Last week, the City of Detroit unveiled a historical marker to recognize Black Bottom, a thriving, dynamic Black community that was destroyed decades ago. Unlike Tulsa’s Greenwood District, this neighborhood has not received a presidential visit to commemorate it and did not fall to racist mobs.
Black Bottom, and neighborhoods like it — the DeSoto-Carr section of St. Louis, parts of Chicago’s Bronzeville, and Cedar-Central in Cleveland — were the victims instead of political reforms: above all, urban renewal, as authorized by the National Housing Act of 1949, which provided funds to clear neighborhoods and replace them with public housing towers.
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Howard Husock is a contributing editor of City Journal. Adapted from City Journal.
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