The riots that followed the death of Martin Luther King devastated the Westside of Chicago. People in Oak Park could see the flames of the fires along Madison Street. It must have been a real motivation to do something to prevent Oak Park for resegregating.
This update is late
and brief. The press of time is upon me. I must leave here on
May 15th and feel as if I have months more work to do. I have
continued to film material to be used in all of the films - The
Housing Center and the three family films. I continue to observe
as much of Village life as possible. The press of my other life
is also upon me. I needed to prepare for teaching summer school
classes and to receive the news graduate students who will appear
in the fall in the program I manage on the anthropology of visual
communication. My most time consuming project was the writing
of a rough draft of a paper about Oak Park's complex attempt to
be diverse and integrated. I wish to circulate it in enough time
to receive feedback from Oak Parkers while I am still in the community
and to work on a collaborately written article with University
of Illinois, Chicago politican scientist and resident Oak Parker,
Evan McKenzie. The paper is entitled THE
CONUNDRUMS OF INTEGRATION and can be downloaded. As always
I welcome your comments and criticisms. I will attempt one more
monthly update for April and then begin quarterly updates from
that point on. I cannot posibly thank everyone who has helped
me this year but to you who have been on this update listserv
and have made comments, criticisms and suggrestions, many thanks.
Please continue to do so.