Chapter 5 "White Houses" Summary

In July of 1925, posters appear in the Garland Avenue neighborhood promoting the Waterworks Park Improvement Association. There is a meeting scheduled in two days and all concerned parties are invited to attend. The signs caused a panic because people know that a black family was moving into the neighborhood. "In the privacy of their flats, husbands and wives talked nervously of fragile family budgets, mortgages years from being repaid, and the specter of plummeting property values. Children heard the fear in their parents' hushed voices and spun out of the horrors that the Negroes would bring to their homes would bring to their homes, terrifying and thrilling themselves with thoughts of assault and pillage. Out on the streets, there was rage at the audacity of the coloreds, moving where they didn't belong, buying the best goddamned house...