Demolition means progress: Urban renewal, local politics, and state-sanctioned ghetto formation in Flint, Michigan

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 348-368

  Highsmith, Andrew R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FLINT   (United States)

Author keywords

Blight; Civil rights; De facto segregation; Flint; Freeways; General Motors; Michigan; Pollution; Public housing; Racial segregation; Urban renewal

Indexed keywords

PLANNING HISTORY; RACIAL SEGREGATION; REDEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN PLANNING; URBAN RENEWAL;

FLINT; MICHIGAN; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 60649090279     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144208330403     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Memorandum, Olive Beasley to Richard Wilberg, June 7, 1973, Olive Beasley Papers, box 21, folder 51, Genesee Historical Collections Center (GHCC), University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, Michigan (hereinafter cited as Beasley Papers). On the Kerner Report, see Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968). Chaired by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, the commission and its report are commonly referred to as the "Kerner Commission" and the "Kerner Report."
2. On the current racial demography of metropolitan Flint, see Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, Genesee County Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability in Genesee County, Michigan (Minneapolis: Metropolitan Area Research Council, 2003); and Patricia A. Baird, Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing in Genesee County (Flint: Genesee County Metropolitan Planning Commission, 2007).
3. On state-sponsored segregation in cities and suburbs, see Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); and especially David M. P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
4. Dating back to at least the 1950s, the terms de jure and de facto segregation emerged to describe distinctions between racial segregation in the South and North. Most historians and legal scholars have employed the de jure term to characterize the state-sponsored, statutory forms of segregation that characterized race relations in the Jim Crow South, reserving the de facto label for the ostensibly private, market-based, nonstatist acts that resulted in segregation "in fact" in the North and West. The de facto distinction, which implies that segregation happened because of individual market decisions in the absence of state sponsorship, elides the tremendous extent to which local governments in the North and West maintained segregation through housing, education, urban development, and transportation policies in the decades following World War II. I argue here for an end to the use of the term de facto segregation. On the history and mythology of de facto segregation, see Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Also see note 30 below.
5. For Plants of Tomorrow, Country Club Air, Detroit Free Press, n.d. [ca. 1955].
6. Flint Journal, September 2, 1970.
7. The statistics in this paragraph are from U.S. census reports. See U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Housing, 1940, Supplement to the First Series Housing Bulletin for Flint, Michigan (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1942), tables 1 and 3; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population, 1950 Census Tract Statistics, Flint, Michigan, and Adjacent Area (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1952), tables 1, 2, and 3; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population and Housing, 1960, Summary Population and Housing Characteristics: Flint, Michigan (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), tables p-1, p-2, p-3, p-4, h-1, and h-2. For first-hand accounts of life in St. John and racial transitions in Flint's North End, see Rhonda Sanders, Bronze Pillars: An Oral History of African-Americans in Flint (Flint: Flint Journal and Sloan Museum, 1995); and Ananthakrishnan Aiyer, ed., Telling Our Stories: Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in Flint (Flint: Flint ColorLine Project, 2007). On federal housing policies and racial segregation, see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier; John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Self, American Babylon; and Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). On social and political contestation over the multiple meanings and definitions of "blight," see Colin Gordon, "Blighting the Way: Urban Renewal, Economic Development, and the Elusive Definition of Blight," Fordham Law Journal 31, no. 2 (2004): 305-37; and Brian Robick, "Urban Blight and Community Reaction to the Gateway Center Redevelopment Project, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1946-1950" (paper, 12th National Conference on Planning History, Portland, ME, October 25-28, 2007).
8. Occupied Housing Units by Tenure and Race, in A Demographic Analysis of Neighborhood Development Project Areas: Flint, Michigan, eds. G. Dale Bishop and Janice K. Wilberg (Flint: University of Michigan-Flint, 1972).
9. Flint Journal, June 26, 1960, September 2, 1970. Also see Harriet E. Tillock, "St. John Street Community Center," Beasley Papers, box 2, GHCC. On the relationship among low household incomes, public policy, and substandard housing, see William G. Grigsby, "Housing Markets and Public Policy," in Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, ed. James Q. Wilson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 24-49.
10. See Ailene Butler Testimony, "Public Hearing on Equal Housing Opportunities in Flint, Michigan," November 1966, Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 21, GHCC. Butler went on to become the first black woman to serve on the Flint City Commission. Also see Flint Journal, May 29, 1971. On smoke abatement in Pittsburgh and St. Louis, see Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 31-32, 83-85. Also see David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); and Joel A. Tarr, ed., Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). On the city's refusal to regulate industrial air pollution, see Olive Beasley, "Weekly Report from Flint," January 16, 1968, Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 18, GHCC. On pollution in the North End, see Memorandum, Thomas Kay to William Polk, n.d., City Manager Files, Office of the City Clerk, Flint, Michigan (hereinafter cited as City Manager Files); and Flint Journal, February, 24, 1966, March 4, 30, 1969, September 4, 1969. The Winfrey quotation is from the Flint Spokesman, May 29, 1971.
