Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

Through no agency of their own, Chicago’s white ethnics were the beneficiaries of an urban-planning miracle. The National Association of Real Estate Boards—the same group that turned itself into a political machine to lobby against open occupancy in 1966—launched an “Own Your Own Home” crusade in the 1920s to coax families into putting down payments on single-family houses of their very own; simultaneously, idealistic reformers coming out of England’s Arts and Crafts movement devised a new form of cheap and felicitous housing unmatched in the history of the industrial working class: the urban “bungalow.” Squat, handsome, one-and-a-half-story single-family homes in sturdy brick, garden plots out front, each a happy marriage of community-building uniformity and dignity-enhancing individuality (families could choose their own geometrically patterned brickwork, limestone trim, colorful awnings, artistic leaded glass, even custom-toned mortar); plentiful sunlight; minimal traffic (garages were in the back alley); endless ribbons of common greensward out front for children to play; each neighborhood anchored by parish church and school; all manner of citizens’ bunds to join; lively neighborhood newspapers; attentive block captains under the discipline of Daley’s Democratic machine attuned to their every municipal need. When another wave of Negroes migrated to Chicago during and after World War II, however, not-so-enlightened reformers boxed them into soulless “housing projects.”