Evanston, Illinois, doesn't really feel like a suburb of Chicago. It's kind of an extension of the city. I lived there during grad school because it was safer and quieter than many Chicago neighborhoods but retained a city vibe; it was lively, and walkable, and most importantly, affordable.
Some of these same factors attracted young white and black families to the college town just north of Chicago in the 1960s. By then, this progressive place was poised to be a model of racial integration—a glaring contrast to the rest of the city. But it never succeeded.
Evanston native Mary Barr, now a professor of sociology and anthropology at Clemson University, has written about her hometown's fight for racial integration in her book Friends Disappear: The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston. Barr recently spoke to Chicago magazine's Whet Moser about how the failure to integrate the school system in Evanston has shaped her life, as well as the lives of her interracial group of friends (pictured above).
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...esegregation/389153/]
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