If you keep voting in the same crowd, your vote gets taken for granted.

The city’s black population was growing rapidly when redevelopment began in the 1950s. By the mid-1970s, however, blocks sat vacant and the black population had started its decades-long slide from about 13 percent to half that in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline of any major city.

On the block where King’s Birdcage used to be, the New Chicago Barbershop is the only black-owned business that returned after development.