Monday on Eight Forty-Eight, we head to the suburbs. Specifically, to Maxfields Family Restaurant and Pancake House in the Village of Lombard, a suburb west of the city of Chicago. 

You may or may not remember the last live, remote broadcast of Eight Forty-Eight we did in June at BJ’s on Chicago’s South Side. We asked community members there to share their thoughts on how segregation influences crime in the city.

Some listeners of the series commented that they felt just talking about the problems surrounding race in predominantly black communities wasn’t getting the whole picture. We agreed, and that’s why we’d long planned to go to a community that appears to be entirely different from Auburn-Gresham.

In Lombard, we will try to answer these questions: How diverse is the area and how has it changed over the years? We’ll be joined by Lombard Village President William Mueller, who was born in Lombard and has been mayor for almost two decades.

Additionally, North Central College History professor Ann Durking Keating will be on hand to offer details on the evolution of Lombard, and changes in demographics in the Western suburbs.    

Some background on Lombard: According to Keating, in the early part of 20th century, about half the population of Lombard was foreign born or were children of foreign born. Over time, that percentage dropped because of exclusionary immigration policies, but started growing again at the end of the century. Keating says Lombard is returning to that higher percentage of foreign born because of the global economy and changes in United States policy toward immigration, much of which was the result of the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act.    

Keating says in 1930, Lombard was more or less 100 percent white, but by 2010 it was 81 percent white, 10 percent Asian, five percent black and nine percent hispanic, out of a population of 43,165. Additionally, the black population has almost doubled between 2000 and 2010, but is still only five percent of the population at large.

This matches up to the results of a recent study that, as mentioned in an article in the New York Times, found that “America’s suburbs are becoming more diverse, but tenuously so.” Specifically, the study found that neighborhoods like Oak Park were making a specific and effective effort to increase racial diversity. Is that something that Lombard is doing — and is it even necessary — are some of the questions we’ll be exploring with the community members there.

How diverse is Lombard? How typical is it, when compared to the region, to the U.S., as a whole?

Mayor Mueller: I was born here in 1935…my family’s history goes back to the 1800s when my grandfather came from Germany. 

Mueller: We have trustee committies [to work on diversity]…one of the committees is the Community Relations Committee.