 Two Guys on Politics Background Zoom LOGO with images
    Two Guys on Politics Podcast on Elon Musk, Trump’s Parade, LA Riots, and Middle East ban Bill Lipinski
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Often overlooked single fathers deserve praise this Father’s Day Blogger
  • Fentanyl drugs Courtesy of the DEA
    Five Defendants Charged in Federal Investigation Targeting Fentanyl Sales in Chicago Crime
  • Illinois State Senator Michael Hastings. Photo courtesy of the Illinois State Senate
    Southland manufacturer receives state funding thanks to Hastings Business
  • Stolen merchandise in the arrest of Isadore House by Cook County Sheriff 06-11-25
    Chicago Man Faces Felony after $400,000 in Stolen Merchandise Recovered Chicago
  • Ray Hanania joins Thom Serafin on The Crisis Cast Podcast this week discussing presidential politics, journalism and how to understand Trump's reality TV persona style
    Podcast: Musk vs Trump and the impact of media distortion on news Commentary
  • Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
    Suburban Chicago Physician Sentenced to Ten Years in Federal Prison for Health Care Fraud Crime
  • Congresswoman Robin Kelly official photo
    Congresswoman and Illinois native Lucy McBath endorse Robin Kelly for U.S. Senate during Gun Violence Prevention Month Crime
  • Standup to growing anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Photo courtesy of human rights watch
    Chicago Federation of Labor criticized for racial bias against Arabs and Muslims Blogger
  • Orland Fire Protection District responds to fire in Orland Park Thursday Sept. 5, 2024. No injuries
    Orland Fire participates in Village Touch a Truck event June 12 Festival
Bowen High school, 2710 E 89th St., Chicago. Website banner 2017

Midnight Flight: Chapter 9 — Midnight Flight

Posted on January 29, 2016February 25, 2018 By Ray Hanania 1 Comment on Midnight Flight: Chapter 9 — Midnight Flight
SHARE THIS STORY
            
 
  

Midnight Flight: Chapter 9 — Midnight Flight

One family’s experience of White Flight and the racial transformation of Chicago’s South Side (an online novel)

By Ray Hanania

Midnight Flight, (C) 1990-2018 Ray Hanania, All Rights Reserved

“I’m gonna leave the city, got to get away.
“I’m gonna leave the city, got to get away.
“All this fussing and fighting, man,
“You know I sure can’t stay.”

— Going Up the Country, Canned Heat, 1969

“There is a community meeting tonight at Stuart’s home, across the street,” my father told my mother.

It was the end of the summer of 1968 and I was preparing to return to Bowen High school as a sophomore. My sister, Linda, was just enrolling there for the first time as a Freshman. And my brother, John, had already left to return to college at the Michigan Institute of Technology where he studied engineering and played on the school hockey team. John had graduated from CVS. I still have the 8 mm film of his graduation from CVS held at another outdoor stadium on Chicago’s North Side.

Bowen High school, 2710 E 89th St., Chicago. Website banner 2017
Bowen High school, 2710 E 89th St., Chicago. Website banner 2017

Most of the older kids in the neighborhood had also gone to college. Jeff Pomerantz, whose father owned a haberdashery, was in college, as were Ron Smerek and Frank Zurek.

My friends and I were the older generation now, and we were alert to the fact that something disruptive was happening. It was the talk of the neighborhood. Racial change. No one ever took the time to define it for anyone. Everyone was left to react in their own way, or to follow the “herd” which reacted in the most negative ways.

I was with a friend and his mother was driving us someplace in their car. I don’t recall where we were going. But he had said to me that he heard some “Schvartzes” had moved into the area near Stony Island Avenue. Schvartz was the common Yiddish word for Black people that many in the Jewish community preferred to words like “Colored,” Black or even “nigger.” Some of the Christian kids were also calling the Black students Schvartz, too. One of them asked me what it meant, saying he thought it meant something worse than “nigger,” which was his intent. 

Race was a major issue in Chicago in the 1960s, whether we meant it to be or not.

