I. Free Fall "S tand in the center of the black belt -- at Chicago's 47th St. and South Parkway. Around you swirls a continuous eddy of faces -- black, brown, olive, yellow, and white.... In the nearby drugstore colored clerks are bustling about. (They are seldom seen in other neighborhoods.) In most of the other stores, too, there are colored salespeople, although a white proprietor or manager usually looms in the offing. In the offices around you, colored doctors, dentists, and lawyers go about their duties. And a brown-skinned policeman saunters along swinging his club and glaring sternly at the urchins who dodge in and out among the shoppers.... There is continuous and colorful movement here -- shoppers streaming in and out of stores; insurance agents turning in their collections at a funeral parlor; club reporters rushing into a newspaper office with their social notes; irate tenants filing complaints with the Office of Price Administration; job-seekers moving in and out of the United States Employment Office."

See each installment of this article:

Origins of the Underclass

(July, 1986)

The first installment of this two-part article described why black urban ghettos are poorer and more isolated today than they have ever been. The question remaining is how to reverse the effects of what has become a self-sustaining culture.