Reports in the Roanoke Times indicate that the Roanoke City Council is considering offering an apology to African American citizens for the destruction of Gainsboro and other sections of the city during the urban renewal debacle in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Please say it isn’t so. Please say that these are discussions and not plans.
Apologizing for the destruction of viable Black communities is like apologizing for slavery and keeping the slaves.
First, there was the redlining. In the 1930s, the federal government created color-coded maps that assessed the creditworthiness of neighborhoods in 250 cities across the country, including Norfolk, Richmond, and Roanoke in Virginia.
Based on racist assumptions, these maps ‘redlined” (designated) many Black neighborhoods as poor risks for loans and housing assistance. Consequently, with limited residential options, Black communities became more concentrated in less desirable neighborhoods.
After WW II, the Federal Housing Administration subsidized the construction of American postwar suburbs but used racially restrictive covenants to ensure that these suburban homes could be sold or resold only to Whites.
By the time the 1949 Housing Act became law, a half-century of deliberate racist policies had created some of the blighted conditions that were then used as the justification for slum clearance and urban renewal.
As urban renewal took place across the country, it became clear that slum clearance served as a guise to legitimize the forced removal of Black communities from urban land so that municipalities could repurpose these spaces.
In the words of African American author and activist James Baldwin, “urban renewal” became a euphemism for “Negro removal.”
Through urban renewal, vast swaths of American cities were razed to benefit the growing white middle class with highways, sporting arenas, shopping malls, and convention centers, notably at the expense of Black communities.
At the same time, Black communities in cities across America experienced disruption, dislocation, displacement, and a vicious cycle of urban disinvestment. Urban landscapes across Virginia continue to bear the scars of this so-called urban renewal.
Between 1949 and 1973, this federal program, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods in cities across the United States.
According to the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, by the late 1960s, an estimated 432 families had been displaced by urban renewal projects in Roanoke, 100 percent of which were families of color.
The historical record is clear. Black people who had money to buy and develop properties were prevented from doing so by redlining which prevented mortgages, bank loans, and even insurance from being utilized in Black neighborhoods across the country,
Gainsboro was once known as a vibrant area for African Americans before urban renewal began destroying their homes and businesses in the 1950s. A feature report in the Roanoke Times on January 29, 1995, describes how urban renewal uprooted Black Roanoke, Street by street, block by block.
In the 1950s, most Blacks in Roanoke lived in either Northeast or Gainsboro. With few exceptions, all 980 homes, 14 churches, two schools, and 64 small businesses had to be demolished. In 1956 and 1957, the city burned more than 100 homes. It was the cheapest way to eliminate them, two or three at a time.
And you think only an apology will suffice?!
Gainsboro’s landmarks were many. It included Burrell Memorial Hospital, one of the best-known Black hospitals in the South. It was established by African Americans, because “White” hospitals would not treat Blacks. The Claytor home, a 22-room mansion and one of Virginia’s largest Black homes was in Gainsboro.
The 1950 Roanoke city directory shows 900 homes and 165 small businesses in Gainsboro. There was a savings and loan, an insurance company, a cleaners, a drugstore, and several hairdressers. Urban renewal, as it was practiced from the 1950s through the 1960s, made no distinctions within a neighborhood. Northeast’s solid homes and dilapidated homes, neighborhood networks, and businesses were treated the same.
No. An apology will not be sufficient.
What, then, instead of an apology? The obvious answer is recompense–a program of reparations. The question may be asked, “On what basis should African Americans be accorded reparations?” The sordid and well-documented post-slavery “Negro removal” disaster is one such reason.