The concrete/physical “acting out” of fear toward the “dissed” (disrespected) that results in physical harm/death and/or the threat and fear of physical harm/death for the “dissed”(disrespected.)

Below is an excerpt from my memoir where I recount the physical racism I encountered when my family moved into an all- white community in Chicago in 1955.  It speaks of the both physical danger we lived with as the first Coloreds in the neighborhood and the physical segregation due to racism that resulted when white flight occurred.

(Excerpt from my memoir)

7838 Chicago, Illinois

When I was eight in 1953 my family moved out south to 7838 where only white people lived. We left the comfort and security of 4926 and started a new and scary adventure, just the three of us. My grandmother, Mom’s mother, who could pass for white and was a real estate agent, bought us the house. The neighbors were really, really, really surprised when we moved in. They had mistakenly thought the house was hers. For six months a police car was parked outside our house to make certain that this transition in a social experiment, integration, went well. One afternoon after being stationed there for several months the police car briefly left. The policeman went to a store for snacks. When the policeman returned all of our windows had been broken.  A police car followed me to school every day as I walked alone down 79^th Street. Ruby Bridges, in that Norman Rockwell picture, had nothing on me. I did well at school, Martha Ruggles Elementary School. There were only three houses on my block when we first moved in and we were surrounded by vacant lots before they built the Dan Ryan Expressway. I made two friends my first year there. Sonia, Ralph and I would play baseball in the lot behind my house every day after school and in time Sonia and I walked to and from school together until her family and Ralph’s moved away. By the time I left Martha Ruggles Elementary School I had gone from being the only Colored child in my class to a whole school of Colored children. I got to see firsthand what “white flight” was all about in the four years I attended Martha Ruggles Elementary School. The evidence is blatantly recorded in my yearly group class photos that changed drastically in hue over the years. More houses were built on my block and were called Universal Homes. These filled up quickly with Colored people moving south as the white people sold their homes and ran. My new neighborhood became the crowning glory of middle class Colored people. We lived there, the doctors and nurses lived there, the teachers lived there, the contractors lived there, the lawyers and secretaries lived there, and the businessmen in real estate, funeral homes, daycare centers, cleaners and barbershops lived there. All the businesses up and down 79^th Street were Black owned and prosperous. Many of our celebrities lived in Chatham too. Mom’s Mabley, Ernie Banks and Mahalia Jackson’s houses could be reached just by walking a few blocks from my house.

We were segregated again, now in Chatham/Park Manor. We looked after each other, knew each other, and were safe again in our newly racially segregated Colored/Black community.

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