Elmhurst was not untouched by controversy—in the early to mid-20th century, real estate developers in the city practiced racial discriminatory housing policies, and Civil Rights ordinances uniformly failed on the local level. According to Jean Eyrich Pennell, an Elmhurst College student in summer of 1965, Pennell recalls seeing African Americans working in Elmhurst as maids and other similar jobs, but they did not live here. She would see them head back to Chicago on the 5 o’clock train. “I don’t think people in Elmhurst were very accepting of Black people. Period,” said Grace Lippert, 74, who has lived in Elmhurst since 1958. “I never felt I was prejudiced,” she said, but she acknowledges the city as a whole was not very accepting until about the late 1970s.
During the time of the Civil Rights movement, Elmhurst was more or less a sundown town. Neighborhood covenants, segregative realtor practices, and the high cost of living, including high taxes, kept African Americans from taking up residence in Elmhurst. “Integration wasn’t a good thing in anybody’s mind,” Chris Hauri, 56, said. “It was truly terrifying to see a Black family move into the neighborhood.”
In the 1960 census, 36,991 people called Elmhurst home; only 63 of which were identified as non-white, with an average age of 28, with over half being married couples. At the time this accounted for 10% of the non-white population in DuPage County. The new Mayor, Charles Weigel, took a proactive approach to make sure non-white residents were welcomed and met with little to no protest. He would organize community efforts involving Elmhurst officials, police, and local religious leaders to make sure any new non-white residents were welcomed and not provoked by opposing groups and neighbors.