“We're still on the West Side. We just moved to, we moved from Lawndale, K Town [North Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois] to Austin [Chicago, Illinois] (1969). And Austin, at the time, was an excellent, excellent high school. So we were--there, we were like the third Black family on the block. When we moved in the beginning of the summer, literally, by the time school started, there were no white people in the block. I am not exaggerating. And I can remember the people next door. We came shortly after they did. But then, everybody else--and it was a long block, the 5300 block of Gladys [Avenue], long block. Everybody else was white. And, you know, there was like graffiti on the garage next door. You know, some nasty graffiti had been painted, some anti-Black graffiti. And, you know, we were a little bit concerned. But by the end of the summer, you know, if there was a white person on the block, we certainly didn't know it. We certainly didn't know it. It changed just that quickly. And the whole neighborhood--just everything changed, literally, in a matter of months, in a matter of months. It was amazing. And by the time we got to Austin, I think my sister--I went into eighth grade, and my sister was going into her junior year at Austin. And there were a number of white kids in her class. By the time I became a freshman, she became a senior, she may have had two or three. But I think there was maybe one white girl in my class. As a freshman and eighth grade there was, you know, one white girl in my class. And I felt sorry for her, I felt very sorry for her.”
Dorothy Tucker (The HistoryMakers A2013.222), interviewed by Thomas Jefferson, August 25, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 7, Dorothy Tucker recalls the white flight from the Austin neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois