🏛 Exhibit I
What Was Urban Renewal?
Urban Renewal was a federally funded redevelopment program that provided cities with money to purchase, clear, and redevelop neighborhoods.
Projects often included:
- Interstate highways
- Office buildings
- Convention centers
- Public housing
- Universities
- Commercial districts
- Parking lots
Supporters believed these projects would eliminate deteriorating housing and encourage economic growth.
But redevelopment often came with a human cost that wasn't reflected on planning maps.
The word "blight" appeared frequently in planning documents.
To city planners, it described neighborhoods targeted for redevelopment.
To many residents, it described places filled with families, businesses, churches, schools, traditions, and memories.
🏛 Exhibit II
Why Did People Call It "Negro Removal"?
For many Black Americans, Urban Renewal wasn't experienced as renewal.
It was experienced as removal.
Entire neighborhoods disappeared.
Families who had lived within walking distance of one another were scattered across different parts of a city.
Businesses that had served communities for decades closed.
Church congregations shrank.
Neighborhood schools disappeared.
The phrase "Negro Removal" became a powerful expression of what many residents believed they had lived through.
"Urban Renewal wasn't simply about buildings. It reshaped lives."
🏛 Exhibit III
Communities That Changed America
Fillmore District — San Francisco
Known as the "Harlem of the West," Fillmore was one of the nation's most vibrant Black cultural and business districts before redevelopment displaced thousands of residents.
Black Bottom & Paradise Valley — Detroit
Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were thriving neighborhoods filled with Black-owned businesses, churches, jazz clubs, and homes before highways and redevelopment projects transformed the area.
Bronzeville — Chicago
Bronzeville became one of America's most influential Black cultural centers. Portions of the neighborhood later experienced extensive redevelopment that reshaped the community.
Hayti — Durham
Construction of the Durham Freeway cut directly through Hayti, disrupting one of North Carolina's most successful Black business districts.
🏛 Exhibit IV
What Was Lost. What Replaced It?
Homes
⬇
Highways
Businesses
⬇Parking Lots
Churches
⬇
Office Buildings
Schools
⬇
Convention Centers
Sometimes redevelopment changed more than a city's skyline.
It changed where families lived, worshipped, learned, worked, and gathered.
🏛 Exhibit V
The Cost Was More Than Concrete
Urban Renewal affected far more than buildings.
Communities lost:
- Homes
- Black-owned businesses
- Churches
- Schools
- Neighborhood organizations
- Cultural gathering places
- Family support networks
- Economic opportunity
These losses cannot be measured simply by counting demolished structures.
"Communities don't disappear when buildings come down. They disappear when relationships are broken."
🏛 Exhibit VI
Why It Still Matters
Urban Renewal officially ended decades ago.
Its effects did not.
Researchers continue to examine how these policies influenced:
- Homeownership
- Generational wealth
- Neighborhood segregation
- Transportation access
- Business ownership
- Community displacement
Understanding this history helps explain why some communities accumulated wealth across generations while others experienced repeated disruption.
Timeline
1949
Housing Act of 1949 establishes the federal Urban Renewal program.
↓
1950s–1960s
Redevelopment projects expand across cities nationwide.
↓
1956
Interstate Highway construction accelerates, frequently intersecting urban neighborhoods.
↓
1970s
Federal Urban Renewal programs wind down, but their physical and social impacts remain.
Reflect
History asks difficult questions.
Urban Renewal asks one of the hardest:
What is lost when a neighborhood is valued more for its land than for its people?
🏛 Explore the Archives
Government Records
Housing Act of 1949 (Public Law 81-171)
The federal legislation that established the Urban Renewal program and provided funding for slum clearance and redevelopment.
https://www.govinfo.gov/features/ppp-70years
U.S. Code – Urban Renewal Projects
Federal laws governing Urban Renewal and redevelopment projects.
National Archives
Government records, photographs, planning documents, and historical resources related to housing, cities, and African American history.
Library of Congress
Historic photographs, maps, oral histories, newspapers, and primary source collections documenting American cities and Black communities.
Museum & Historical Collections
Detroit Historical Society
Historical resources on Black Bottom and Paradise Valley.
https://www.detroithistorical.org
Encyclopedia of Chicago
Research on Bronzeville, Urban Renewal, and Chicago history.
https://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org
Preservation Durham
Historical information on Hayti and the impact of freeway construction.
https://preservationdurham.org
National Park Service
Civil Rights and African American Heritage resources, including community preservation.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/africanamericanheritage
Recommended Reading
Richard Rothstein
The Color of Law
A landmark examination of how government housing policies shaped residential segregation in the United States.
Publisher: Liveright (2017)
Mindy Thompson Fullilove
Root Shock
Explores the long-term psychological and social effects of community displacement.
Publisher: New Village Press (2004)
Arnold R. Hirsch
Making the Second Ghetto
A foundational history of race, housing, and Urban Renewal in Chicago.
University of Chicago Press (1983)
Thomas J. Sugrue
The Origins of the Urban Crisis
Examines race, inequality, and economic change in postwar Detroit.
Princeton University Press (1996)
Isabel Wilkerson
The Warmth of Other Suns
Provides essential context on the Great Migration and the communities that later faced Urban Renewal.
Random House (2010)
Related Topics
Continue exploring the history behind today's communities:
- Black Codes
- Jim Crow
- Redlining
- The GI Bill
- Homeownership
- Generational Wealth
- The Interstate Highway System
- The Racial Wealth Gap
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