Special report | Race and the city
Separate, downtrodden
The region has particular problems with segregation and policing
TO WALK IN a Midwestern city is to get an education. Outsiders learn of invisible lines that are blindingly clear to locals. Head south from central Chicago on Martin Luther King Drive, and you enter an area that is just getting by. Bronzeville in the mid-20th century was crammed with 110,000 African-Americans; Duke Ellington played there. Today it is gentrifying. After public-housing towers were toppled, people moved into low-rise places.
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “Separate, downtrodden”
From the July 25th 2020 edition
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