ABSTRACT
The civil rights movement cleansed the country of a great moral evil.But major problems in the ghettoes remained because racism was oftenmore intractable in the North than the South. Unlike white immigrants who clawed their way to the suburbs, native-born blacks remained stuck in the ghetto. A combination of interests kept northern neighborhoods segregated. Realtors steered most black homebuyers to black neighborhoods. On occasion, realtors moved a black family into a white neighborhood and then profited by spreading rumors that more blacks were coming. Panicked whites sold their homes at fire sale prices to brokers, who then sold them to middle-class blacks at higher prices. As the cities became blacker, whites fled the centre on new federal highways, leaving urban areas destitute. Lowincome people could not help themselves because banks and insurers refused them assistance, a practice called redlining. The result was that more blacks sank into poverty. Politicians responded to the urban crisis by erecting public housing projects to warehouse blacks. Blacks understandably concluded that ‘urban renewal equals Negro removal.’
