Underpinning these projects was a troubling logic: the infrastructure interventions helped maintain white supremacy by improving white communities through increased connectivity while rendering African American communities as sacrifice zones. Utilizing redlining maps, government bureaus facilitated the accumulation and preservation of generational wealth through land ownership for white communities while designating racialized communities as blighted. As Leland Ware argues in tracing the legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson (1895) to urban renewal, municipalities exploited eminent domain to seize African American-owned properties, businesses, schools, and community centers. Highways were then constructed to either maintain separation from white communities, segment African American communities from other businesses and neighborhoods, or destroy them altogether.
The story of the once-booming Hayti neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, exemplifies the devastating impact of urban renewal on African American communities nationwide. As researchers Allison De Marco and Heather Hunt relate, the construction of North Carolina Highway 147, also known as the Durham Freeway, was marketed to Hayti’s residents as a means to better connect those living on the outskirts of Durham with the bustling businesses of the downtown area.
Initially, the community was divided on the opportunity presented to them. Should they trust the intentions of the Durham City Council? Much of the neighborhood would have to be demolished and residents temporarily relocated while the freeway was being built. The city council promised Hayti residents that after the completion of the highway, they would rebuild and improve the segments of the community that had been destroyed, write De Marco and Hunt. The Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (DCNA), a political powerhouse in Durham that still exists today (now the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People), believed that urban renewal would bring governmental investment to raise property values, improve public infrastructure, and create business opportunities. Consequently, the DCNA encouraged Durham’s Black community to vote in favor of the bond referendum that would allow the urban renewal plan to continue.
Ultimately, the promise of a renewed Hayti never materialized. Approximately 500 businesses and 4,000 families were displaced, report De Marco and Hunt; many never returned. According to the Renewing Inequality project, nationwide, the federal Urban Renewal program “displaced tens of thousands of families each year, with families of color displaced at rates far higher than their share of the population.” By 1974, at least 600 municipalities had displaced families through federally funded urban renewal projects.
“African American neighborhoods across the country…were destroyed at disproportionate rates,” the research team reports.