Suburbs and Ghettoes:

Eric BeckmanAnoka, HS (MN)

Racialized space, identity, and privilege in postwar America

Parallel Parades 1940-1970❖ Millions of Americans moved

❖ American cities became even more racially

segregated

❖ White people received many benefits

❖ People of color were penalized financially.

Americans on the Move Segregation by Race

Benefits for whites Disadvantages for people of color

SegregatedNeighborhoods

Migrations during WWII

❖ Millions moved

Racial Tensions during WWII

❖ Overcrowded cities were often racially tense➢ Riots: Detroit, LA, and NYC

White American Sailors during the Zoot Suit Riots in LA (1943)

Racial Violence in War-time Detroit

“Early in June 1943, 25,000 Packard plant workers, who produced engines for bombers and PT boats, stopped work in protest of the promotion of three blacks… During the strike a voice outside the plant reportedly shouted, "I'd rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work beside a n***** on the assembly line.”

–Detroit News

Post-war Housing Crisis❖ Housing shortage

➢ Millions of vets■ 100,000 homeless

➢ 17.5 million needed ❖ “ threat or an opportunity.”❖ Government assistance, for white folks

➢ GI Bill➢ Housing Act of 1949

■ Mortgage insurance, almost all for all-white suburbs■ Public housing, racially segregated■ Urban renewal, destroyed housing in city neighborhoods

The Second Great Migration❖ 5 million African

Americans left the South,1940-1970 ➢ Largest ethnic

relocation in US➢ North, West cities

■ 1940s: 85% ↑ in black pop

➢ Southern cities, too❖ Lack of quality

housingChicago’s “Black Belt,” 1941

Making the Second Ghettoes❖ Crowded, high rents❖ Houses subdivided

➢ Apartments →“kitchenettes”

❖ Run down❖ Difficulty finding

good jobs➢ Business to suburbs➢ Education➢ Discrimination

Resistance to Integration

Counterdemonstrators in Milwaukee opposed Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council’s marches for open housing in very clear terms in 1967.

❖ Nonviolent, but mean-spirited demonstrations

❖ Underreported, but real, violence directed at Black pioneers

Suburbanization❖ Suburban population 2x,

37 million-74 million, 1950-1970

❖ Massive government assistance➢ Half of homes had

federally guaranteed mortgages

➢ Highways➢ Water and sewer

❖ Almost no federally guaranteed mortgages in cites

❖ FHA guaranteed 60x to suburbs, 1934--1960 Levittown, Pennsylvania

Whites-Only Suburbs❖ Federal government

underwrote $120 Billion in new housing,1934-1962➢ 98% for white people.

❖ Levittown, NY:➢ largest city (70,000)

without a single black resident in 1953

❖ Many developers only sold or rented to white people

Bloomington, MN 1956.

Redlining: Denying loans to buy houses in certain neighborhoods

Federal Government Map of Philadelphia, 1936

❖ Government maps showed neighborhood ratings➢ In1930s red =lowest

rating (nonwhite, low income)

❖ 1930s and 40s: Federal Housing Administration officially recommended only loaning money to buy houses in all-white areas

❖ Result: Very few loans in “redlined” areas ➢ People of color with loans

usually paid more interest

Federal Government Map of St. Louis, 1937

Impact of RedliningIn the 1940s developers built this wall near 8 Mile Road in Detroit to divide a new white neighborhood from an older black neighborhood. Otherwise, the area would have been redlined and white people would not have been able to get mortgages. (Photos taken August 2009)

Impact of Redlining

❖ No loans for most city neighborhoods➢ Property values and conditions declined

❖ Wages of whiteness: more valuable house

❖ White homeowners, even if not prejudiced, had reason to fear black neighbors

Destruction of Urban Housing

❖ Urban renewal❖ Highway construction❖ Racism limited

relocation possibilities

Urban renewal, Chicago, mid 50s

Public Housing❖ Built, in part, to control

where people of color lived➢ People leaving destroyed

housing

“Public housing was now meant to collect the ghetto residents left homeless by the urban renewal bulldozers” ~ Mark Condon of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

Poverty, Isolation, Segregation❖ Public Housing increased

segregation➢ Chicago riots ➢ Federal rule

❖ The projects concentrated low-income people in areas with decreasing numbers of jobs and businesses

❖ > half poorest neighborhoods in US were CHA, in 1980

Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago

Housing as Wealth❖ Housing costs per month in

the late 40s:➢ Rent in NYC: $100-150➢ Mortgage payments in

Levittown: $65

❖ Home ownership=wealth

❖ Housing wealth=possibility of more loans

❖ Housing wealth passed to childrenThis 1990 photo shows a Cape Cod cottage in

Levittown, New York remodeled into a larger, two-story Dutch colonial. This shows how residents of white spaces were able to add value to their homes.

Implications

❖ white people reaped advantages, communities of color suffered

❖ Identification of whiteness with nice neighborhoods and blackness with bad neighborhoods

❖ Concentrated poverty❖ Racial divisions deepen❖ Opportunity lost

Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white––separate and unequal... Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American

life; they now threaten the future of every American.

Kerner Commission, 1968(at least 20 years late)

“geography does the work of Jim Crow laws”—john a. powell

❖ Racially segregated housing➢ Segregation increased during Civil Rights Movement

❖ Average white-black advantage in 2000 ➢ Income 1.5 times➢ Wealth: 8 times