The fact that Blacks were moving into the area wasn’t really news, although we hadn’t experienced a family moving near us or on our blocks, yet. But then he said that some of the people were saying the Black families were also buying homes in places like Flossmor and also Niles and Skokie. That prompted his mother to exclaim somewhat startled, “I hope the Schvartzes aren’t moving to Niles. That’s where we’re going.”

The Jewish families were much more organized than the rest of us. And they were organized closely around their religion.

While we went to Bethany Lutheran Church for Sunday worship, summer Bible school and even a few dances and summer picnics, the Jewish community’s organization was much more intense.

For them, Synagogue Rodfei Shalom was more than just a place of worship. It was the center of Jewish community life and activity. More than 800 Jewish families were members of the Congregation, making it one of the largest community organizations on the Southwest Side. Some 1,800 students went to the Hebrew School there, too. They were also all members of The Henry Hart Jewish Community Center, located across the street on Jeffery with its new outdoor swimming pool, drew large attendance that summer.

In fact, it was such a part of their life that my friends often brought me to Hebrew school with them.

Naturally, the Jewish community is where most of the organizing in response to the threats of block-busting first began.

Fathers met at the Synagogue and formed “Stop Move” committees. These committees were distributed throughout South Shore Valley and even in Jeffery Manor. There was a school in Jeffery Manor just east of Luella Avenue called Luella Elementary, 9928 S. Cranston, which also was undergoing a racial change in its student body. That school also served Merrionette Manor.

A Jewish family on our block in a house across the street from us was in charge of one of the committees that tried to “bring our area together.”

I wasn’t permitted to attend the meetings — actually I don’t think I would have been interested — but dad would return and relate to mom what had happened. And I would listen.

All I knew was that the discussions had to do with “Colored” people moving into “our” neighborhood. My dad referred to the Black people as “Abeed,” which means “Black” in Arabic.

“They said the Abeed have already crossed Stony Island,” dad said.

“What about the Hitching Post restaurant? Can we still go there to have dinner?” Mom asked startled by the revelation that somehow Black people crossing into Stony Island Avenue also meant we would no longer be able to frequent popular restaurants. “What about shopping there?”

It was as if they were talking about enemy armies that had captured a strategic location. The Hitching Post, for many years, was a very popular restaurant. I hadn’t realized it was a military outpost, too. (Today, it is renamed “The Queen of the Sea” restaurant.)

The organizers of the meeting had all agreed that they would not permit anyone to place “For Sale” signs on their front lawns, although legally, there was little they could do to stop anyone.

But talk was cheap, and at first, it seemed to be effective.

Some of the homeowners even drew large signs on “construction paper” that they put up in their homes on their windows that read “Not for Sale.”

None of the homes that were sold had placed “For Sale” signs on their lawns. Not even the organizer of the meetings on our block had placed a “For Sale” sign on his lawn. He sold his house within a month of organizing the meetings and moved his family and furniture early in the wee hours of the morning.

His departure was discouraging to many of the people who thought the “Stop Move” movement was beneficial. It took weeks before another meeting was called.

Once his house was sold, everyone’s houses were being sold, too. Homes changed hands quickly. Black families were moving in at a rapid pace and White homeowners couldn’t sell their homes fast enough.

Ironically, while all this was happening, some Realtors were prepared to make money off of anyone, selling the home across the alley from us on Paxton Avenue to a White family. The family went into near shock when they realized they had purchased a “below market priced home” in a neighborhood that was changing racially.

I remember meeting the lady who moved in. I was taking out the garbage and was lifting the metal door to the cement garbage container next to our garage when the lady called to me.

“Your family isn’t moving. Are you?” she asked surprised.

I shrugged my shoulders. I honestly didn’t know if we were moving out or not. “I don’t know,” I said.
“This is unbelievable. We just moved in. Why is everyone leaving? This is a beautiful neighborhood. If no one moves out it will stay that way,” she told me. I don’t know if she was talking to me, as much as just venting her frustrations.

I think later that week, she came by and introduced herself to my mother, and I think they had the same conversation.

It didn’t do any good, though.

It was like that everywhere.

