U.S. Suit Charges Cicero, ill., Has Policy To Exclude Blacks
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The Justice Department charged today that the Chicago suburb of Cicero excluded blacks from living there or working in town government jobs. In a suit filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, the department said: ”Through its officials, the Town of Cicero has verbally and physically harassed blacks attempting to migrate to Cicero, including overt actions to physically remove such blacks from the town.” Justice Department officials declined to elaborate except to say that on occasions officials had physically ejected blacks from the town. The suit also charged that the town had been eligible for substantial Federal funds through a Community Development Block Grant Program designed to provide desegregated housing but had refused to participate in the program in order to deny housing to blacks. Less Than 1 Percent Black In describing the situation in the town, west of Chicago, the department said its population of approximately 61,232 was less than 1 percent black. By contrast, it said, 40 percent of Chicago’s population of over three million people is black. ”There is considerable racial separation in residential patterns in the Chicago metropolitan area,” the suit said. Cicero, which occupies an area of just 1.75 square miles with an extremely concentrated industrial section, is a working-class town populated largely by residents of Eastern and Central European descent. It has been the scene of racial unrest periodically for at least 30 years. In 1951, when a black family unsuccessfully attempted to move there, rioting broke out and a mob of 5,000 whites burned the family’s belongings and heavily damaged the apartment building. In the mid-1960’s, residents tried to block integration efforts by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader. And in 1966 a march there organized by the Congress of Racial Equality led to extensive violence, despite the presence of 2,000 National Guardsmen and 500 local, county and state police officers. The suit filed against Cicero today stemmed from an investigation that was started after the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the Federal housing grant program, referred the case to the Justice Department, according to John Wilson, a Justice Department spokesman. The suit charges the town with ”exclusionary policies” that it says violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those policies, the suit says, include a requirement that anyone seeking a municipal job must have lived in the town for a year. Mr. Wilson explained that because blacks could not live in the town, the policy automatically prevented them from obtaining employment. The suit asks the court to overturn that policy and to order the town not to promote segregation by interfering with anyone’s right to seek equal housing. Officials of the Justice Department said that if its suit was successful, the town would have to change its housing and employment policies or else face contempt proceedings for violating a court order. The department’s civil rights division, which filed the suit, has been widely accused under the Reagan Administration of failing to act aggressively on discrimination. Today, J. Harvie Wilkinson, deputy assistant attorney general for the division, said it had filed two previous housing discrimination suits, against private developers in Boston and Detroit. More : query.nytimes.com |