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.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bridge Detroit
______________________
Howard Husock is a contributing editor of City Journal. Adapted from City Journal.
Photo by pawel.gaul/iStock
