CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED. . .

Political Economy of Urban Renewal
and Redevelopment and African Americans
"Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?"
-- W.E.B. Du Bois (1969:45)

Colonization and dislocation are embedded in the history of urban renewal and redevelopment in African American communities. Economic schemes contribute to the restriction and displacement of African Americans. Social networks are sacrificed to make way for private/public ventures such as hotels and sports stadiums. Structural and social costs to these disrupted neighborhoods by urban redevelopment are often high. These conditions nurture the criminalization of many African American women and men (Hacker 1992:19 &197). In these next few pages, l will provide an overview of the historical conditions that led to the development of urban African American communities and their demise by urban renewal.

The failure of agriculture in the South, poor job opportunities in the rural areas, the inability to extract oneself from the indebtedness of sharecropping, and the lack of European immigrants to work in manual labor led many African Americans to migrate to urban areas in the South and the North (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:34; Cobb 1984; Berry and Blassingame 1982:198). In many instances they were recruited by northern mills, foundries, assembly plants, and southern railroads (Fusfeld 1984:26). David Katzman (1973:207), contemplates that between 1910 and 1930, the African American population in Detroit grew sevenfold.

However, African Americans were not welcomed by many of the White American residents. For example, the Chicago riot in 1919 was motivated by migration of African Americans, housing conflicts, and concerns over jobs (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:123). Twenty-six riots occurred throughout the United States during that time.

Such tensions led city leaders to restrict African Americans to certain areas by racial covenants. To block the expansion of African Americans, real estate firms, property owners, and banking institutions conspired to permit African Americans to live only in certain neighborhoods (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:31). An agreement to sell property only to certain people, maintained racial segregation in the North and South. Kenneth Kusmer (1978:46) communicates that in Cleveland that there was a pervasive strategy of selling to "whites only." He says that a prominent black citizen of Cleveland complained that there was an unofficial policy among Cleveland's Real Estate Board to not sell or rent to Negroes in some desirable neighborhoods, no matter how much money they had (Kusmer 1978:46). These covenants were legally reinforced until 1948 when the Supreme Court overruled the practice in Shelley v Kramer (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:31). Perrin (1977:122 &192) records that the cultural logic justified the segregation of blacks because they were perceived as "dangerous."

Occasionally, some real estate developers did not follow the agreement because they could make a profit by renting depressed property to African Americans (Tabb 1970:14-18). When African Americans began to move into an area, often white Americans would flee and seek other locations. Therefore, the speculation by the realtors would create the same effect as the racial covenants. African Americans were eventually resegregated.

Not only were urban African Americans residentially isolated, they were also crowded into "internal colonies" known as ghettos argues Tabb (1970:2-3). To make great profits, slumlords subdivided rental units and charged high rents (Tabb 1970:14). Robert C. Weaver suggests that African Americans in northern cities were usually restricted to 'the least desirable segments of low-income area' (Kusmer 1978:47). Spatially, these communities became densely populated islands. Kusmer (1978:48) explains that in Cleveland the densities of the African American neighborhoods ranged from forty-eight to eighty-two inhabitants per acre, while that of Cleveland as a whole was only thirteen per acre. Katzman (1973:207) depicts Detroit's 'black bottom' as literally as city within a city.

Residential segregation was not restricted to Northern cities. In the South, African Americans who migrated to urban southern cities for better opportunities found themselves also in enclosed communities. For example, Ray Arsenault (1988:124-125) writes in St. Petersbura and the Florida Dream, that African Americans settled primarily in distinct communities south of the railroad tracks. He recounts that "the boundaries of black settlement remained easily identifiable and nearly inviolate." Arsenault (1988:269) writes that during 1930s and 1940s housing for this groups was overcrowded, substandard and often malignly neglected by white absentee landlords. "Black neighborhoods were inescapable reminders of racial separation and inequality" records Arsenault (1988:269).

In Detroit (Katzman 1973), Cleveland (Kusmer 1976), St. Petersburg (Arsenault 1988), and Harlem (Gutman 1976:453-455), African Americans lived separate and distinct lives. Churches, businesses and other social institutions began to develop. Booker T. Washington established the National Negro Business League in 1910 (Ijere 1978:50). W. D. Fard, in 1930 organized the Black Muslims (Berry and Blassingame 1982:110). The Harlem Renaissance was born. African Americans prospered in personal services such as, entertainment, hairdressing, undertaking, barbering, and dentistry because of the lack of competition and a dearth of credit (Ijere 1978:50). Williams (1989:129-144) suggests that in 1928, Robert Park argued that there were basically two societies in America. He hypothesized that instead of whites looking down at blacks, they were looking across at parallel businesses and institutions (Williams 1989:129- 144).

Although, these communities became home and nurtured new dimensions of African American culture, they were targeted for urban renewal and redevelopment. By 1937, much of the housing in these central city neighborhoods had deteriorated because of overcrowding and lack of code enforcement (Fusfeld and Bates 1984). Greer (1965:15) asserts in Urban Renewal and American Cities that President Roosevelt aimed to prime the economy by improving housing stock that had deteriorated during the Depression. This goal motivated the enactment of the Housing Act of 1937. Greer (1965:15) writes that the first slum clearance effort consisted of designating homes as dilapidated, tearing down offending slums, and replacing them with public housing. No such housing was ever built in middle-class areas. In the process, many African American neighborhoods were destroyed.

