Exclusive Report
Integration will take decades
Will the Metro Detroit of our children be viewed in black and white? 01/28/02

Max Ortiz / The Detroit News Jonathan Wolbert, 9, of Flushing, Mich., studies a photograph included in a Smithsonian Institution exhibit celebrating African-American history during a stop in Pontiac this summer. Experts say a key to integration is for younger people to attach less importance to race.

Future
Attitudes, habits stall integration progress
The for-sale signs last spring told Laura McMullen an awful truth: The walls separating black from white in Metro Detroit still stand. 01/28/02

Thousands speak out on divide
Readers flooded The Detroit News with responses to the series, "The Cost of Segregation," many offering lifelong perspectives and heartfelt recommendations for narrowing the region's racial divide. 01/28/02

Metro area leaders: Segregation not an issue
L. Brooks Patterson says segregation doesn't matter in Oakland County. Ed McNamara has never addressed integration in Wayne County's public policies. And former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer doesn't believe segregation exists anymore. 01/28/02

Kilpatrick: Change 'has to start now'
Saying segregation is stifling Detroit's revitalization, new Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will hold public forums to spark discussion of how to close the region's racial divide. 01/28/02

Whites make small gains in Detroit
Across the United States, an influx of white residents to neighborhoods that had been nearly all-black has led to lower segregation levels. 01/28/02

Hispanic growth may aid integration
Greater integration of Metro Detroit's blacks and whites may depend in part on a much smaller, but overlapping group: the area's small but growing Hispanic population. 01/28/02

Diverse, upscale suburbs emerge
If stable, integrated neighborhoods are to arise in Metro Detroit in the next decade, they will probably emerge in the upscale Oakland County suburbs of Farmington Hills and West Bloomfield Township. 01/28/02

A Changing Community
Dramatic racial turnover alters face of Southfield
SOUTHFIELD -- For 50 years, James Lumzy has watched white families climb into moving vans. From the Detroit neighborhood where he grew up to the leafy Southfield subdivision where he's lived for three years, the retired auto parts worker has seen whites move away as he and other blacks have moved into the bigger, nicer, safer homes all families want. 01/28/02

Diverse Southfield strives to defy divide
Brenda Lawrence is the changing face of Southfield. Elected mayor just months after the 2000 census confirmed the city's status as a majority-black city, Lawrence became its first African-American mayor. 01/28/02

Pioneers
Couple takes bold step into Warren
What she didn't see was a neighborhood that, in 1990, had not a single black resident. And she didn't see a city with a history of sometimes tense race relations. 01/28/02

White pioneers
Young white couple wants to live in Detroit
DETROIT -- Sometimes, Rachael and Christoph Sanowski feel like they're swimming upstream. 01/28/02

Lessons From Elsewhere
Steps to bridge divide pay off
The nation is integrating twice as fast as Detroit. Segregation of blacks and whites in the nation's 100 largest metro areas dropped an average of 6.3 percent in the 1990s, compared to 2.6 percent in Metro Detroit. 01/28/02

Portland: Neighborhood boundaries fall
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Bohemian art galleries and co-op organic groceries are neighbors to African-American beauty salons and Malcolm X murals on Alberta Street. They testify to what has occurred in the last decade in this trendy Northwest city, and what has not happened in Metro Detroit: the breakdown of neighborhood boundaries between black and white. 01/28/02

Lessons From Elsewhere
Atlanta: Black-white gap shrinks
ATLANTA -- There is a loud metal click, and the large, black gates that lead into Highland City View Townhomes swing open. Andrew Barber waits inside with a brochure, a smile and a quick description of the condominiums' security system. 01/28/02

Shaker Heights: City works at integration
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The grove trees and surrounding lakes conjure up a scene straight from a Thomas Kinkade painting. 01/28/02

Two Areas of Hope
Success stories offer lessons
The neighborhoods are an unlikely pair, aging Victorians surrounding a deserted baseball stadium and suburban tract homes hugging a freeway. 01/28/02

Fire guts Jewish News building
SOUTHFIELD -- The Detroit Jewish News building was gutted by fire Sunday night, but the 60-year-old weekly still hopes to publish Friday's edition, said Alan Hitsky, the associate editor.  01/28/02

Court policy: Pay fines now
NOVI -- Standing before a judge in district court, Mark Cameron knew he'd pay for his crime. 01/28/02

Landfill cleanup award set at $207 million
MACOMB TOWNSHIP -- The South Macomb Disposal Authority will collect $207 million from two insurance companies to clean-up land and water pollution from a 162-acre landfill, in what legal watchers say is one of the largest judgments of its kind. 01/28/02

Pete Waldmeir
SBC Ameritech reaches new low in sharing our personal data
Included with my January telephone bill was a plain white paper that looked like the boilerplate warranty you get with a small appliance. There was no headline telling me what it was about, only the sanitary SBC Ameritech logo at the top. 01/28/02

Detroit Briefs
 01/28/02

Exclusive Report
Livonia mirrors area's barriers to integration
LIVONIA -- When Deano Ware and his family decided to move out of their integrated Detroit neighborhood, they chose the whitest city in America: Livonia. 01/27/02