When I returned to Bowen High school that fall, there were more Black students registered at the school and there were frequent gang fights between Black and Hispanic students. The Spanish Kings were really up in arms, painting street gang symbols insulting Black gangs, and vice versa. The increase in Black and Hispanic gang violence at the school only fed the stereotype and the growing fears of Whites in the area.

One day, there was a shooting in the lunchroom. That was bringing it real close to home, so to speak.

Because although it happened at school, the stories came back to the homes with the kids, who described in vivid detail how the shooting took place. It was horrific.

We walked to Bowen High school. And while we were used to the distance, having walked to Warren Elementary school every day of our lives, it was somewhat scarier. We would have to walk through the Skyway viaduct to cross into the East Side from our neighborhood into Bessemer Park near the high school.
Every week, the gang signs painted on the walls of the viaduct would change. One time, as we walked to school, Black and Hispanic gangs were slugging it out right at the entrance near the park.

We’d come home and watch television news reports of the violence occurring around us, and we would listen to the discouraging reports about the rising death toll in Vietnam.

I don’t know which was worse. Watching the violence at school or seeing it in living color in the comforts of our homes. Two wars. Two battles. Two conflicts. It seemed as if the dividing line between what was happening in Vietnam and what was happening in our backgrounds did not exist, and emotions and perceptions were being confused.

Protesting the Vietnam War was one way that we could vent our frustrations, I guess.

I had joined up with a group of students that drove downtown and participated in an anti-war march down State Street, ending up at a rally at a large auditorium or hall. There seemed to be a sense of togetherness. White students. Black students. Hispanic students. We were all together protesting against something, rather than against each other.

It was only a temporary escape from the reality of the anger and hatred that seemed to swell all around us.
Those days of fun at Warren Elementary school were long gone, erased by the seeming violence that was erupting all around us. Bowen High school was no fun either.

I guess when my father broke the news to us that we were moving, maybe I felt a little relieved.

“Where we gonna go, dad?” I asked.

“Someplace where we can get away from all these problems.”

And, the “Abeed,” of course.

Midnight Flight

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Dividing Lines

Chapter 3: A Beautiful, Idyllic Community

Chapter 4: Written Long Before

Chapter 5: Black is Bad

Chapter 6: Alone in the Playground

Chapter 7: Bowen High School

Chapter 8: In the Eye of the Storm

Chapter 9: Midnight Flight

Chapter 10: The Sub-Urban Life

Chapter 11: Friends Left Behind

Chapter 12: Looking Back

Chapter 13: Notes from Readers

newswire info
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.  

His award winning columns can be found at www.HANANIA.COM Subscribe FREE today

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.

Follow RayHanania at Twitter
Ray Hanania
Latest posts by Ray Hanania (see all)
  • Leving team’s court victory protected dad’s daughters from reported danger - June 14, 2025
  • Madigan sentenced to stiff seven and a half years in prison on corruption case - June 13, 2025
  • Honoring Fathers: A Father’s Day Reflection - June 13, 2025
  • Tweet

SHARE THIS STORY
            
 
  
 
 
 
           
Baby Boomers, Books & Films, Suburban Chicagoland Tags:1960s, African-Americans, Blacks, Bowen High school, Calumet Park, changing neighborhood, Chicago, Moved to suburbs, race, Racism, realtors, selling homes, South Shore Valley, Southeast Side, SuburbanChicagoland, Warren Elementary school, White Flight, White Homeowners

Post navigation

Previous Post: Midnight Flight: Chapter 8 — In the Eye of the Storm
Next Post: Midnight Flight: Chapter 10 — The Sub-Urban Life

Related Posts

  • Hassan Nijem, Ray Hanania, Samir Khalil, Marie Newman at the AADC Online Candidates Rally Oct. 25, 2020
    Candidates, Judges and community leaders address AADC online rally Cook County
  • Brian Hahn, 38, accused of stabbing his mother to death March 6, 2019 in Lyons. Photo courtesy of the Lyons Police
    Son stabs mother to death in Lyons Crime
  • house fire on the 9100 block of 169th place in Orland Hills on the evening of March 18, 2022
    Orland Hill house fire Friday night, no injuries Fire
  • Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
    Alexi Giannoulias easily captures Democratic nomination for Secretary of State Chicago
  • Students appointed by School DIstrict 230 Superintendent Dr. Robert Noltingthree to the Board of Education Committees, which include Education, Student Support & Development, and Building & Finance.
    School District 230 welcomes students to Board of Education Committees Education
  • The Orland Fire District responded to a reported house fire on Sunday, March 14th, 2021 at approximately 1:37 pm located in the 13900 block of Springview in Orland Park.
    House fire at 13900 block of Springview, Orland Park: no injuries breaking news

