I agree, Tara, about northern cities being segregated. Looking back on the King years, I'm amazed how differently longtime Southernors view the North, and vice versa. I have a friend who lives in Maryville TN where I live but lived her adult life in Birmingham. She's a college graduate and widely read, but was amazed to find that we in Chicago were used to race riots during those times. It's for sure that we who lived in northern cities did not have a true sense of what was taking place in the South. I followed a lot of news in those days and still learned more of what John Lewis is known for by reading Taylor's book than I ever knew.
But I will have to say after living in Chicago from from 55 to 77, that I saw a lot of changes. The influx of Southern blacks was tremendous after the Supreme Court loosened the rules for welfare relief when changing to a new state. We had a saying when discussing a black person: "First generation or second?" First generation people often ended up in Gary, Ind. until they could get established in Chicago. Those who had gone to school in Chicago had better chances of getting work. (Something similar to what happens to Mexican-Americans today.)
I worked at Spiegel in Mayor Daley's back yard. The "Gary girls" were bussed in to do keypunching. We had black programmers. The total workforce was 95% black because of the warehouse. When the tollways were expanded Speigel moved to the suburbs. By then keypunching was out and those who had worked in the warehouse had no way to get to the suburbs without a car, which wasn't feasible because of low wages.
The city now, I hear from my friends, is a lot better. One of them, a schoolteacher (second generation) who had a house on the South Side and one which had belonged to her parents on the West Side says that I wouldn't recognize Chicago now. It is so much better. I don't know what the real poverty rate is. When I later taught computer programming, most of my students were black and many were from the projects. Upward mobility is hard to describe, but a good part of its success comes from education.
And the Board of Education in Chicago is something which is a contentious topic. During the time the Nixon impeachment hearings were going on I was getting a Masters in Vocational Guidance at Roosevelt University and most of my classmates were Chicago schoolteachers advancing to counsellors by taking the course.
Jessie Jackson and now his son, were a big part of the conversation. It will be interesting to see how Obama adds to it.