SALENA ZITO: A Fragile Hope In Ford Heights.

Nobody ever really moves in here. Nobody ever comes here except to pass on by; you either escape or die.

The only businesses left in the town are one gas station, two liquor stores and a strip club; the strip club, a massive Greek-revival structure, is the largest employer.

Building after building is vacant, litter is everywhere. Businesses are shuttered, modest homes abandoned, and so are a couple of the housing projects.

The community’s connection with hope is fragile.

And the saddest thing is that none of this is new: Ford Heights, located 25 miles from Chicago, has been fighting this battle for decades. In 1987 it was named the poorest black suburb in America.

De-industrialization is color-blind; it doesn’t matter if your town is all white, or predominately black like Ford Heights — when the jobs leave, everyone bleeds red.

A study by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago showed, in 2014, that Ford Heights’ jobless rate exceeded 60 percent for 20- to 24-year-olds.

The evidence of prosperity passing by this rural black town is everywhere.

The problems are so numerous, so egregious to polite society’s sensibilities, that polite society just doesn’t come here. Like everything in culture, if you don’t hear about it or see it, walk the streets or step in the peoples’ shoes for a week or a day or even an hour, then it mustn’t really be happening.

Except it is.

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