The New York Times, February 16, 2020: Black Families Came to Chicago by the Thousands. Why Are They Leaving?
Hardis White, 78, could hardly wait to break out of suburbia.
He dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans and a Bears cap, strode out of the rectangular bungalow he shares with his wife and daughter and folded his tall frame behind the wheel of his silver Nissan sedan.
Forty minutes away from his suburban neighborhood of Hillside, he arrived in Chicago, on Laporte Avenue, to see what he had come to see: a handsome brick house with white trim, two stories tall, as solid as the first day he saw it in 1967.
For a moment, he gazed at the house. Marvin Gaye played softly on the radio. The grass seemed a little long, he murmured. He put the car back in gear and started back to the suburbs.
“I don’t know why I keep coming back,” he said. “I guess I just miss the neighborhood.”
Some people, lured by nostalgia and curiosity, drive past their old houses now and then. Mr. White does it nearly every day.
