African American Studies Commons^™

Through The Ivory Curtain: African Americans In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Before The Fair Housing Movement, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the largely neglected history of African American struggles to obtain housing in Cleveland Heights, a first-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, between 1900 and 1960, prior to the fair housing and managed integration campaigns that emerged thereafter. The article explores the experiences of black live-in servants, resident apartment building janitors, independent renters, and homeowners. It offers a rare look at the ways that domestic and custodial arrangements opened opportunities in housing and education, as well as the methods, calculations, risks, and rewards of working through white intermediaries to secure homeownership. It argues that the continued black presence laid …

Role Of Municipal Governance In Stabilizing Mature Inner Suburbs: A Study Of Five St. Louis Municipalities 1970-2015, Napoleon Williams Iii

Dissertations

This study explores the role of municipal governance in municipal-level stabilization of inner suburbs in St. Louis County, Missouri. The data, from 1970 to 2015, include a robust collection of official government archives collected from five municipalities in St. Louis County, historical documents, city-state-national statistical data, and related materials. Interviews of 25 stakeholders were conducted and data were analyzed based on the community power structure framework.

I outline five mature St. Louis inner suburbs’ evolution in municipal-level conditions from 1970 to 2015, and I detail the role each suburbs’ municipal governance played in the evolution of municipal-level conditions. I conclude, …

The Politics Of Race, Class, And Gentrification In The Atl, Keith Jennings

Trotter Review

Methodologically, the essay uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine gentrification from a race, class, and gender perspective. Within the essay a number of the dynamics directly associated with Atlanta’s political economy and the impact those dynamics are having on issues such as affordable housing, poverty, and Black employment and underemployment are analyzed. While not a central focus of the essay, the changes taking place outside of Atlanta in several counties, as a result of the push and pull effect in the metropolitan region, are briefly discussed.

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …

Gentrification As Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case Of Boston, Massachusetts, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Activists and political leaders across the city of Boston are concerned that gentrification in the form of rapidly rising rents in low-income and the poorest areas are contributing to displacement of families and children. Rising home sale prices and an increasing number of development projects are feeding into this concern. There is also a growing wariness about the impact that this scenario can have on small and neighborhood-based businesses and microenterprises whose markets are represented by the kinds of households facing potential displacement. This potential side-effect suggests that gentrification could actually emerge as anti-local economic development in Boston. It can …

Chicago's Wall: Race, Segregation And The Chicago Housing Authority, David T. Greetham

Senior Independent Study Theses

When the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) was created in 1937 the organization's mission was to provide decent and affordable housing for low-income people. As thousands of African Americans migrated to Chicago from the South after World War II, a combination of public policy and private exclusion forced them to turn to the CHA for housing. Through political manipulation and racism, the CHA became a tool to segregate, confine, and conceal Chicago's burgeoning African American population. By the 1960s, 99 percent of CHA tenants were African American and over 90 percent of CHA developments were located in predominantly African American neighborhoods. …