I have the privilege of being white. 

If that sentence made you squirm a little, I want you to sit with it for a second. I don’t want you to feel like you CAN’T be white in America, of course you can. But I challenge you to read this article and fight the feelings of discomfort you may encounter and educate yourself on what our ancestors have done. 

I’ve lived in three different cities and visited countless more affected by the following policy of the 1950s & 60s: “urban renewal.” A concept designed to impact the poorest and almost always racially diverse peoples in the country. I’m talking about everyone but (rich) white people. 

I also want to put this into perspective for you, before one is quick to judge this as a concept that existed “such a long time ago.” It wasn’t. If you’re a millennial like me, this happened around the time your parents were in their early childhood years. For many of us, that means our grandparents were involved, either directly or indirectly. 

We’ve come a long way. But we need to also recognize our dark past. Our country is horribly bloody and, I’ll say it, incredibly racially prejudiced.

Ok back to urban renewal. I’ve been a student of history for a long time. But in typical fashion (I’ve learned), I was introduced to the history written by the victors. The Union Army of the Civil War, the cowboys and military men of the Wild West, the valiant US forces that helped liberate Europe of Hitler’s mighty grip. I used to be obsessed with stories of war and who won and why. 

But there’s so much more US history than that. The nuances of subtle policy changes or major ones like that of redlining and the Housing Act of 1949 changed the course of the country and its economic state for all its peoples.

The too long didn’t read on this concept was the United States wanted to invest money on urban renewal through slum clearance and building affordable housing for those displaced. All fantastic in theory. These projects paved the way, literally, for bigger highways, sporting venues, convention centers and other symbols of American “progress.”

But what they often conveniently leave out is that the bulldozers removed hundreds of homes and businesses of minorities. Yes, there definitely were residences that were unsafe and hadn’t received enough investment. But the architects of urban renewal purposefully wiped out thriving communities of African-, Mexican-, Asian-Americans in the process. They knew what they were doing. 

There are many examples of this across the United States, basically every major city. In the cities of Chattanooga, Nashville, and Tucson where I’ve lived, I have found numerous examples of the white politicians in power demolishing the groups they wanted pushed farther from downtown. 

In Chattanooga, they destroyed the west end of Ninth Street, displacing 1,600 families and disrupting an avenue filled with many prosperous black businesses, all for a highway interchange and the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium. In north Nashville, the construction of I-40 was designed to decimate entire neighborhoods and a cultural hub for African American citizens. And in Tucson, Anglo-Americans decided the “most densely populated 80 acres in the state” of Arizona should be razed to build a convention center, government and office buildings. It was almost exclusively Mexican-American, but African- and Asian-Americans also made their homes there after being barred from many white neighborhoods. Click here for a more personal, heart-wrenching account of Tucson’s urban renewal. 

During the urban renewal project, the city demolished “more than 100 homes, 196 businesses, 21 churches, 2 schools, 2 community centers, 1 hospital, and 1 mental health facility”, most of which were owned by and catered to Chattanooga’s Black community. - storymaps arcgis

With the post-war economy booming and the land becoming more desirable, gentrification stepped in while others were forced out to low-income housing, usually quickly built on the cheapest land government could buy. Think undesirable places like marshes, landfills, food deserts and areas within major highway junctions, effectively cutting off access to the world outside for many. These places also had the effect of causing a significant rise in health issues in displaced communities.

And in 1954, another act drastically reduced the amount of public housing that would be built to replace the homes destroyed. From 1952 to 1962, the number of families in public housing receiving some form of income assistance rose from 29% to 46%. Those numbers were disproportionately minorities.

I wonder why.

In downtown areas nationwide, Urban Removal projects resulted in 20 percent of total African American homes. Of all demolished areas, African Americans made up over 60 percent of the houses that were demolished. Of these, 90% of the houses were never replaced, and new infrastructure took their place. The affected families were displaced and separated from their communities, and more importantly, from the homes and people they knew. - Storymaps ArcGIS

The biggest takeaway here, because I understand that this is heavy for any human with a heart, is that we have to recognize our past before we will EVER make meaningful changes to our future. As we move forward, especially during this administration, we must do so TOGETHER. We have far more in common with each other than we ever will with a billionaire. They don’t care about you, so we have to take care of each other. 

The one thing that links most people in the United States is the depth of our pockets. It is and will always be, a war against the poor populations. The billionaires do not care about you. And you will likely never become one. So let’s get that out of your system. (Besides, billionaires represent those who exploit and then hoard while never giving back to any community. At least the Robber Barons of the late 1800s gave away a large chunk of their fortunes for good causes.)

My goal for 2025 is to call out the people that are doing harm by minimizing America’s past. Because it matters. Because the racist infrastructure of the 1950s is still felt today. And the only way to heal our country’s past trauma is acknowledge and work through it together.

Links I found useful when writing this article are below. There is so much research on this subject. This topic is not a one-off thing. It happened consistently across the entire United States.

We’ll start with a video by Garrison Hayes. Easily the most digestible of all these links, Garrison does an amazing job of weaving story, facts and myth-busting into this 10-minute video. If nothing else, please watch this.

Housing Acts in simple terms:
https://nationalpovertyplan.org/timeline/urban-renewal/

Congressional Research Service - Introduction to Public Housing
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R41654.pdf

Redlining: the predecessor to urban renewal
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining

Mapping the Destruction of Tennessee's African American Neighborhoods
https://tnlibarchives.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=8dba65584072450ca8928a5f3408373f

A City Swept Clean: Nashville Scene
https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/a-city-swept-clean/article_6c3a1c80-ea61-57be-b973-03cad5a6506b.html

Fascinating account with GIS maps about Chattanooga’s Big Nine district before/after urban renewal
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c3491bc7b9c249e799d8278bf4f4ee5c

Destruction of Tucson barrios 
https://beta.tucsonaz.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/city-services/planning-development-services/documents/azpimacounty_barrioviejonhl.draft.pdf

Photos of the iconic businesses and residences that Tucson demolished in the 60s.
https://tucson.com/news/local/history/see-what-was-torn-down-in-downtown-tucson-in-the-1960s/collection_a9f2d78a-7cd4-11e5-a9b5-2b75e6193d55.html#40

More on the urban renewal of Tucson and how it impacted the people who lived there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLBjFV-zDks

Health effects of Urban Renewal:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6225879/#:~:text=the%20Capitol.26-,The%20Advent%20of%20Urban%20Renewal%20and%20the%20Complicity%20of%20Public%20Health,-One%20of%20urban

Because the concept of urban renewal is so intersectional, it has broad reaching effects. This video talks about the Rainbow Coalition comprised of the Black Panthers (African American)/Young Lords (Puerto Rican)/Young Patriots (poor whites from the Appalachians) and the urban renewal/segregation of Chicago, IL. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzZTLT8WpcQ

Thanks for reading and digesting this with me. I am learning more and more about the history of the United States in a fashion I’ve not explored before. If you found this useful, let me know below. If you have something you’d like me to investigate, feel free to reach out. My internet deep dives know no bounds.