Austin Boulevard: The Invisible Line Between Two Worlds

by Jeff Ferdinand

In Austin Boulevard: The Invisible Line between Two Worlds, Jeff Ferdinand uses Austin Boulevard - a street dividing the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois and Austin Village, located in the West Side of Chicago - to illustrate the divide he sees between black and white, rich and poor, privileged and unprivileged. Jeff's personal experiences living on Austin Boulevard has given him a passion to learn about the history of African Americans and race relations in the United States. Using many resources, he has gathered together information to help the reader gain a new perspective on this complex issue and by doing so has given hope to imagine a more tolerant and compassionate America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Justice, History

222 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2016

About the author

Jeff Ferdinand is a Chicago Public Schools teacher. He lives with his wife in Chicago and is the author of the book Austin Boulevard: The Invisible Line between Two Worlds.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written for white folk from a white suburban male perspective. This isn’t about Austin or Oak Park; it’s a sweeping generalized explanation of how his view of American racism has made Austin a drug and gang infested hell hole while extolling Oak Park’s suspect “liberal” racial history. And “racial inclusion“ in Oak Park is not as he claims; “the commitment to dispersing African-Americans evenly throughout Oak Park has been instrumental in avoiding areas that are high in racial concentration.” That’s not inclusion, that’s steering. And there’s a heavy concentration of black folk all along Austin Boulevard the author never touches. If he ever lived on Austin Boulevard he didn’t learn much about racism in Oak Park or the positive things that Austin has. The 1st 70 pages summarized slavery, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration. The next 40 talked generally about school to prison pipelines, drug dealing and treatments, and other issues, quoting heavily from Isabel Wilkerson and Michelle Alexander. Nothing new here and no insight. A waste of time.

[Adriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content is very well-researched and presented in an organized way. Ferdinand outlines the history of race relations and segregation and ties it in to how that has played out (and continues to play out) in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago and its neighboring Oak Park today. He ends with suggestions for a way forward. My only critique is that the writing is mediocre and dry at times. Minor typos in the book detract from the overall experience as well.

[Kevin Carney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book "Austin Boulevard: The Invisible Line Between Two Worlds" by Jeff Ferdinand is an excellent book for an older person such as myself who was grossly miseducated in the 60's and early 70's concerning US History. Black history was given short shrift and limited to a few "good" Blacks like Booker T. Washington and George Wahington Carver and a cursory lesson on MLK as a symbol of the greatness of American freedom and democracy. Our history books de-emphasized the white culpability in creating and maintaining these systems of slavery, in various forms and disguises, from 1619 until today. We learned that the Great Emancipator benevolently freed the slaves in 1863, and since that time African-Americans have been free to succeed or fail on their own merits just like every other immigrant group that comes to America.

The author uses the Chicago street of Austin Boulevard to show the system of segregation that our country has created to separate Blacks from Whites, the poor from the rich. the free from the enslaved... like the apartheid system of white supremacy that existed in South Africa until 1994.
If a child lives on the Chicago side of Austin Boulevard his/her chances of succeeding and living a quality life are greatly diminished compared to those children who are living on the Oak Park side of the same street.

The author points out that there are still many of these invisible racial lines today (2022) throughout the city and suburbs that were designed on purpose by the federal and local governments, churches and businesses to keep Blacks at a safe distance from Whites. These methods of segregation were achieved through the practice of redlining, real estate covenants, racist banking practices, harassment and outright violence against the "offending" Blacks. And it was all perfectly legal and upheld by the US Supreme court case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
This part of American history was white-washed in our history books to make the USA look like a beacon of genuine democracy for all the world to emulate. (Note: I think that the white South African government in 1948 did emulate the USA's effective laws and practices of segregation as a basis for their system of apartheid.)

I am glad that Jeff Ferdinand added a dose of reality to my faulty, US history education. I would like to see his book used as part of the educational curriculum in all the schools around Austin Boulevard. It could offer awareness of the problem of segregation that still exists today and lead to some much needed exchanges and visits between the two sides of this innocent boulevard. that reflects an ugly American truth. We cannot allow another generation to be miseducated. It is time that we disrupt this invisible barrier to create a real democracy for all people living on both sides of Austin Boulevard.

[Happyreader · Rating 1 out of 5]

There really does need to be a book about the stark difference between Oak Park and the neighboring Austin neighborhood of Chicago. But this is not it. Awful writing and no reporting. Reads like a clunky book report of various books on race history that the author read. No sense of Chicago history or politics. Doesn’t address the rapid demographic shift in Austin in the mid-1970s that occurred in a matter of months nor how Oak Park protected itself against a similar white flight in the same time period. Author never even figured out that Austin Village, his name for the area, does not refer to the entire Austin neighborhood but only to a smaller more affluent and whiter subsection between Lake and Ohio and Central and Austin. All this he could have learned if he had actually wandered out of his Austin Boulevard apartment and talked to some residents.

[Meital · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I agree with the points the author made, what disappointed me about this book was that rather than tapping into his backyard and exploring the unpublished deep history + culture of Austin, he wrote the book as a summary of ideas from other books. I can go read those other books and so there isn't that value add that I was looking for in this book.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely interesting, but occasionally tone deaf