More Related Articles

money $20 dollar bill, dollars, cash Orland Park withholds Finance and TIF audits and brings State censure Baby Boomers
Stop Partisan tyranny logo Change.org plays politics with truth and censors GOP censorship
Casa Margarita, 9549 W. 151st St in Orland Park offers a wide selection of Mexican food. This is plates of Guacamole and Ceviche with extra thin taco chips. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania Venturing out of the Coronavirus Pandemic Blogger
Cook County Commissioner Frank Aguilar Aguilar helps secure $8 million in coronavirus funding for West suburbs Business
Village of Orland Park photo courtesy of the Village of Orland Park Orland Park’s Annual Curbside Spring Clean-Up Week of April 8 Government
house fire on Wednesday, November 3, 2021 by a neighbor who  noticed smoke coming from a house behind them in the 16800 block of 89th Ct. in Orland Hills. Neighbor alerts 911 on home fire, no injuries Cook County

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Login with your Social ID
Subscribe to Ray Hanania's column graphic

Enter Your Email to Subscribe to Ray Hanania’s Columns

  • OPINION COLUMNS
  • Attorneys Jeffery Leving Arthur Kallow
    Honoring Fathers: A Father’s Day Reflection
    June 13, 2025
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    Understanding Cook County Property Taxes: A Guide for Homeowners
    June 13, 2025
  • Pekau diatribe expels residents Feb 5 2024 board meeting on ceasefire
    Chicago Union bosses embrace anti-Arab & anti-Muslim racism to fuel Fire District takeover
    June 13, 2025
  • 06-04-25 Two Guys on Politics Background Zoom LOGO with images
    Two Guys on Politics Podcast on Elon Musk, Trump’s Parade, LA Riots, and Middle East ban
    June 12, 2025
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Often overlooked single fathers deserve praise this Father’s Day
    June 12, 2025
  • Ray Hanania joins Thom Serafin on The Crisis Cast Podcast this week discussing presidential politics, journalism and how to understand Trump's reality TV persona style
    Podcast: Musk vs Trump and the impact of media distortion on news
    June 11, 2025
  • NEWS
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Leving team’s court victory protected dad’s daughters from reported danger
    June 14, 2025
  • Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
    Madigan sentenced to stiff seven and a half years in prison on corruption case
    June 13, 2025
  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png
  • SPORTS
  • Chicago Wovles play the Rockford Ice Hogs, Feb. 23, 2025
    Chicago Wolves Hockey skate Past Rockford Icehogs 4 to 2
    February 23, 2025
  • Chicago Wolves player Andrew Poturalski. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Wolves. https://www.chicagowolves.com
    The Chicago Wolves dispatched the Iowa Wild 4-1 on Saturday night at Allstate Arena.
    February 22, 2025
  • NEWS RELEASES
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Leving team’s court victory protected dad’s daughters from reported danger
    June 14, 2025
  • Stolen merchandise in the arrest of Isadore House by Cook County Sheriff 06-11-25
    Chicago Man Faces Felony after $400,000 in Stolen Merchandise Recovered
    June 11, 2025
John Kass Columns

Order the book PoweR PR; Ethnic Activists Guide to Strategic Communications

YOUTUBE VIDEOS

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO RAY HANANIA'S YOUTUBE VIDEOS


Click here to view the video on YouTube or use the widget below.

Follow Ray Hanania at
Twitter
Facebook
TitkTok
BlueSky
RayHanania Columns

Creative Commons License
All works on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

Categories

Copyright © 2022 Suburban Chicagoland & Urban Strategies Group

Powered by PressBook Premium theme