High Cost of Democracy

Looking out of her picture window one morning last week, Mrs. Morris Courington, wife of a Chicago merchandising executive, helplessly worried about the model suburban home going up across the street. "It just can't happen in Deerfield," she said. "It just can't." Like almost everybody else in Deerfield (pop. 10,000), a handsome, new North Shore suburb, June Courington was outraged by a homebuilder's plan to sell roughly one-fifth of an adjacent 51-home development to Negroes. That night her husband joined 600-odd other homeowners in a march on the town board meeting in the grade school gym. There an angry 1 1/2-hour session proved that the problem of integrated housing can be as grim in northern suburbia as anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Builder's Hope. Deerfield's trouble is not so much hard-shell racism as pocketbook fear. Many residents are on-the-rise young executives in Loop corporation offices who went into mortgage debt to buy split-levels (average price: $23,000) for their growing families. With the steady rise of the real-estate market, the tightly budgeted family heads (average salary: $9,000) hoped to break even or turn a small profit by the time their companies assigned them to better jobs in other cities. But their hopes did not take into account the secret plans of Builder Morris Milgram of Philadelphia, a crusading businessman who has built four successful integrated communities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey over the past five years. Through an Illinois subsidiary of his Modern Community Developers, Inc., Milgram settled on Deerfield as the ideal site for his next experiment in residential equality. When word of Milgram's plan leaked out three weeks ago, homeowners feared that real-estate panic would drive down Deerfield values, wipe out many a family's savings.

"We don't want to be lured into the position of debating integration," said Chicago Investment Broker Harold Lewis, chairman of the anti-integration committee at the village mass meeting. "But in essence they are trying to force integration down the throats of the people of Deerfield, and we are resentful. We have an obligation to other communities to fight." Merchandiser Morris Courington took the mike. "Some shyster came around and offered us about half what our house is worth. We called the real estate company, and they wouldn't even accept our listing." Mrs. Robert Ettinger, an engineer's wife, who moved over from Evanston after Negroes moved into the neighborhood, chimed in with word that the Ettingers had "taken a terrible licking" on the price of their Evanston house.

Teacher's Lesson. Strong man of the corporal's guard defending the subdivision was Homeowner Theodor Repsholdt, a high-school teacher. "I am a resident of Deerfield and teach your children American history," said he. "I'm a Lutheran and I'm in favor of an integrated community." Catcalls from the floor: "Resign! Fire him." Repsholdt squared his shoulders, continued: "One thing is fortunate. If there is any shortage more acute than the shortage in housing, it is the shortage of teachers. I'm not frightened about losing my job." Repsholdt got a big hand for his stand. But he did not roll back the angry majority, which, on a show of hands, had vowed all-out opposition to the integrated subdivision. Murmured one North Shore householder as Deerfielders signed up for the fight "We just can't afford to be democratic."

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