clipped from www.nytimes.com Promised Land Heading north, July 1940. By KEVIN BOYLE My parents bought their first house in 1960, six years after emigrating from Ireland. They’d grown up with a fierce sense of place — of land, family, history — and they were determined to recreate that sense for their children. That little house in the middle of a non­descript block on Detroit’s East Side was going to be their home forever. It didn’t work out that way. In the early 1970s the first African-American couple moved into the neighborhood. They were young teachers, I think, though I don’t remember that anyone asked them. Immediately the “for sale” signs began to appear, one or two at first, then more and more until the panic was complete. Within a year or so whites were selling their homes for whatever they could get, running for the suburbs as fast as they could. My parents waited awhile before joining the rush. They sold their house in 1977, their cherished sense of place swept aside by the terrible power of race.