OK, my Mom grew up in University City, Central West End, bordering St. Louis, Missouri. Back in the 1950s to the 1960s, it was a "white" city. My Grandmother worked at City Hall, as a secretary of some sort, let me just say she has been invited to EVERY President's inaugural dinner since the 1960s. Anyways, all I know is that she helped write the integration legislation that opened up U-City for all races to move in.
The integration wasn't perfect, you can't control how your neighbors will react, after all. My Mom told me a story of the first black students she ever encountered in High School, there were I think 3 that first year. My mom described herself as being curious of these people, so, being stubborn as a mule, she befriended them. One of the black women in her class really hit it off with my mom, mostly because both were good at basketball, my Mom was, and probably still is considered quite tall for a woman, being close to 6 feet tall, and her new friend was her height, so they had common ground right there. :)
Anyways, due to the integration, the city could be roughly divided into 3 parts, a white section, a black section, and a mixed section. This was well before my time, and, when I was growing up, in the 1980s-early 1990s, we would visit my grandparents almost EVERY weekend, mostly because my parents were somewhat poor, and I got a good meal and my grandpa made some great eggs for breakfast. :)
The thing that didn't occur to me, at the time, was that my Grandparents were the ONLY white people that lived in that particular neighborhood at that time. However, my best recollection of that time was the fact that I thought everyone around me was RICH, my parents lived in a townhouse at the time, and all these houses are majestic looking two story affairs, with huge lawns. Granted, now, I guess the neighborhood would be considered Upper Middle Class, but, being a kid, I didn't make such distinctions. Until it was pointed out to me, I didn't think it odd at all.
Of course, even before the integration occurred, my Grandparents and their kids were some of the few Gentile families in that neighborhood. My grandmother, I remember, gave me a talk on social relations, we took a tour once, in her car, while driving around the St. Louis area, and we were driving around U-City, and you could almost literally see a dividing line between it and Cities surrounding it. In some cases, it was literally a bump, one second a smooth paved road, the next, a cracked and potholed road.
My Grandma was explaining to me what happened to U-City compared to other cities surrounding it, how, despite the fact that U-City had similar demographics, that it didn't look like the other cities around it. She said that it was simply because of how all these cities are managed, and how they treat their people. While U-City suffered from the same white flight as surrounding communities, though not to the same extent, they refused to let themselves suffer economic collapse because of it. They enacted laws to encourage businesses to stay, remade themselves into a cultural cosmopolitan city, and now are nicknamed the "melting pot" of the St. Louis area. A major attraction of the city is the Delmar Loop, where they have a local community art house, many small and ethnic restaurants, and a lot of color, both literally and ethnically.
Its probably the only place where you can see the blue and yellow equal sign sticker, supporting gay marriage rights, stuck on the windows of ethnic restaurants, tea and coffee shops, as an advertisement. To be honest, I love the place, it has a vitality to it that's hard to describe sometimes. Lately, it seems that many of the communities surrounding U-City have caught the same bug, so to speak, and St. Louis itself in addition to these surrounding cities are in the middle of a building and urban revitalization boom. Also, and this shouldn't be a surprise, but U-City is one of the most liberal cities in the area, and one of the first to refuse to help federal law enforcement in enforcing the Patriot Act.
Here's a link to the law reaffirming U-City's commitment to civil liberties:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17206res20030220.htmlThe city was founded as a Utopian colony, by Edward Gardner Lewis, and it at least tries to maintain that image.
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) Enabled by the rotten republican-run state legislature, they're getting their wish. I wonder how they'll feel in 3-5 years after they've had to raise taxes since they're now responsible for the services that they complained about and used as campaign propaganda. 
