You couldn’t be more wrong.
The first integrated neighborhoods were MIDDLE CLASS.
Specifically, those neighborhoods created when southern minorities moved to the north for industrial (automotive) jobs and, for the first time, joined the ranks of the middle class.
Higher-educated and salaried minorities remained in better areas of their own communities, and didn’t integrate to the suburbs until after the destruction of the inner-cities.
I was back “home” in the Detroit area this weekend and received a refresher course in what happened to Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
My family used to live in Detroit. Mother, Father, Grandmother and us kids.
Overnight, we saw our neighborhood turn into a SLUM.
One group stayed out on the streets all day AND NIGHT, while another group locked themselves up in their homes.
Property stopped being maintained and housing values plummeted. Then came the riots. We all left by 1972 and moved across the state and to the suburbs.
There’s no better example of what can happen than Detroit, and it isn’t the fault of the people that were forced to leave.
Those are the neighborhoods I am referring to as "once-nice". Detroit with the auto industry may have had a different history, but in the 50's and 60's the black acheiver in our area was pretty much in the middle class category income wise.