The development of low-income housing for the poor and primarily African Americns, led many national trade organizations involved in the financing and developing of real estate to the question who should benefit from urban renewal (Foard and Fefferman 1968:92; Johnson 1989:186). Hence, they were very instrumental in ensuring that Housing Act of 1949 contained provision for redevelopment of cities. these special interest groups sought to increase the funds available to redevelop their businesses. they pressured their representatives to use redevelopment funds to provide downtown commercial centers with parking spaces and attractions in order to encourage investment in downtown retail properties (Foard and Fefferman 1968:113). Therefore, the 1949 Housing Act required that only 10 percent of the total grant allocation could be used for residential redevelopment. The land could contain blight slums and deteriorated buildings which could be destroyed to promote public safety and welface (Foard and Fefferman 1968:98-99).

The Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 enabled cities to purchase blighted land, clear it, and sell it to a private developer at below market price (Johnson 1989:67; Gans 1968: 538-539). these restrictions led Congress to abandon low-income housing as the core of urban renewal and to designate it as urban redevelopment (Bridges and Finegold 1982:18). Greer (1965:17) argues that objections to the public housing provisions acted as a stalking horse for urban redevelopment. He explains that in the intensity of opposition to public housing, the program to clear land and sell it on the market excaped radical censure (Greer 1965:17). He quotes one conservative critic as saying, I am in favor of the slum elimination section. I am opposed to the public housing section (Greer 1965:17). Greer (1965:27) suggests that housing was chiefly a problem among Negroes, therefore support for housing programs dwindled. Hence Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 and the Act of 1954 set the pattern for future urban renewal and redevelopment practices (Davis and Whinston 1966:61).

Herbert Gans (1968:237-557) argues that the original goal of urban renewal was altered to stimulate large-scale private rebuilding, add revenues to the dwindling tax base, revitalize downtown, and halt the defection of middle-class Whites from the inner city. James Wilson (1966:xiv-xv), who edited Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, reasons that the purpose of urban renewal and redevelopment was economic and cultural renewal by local communities. Bernard Frieden and Lynne Sagalyn (1989:24-25) write in Downtown Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities that the downtown business coalition took over urban renewal and used it to rebuild commercial areas.

Shortly after World War II, several events motivated urban renewal policies for African American communities. Initially, the federal government enacted the National Defense Highway Act of 1956 (Johnson 1989:66-67). Between 1952-1962, the federal aid spent on urban highways was ten times that devoted to urban renewal. This act combined with the support of the Federal Housing and Veteran Administrations by the 1960s accelerated suburban growth for mostly European Americans (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:39). These conditions had devastating consequences for poor and African American communities. In the process, many inner city neighborhoods and business districts were destroyed (Greer 1965:134; Fusfeld and Bates 1984:39; Johnson 1989:67). Susan Greenbaum (1986) in a monograph, Afro-Cubans in Ybor City, documents such phenomenon in Tampa. Greenbaum (1986:26-27) writes that urban renewal destroyed many homes and businesses of Afro-Cubans and their Marti-Maceo society building. Frieden and Sagalyn (1989:28) account similar events in Nashville. For example, engineers originally planned an interstate highway along a railroad route except for a small section that would have eliminated some white owned businesses. Objections to this route by state and local officials led to the creation of an alternate route. This highway cut through the center of a black community, through the campus of Tennessee State, a black college and through sixteen blocks of commercial property owned by blacks (Frieden and Sagalyn 1989:28). Patricia Melvin (1986:45) argues in American Community Ornanizations that "a decade of urban renewal and highway construction, a cycle of blight, abandonment, and social disintegration led to the displacement and relocation of thousands of low-income black residents." As a result of these social changes, the social fabric of many African American communities began to decline.

Civil rights organizations protested against the neglect and destruction of African American urban communities and urban residents rebelled. For example, the Chicago Urban League challenged the city's Comprehensive Plan for not allowing African Americans to participate in planning what happened to their communities (Johnson 1989:31). Also, civil disorders occurred in Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and many other African American urban districts (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:231).

In response to these challenges, three major bills advanced the destruction of inner cities neighborhoods rather than revitalize them. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, and the Urban Development Action Grant program gave local officials more leeway in allocating funds to meet their needs (Johnson 1989:67). Community development is a broad definition of urban renewal. It includes replacing homes with luxury hotels, expensive homes specialty retail centers and sports stadiums among many other ventures private developers and city planners deemed as development (Fusfeld and Bates 1984:134). Kevin Yelvington (1992) documents how African Americans in Miami were displaced during the 1970s and 1980s by an interstate highway, a sport stadium, and luxury apartment complexes.

African American communities frequently are singled out for urban renewal programs. By 1968, two-third of the cleared slums were occupied by African Americans (Gans 1968:543). Freiden and Sagalyn (1989:29) reveal that in Baltimore 90 percent of the 10,000 homes destroyed by urban renewal and interstate development belonged to African Americans. Therefore urban renewal is characterized also as "Negro Removal."

The involuntary removal from one's neighborhood represents a marked disruption in a sense of continuity (Fried 1968:376). In a study of residents of the Boston's West End who were dislocated by urban renewal, Fried (1968:360) found that 26 percent of the 250 women struggled with depression and sadness two years after being relocated. Jeffrey Henig (1984:171) finds that the elderly is particularly vulnerable to the social cost of forced relocation. Disruption of their network of friends and family often speeds their aging (Henig 1984:171). Fried (1968:36) concludes that "grieving for a lost home is evidently a widespread and serious phenomenon following the wake of urban dislocation." Removal "is likely to increase social and psychological "pathology" in some instances" (Fried 1968:376).

Urban renewal and redevelopment schemes have been motivated significantly by profit. In the process, African American neighborhoods became slums and prime real estate. Social networks and many other elements of African American culture, often fall in the wake of highway construction, stadium development, and other commercial ventures.