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When her employers had scouted an all-white neighborhood they thought ripe for plucking, they would find a white property-owner who, for a bonus, was willing to sell his property to a Negro. If the place was worth $25,000 he would be bribed with as much as another $25,000 to sell out. There are few neighborhoods where not one greedy white man could be found after a searching survey by private detectives.

After the block-buster—in her own name—made the purchase, she and her large Negro family moved in. Immediately, all other property in the neighborhood sank in value and most of it was thrown on the market. The far-sighted realtors then bought it up at greatly reduced values. Then they resold it or rented it to Negroes at inflated prices, and started another Negro island in the city.

When this was accomplished, the block-buster moved on to another base and repeated the process.

You can sense a neighborhood in the process of being block-busted by “For Sale” signs on porches or lawns, oddities in this otherwise overpopulated, under-housed metropolis.