E. Michael Jones has written about the process of how the old ethnic neighborhoods in the inner cities were destroyed. It is a VERY touchy subject, and although he used to be a friend I confess that I broke with him over what I thought was an antisemitic streak in some of his later writings.
Nevertheless, his book on the destruction of the cities, “The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing,” which is the top one listed here, is well worth reading:
http://www.culturewars.com/books.htm
Basically, the process began with FDR, who moved large numbers of black workers into Chicago and the other northern cities during the Second World War, to work in the defense plants. Stalin was doing similar things, moving populations around to break up cultures and fragment opposition to his policies, and I think FDR took a leaf from his book.
It continued with the “urban planning” initiatives put forward by Democrats in federal, state, and local governments, after the war. And it became entangled with Martin Luther King’s movement, which started out with desegregation in the South but in its last years included MLK’s visits to such places as Chicago.
Federal judges decreed school bussing measures in the northern cities, forcing white parents to flee to the suburbs. And the Quakers seem to have played a role disproportionate to their numbers.
Some of it was well-intentioned, no doubt. But some of it seems to have involved the Country Club establishment, which was then WASP, and its desire to deal with what was seen as a political threat from Catholics, who were growing in numbers and morally conservative, and opposed to the kind of “sexual liberation” the establishment was working for.
problem was, the whole scheme was TOO SUCCESSFUL.....we didn't want to work in the shoe factory, we wanted either college or training of some sort....we wanted money, we wanted a little nicer house, better furniture, better cars, and we wanted to spoil our little children rotten, and we did all that....
we had to move away, to the suburbs or bigger city to do it...our old schools and churches suffered for that..
to this day, the best memories I have of any school I attended were of my grammar school and my church.....both still exist buy not as it once was....