11. The Tavis and Kelly quotations are from Minutes, Manufacturers Association of Flint, February 7, 1962, box 2, 87-12, Richard P. Scharchburg Archives, Kettering University, Flint, Michigan. The National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) quotation is from NAREB, Flint Faces the Future: An Advisory Report to the City of Flint, Michigan (Flint: National Association of Real Estate Boards, 1963), 5.
12. On the ambivalent feelings of African Americans toward St. John Street and redevelopment, see Dolores Ennis, interview by Wanda Howard, September 22, 1993, Bronze Pillars Project. Also see note 13 below. On the postwar politics of economic growth, see Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Ann R. Markusen, ed., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage, 1996); Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). On the link between road construction and property values in Genesee County, see Larson and Schenker, Land and Property Values.
13. On urban renewal and progrowth politics, see Harvey Molotch, "The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," American Sociological Review 82, no. 2 (September 1976): 309-32; John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance; George F. Lord and Albert Price, "Growth Ideology in a Period of Decline: Deindustrialization and Restructuring, Flint Style," Social Problems 39, no. 2 (May 1992): 155-69; George Lipsitz, "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the 'White' Problem in American Studies," American Quarterly 47, no. 3 (September 1995): 369-87; Steven P. Dandaneau, A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michigan, Confronts Deindustrialization (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); and Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). On local case studies of municipal politics, progrowth ideology, and urban renewal, see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis; David Schuyler, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940-1980 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002); Self, American Babylon; Bryant Simon, Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Howard Gillette Jr., Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). The authors of the aforementioned local case studies, to varying degrees, incorporate the urban renewal as Negro removal framework. The Huddleston quotation is from The Flint Mirror, April 1964. On black support for urban renewal, see note 14 below. On black public opinion and the "threats" and "promises" of urban renewal, see Robert C. Weaver, The Negro and the Ghetto (New York: Russell and Russell, 1948); and Frank S. Horne, "Interracial Housing in the United States," Phylon Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1958): 13-20. Weaver, the first U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was also the first African American to hold a cabinet position in the United States. I borrow the "threats" and "promises" framework from Weaver's 1948 book.
14. On urban renewal, civil rights, and urban "growth machines," see note 13 above. The quotation is from The Amplifier, February 1962, Urban League of Flint Papers, box 1, folder 7, GHCC (hereinafter cited as Urban League Papers). On black petitions for urban renewal, see Flint News Advertiser, June 19, 1956; "Urban League Will Ask for Early Action on Slum Clearance," Flint Weekly Review, December 6, 1956; and The Amplifier, Winter 1957, Urban League Papers, box 1, folder 7, GHCC. Scholars have tended to define urban renewal coalitions too narrowly, focusing almost exclusively on corporations, downtown retailers, and other members of the "growth machine" as the sole forces driving postwar urban renewal. This approach has effectively silenced the historical voices of black activists who fought from within renewal coalitions to make redevelopment compatible with civil rights objectives. Scholars have written very little on the subject, but black support for urban renewal was not unique to Flint. See, in particular, Irene Holliman's article on Atlanta in this issue of the Journal of Urban History; and Nathan Connolly, "By Eminent Domain: Race and Capital in the Building of an American South Florida" (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, forthcoming). Also see the following articles from a 1958 special section of Phylon Quarterly devoted to urban renewal: B. T. McGraw, "Urban Renewal in the Interest of All the People," Phylon Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1958): 45-55; and George B. Nesbitt, "Urban Renewal in Perspective," Phylon Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1958): 64-68. On African American support for urban renewal in Akron, Ohio, see John H. Lindquist and Charles M. Barresi, "Attitudes toward Urban Renewal," Law and Society Review 5, no. 2 (November 1970): 239-50. On black support for renewal in Detroit, see Eleanor P. Wolf and Charles N. Lebeaux, "On the Destruction of Poor Neighborhoods by Urban Renewal," Social Problems 15, no. 1 (Summer 1967): 3-8. On federal guidelines pertaining to replacement housing, see Terry J. Tondro, "Urban Renewal Relocation: Problems in Enforcement of Conditions on Federal Grants to Local Agencies," University of Pennsylvania Law Review 117, no. 2 (December 1968): 183-227.
15. women can't stand by their own fences or in their own yards without someone making vile remarks to them. See Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, August 8, 1955. Because African American activists attended and spoke at commission meetings on a regular basis, the city commission minutes are a good source of information on black demands for urban renewal and quality city services.
16. Ronald O. Warner to George Elges, July 23, 1974, in Edgar Holt Papers, box 7, folder 30, GHCC. On the Mott Foundation's use of public schools to promote freeways and urban renewal, see Beasley Papers, box 11, folder 23, GHCC. On the collaboration among the Manufacturers Association of Flint, the Mott Foundation, and the city's Department of Community Development, see Genesee Community Development Conference, "The Genesee Community Development Conference: A Broad Plan of Development," October 28, 1971, in Holt Papers, box 7, folder 33, GHCC. Dating back to the early 1960s, Mott Foundation officials participated in urban renewal surveys. See, e.g., Flint Journal, January 17, 1963. On the St. John survey, see Social Planning Associates, Diagnostic Survey for St. John Street, Flint, Michigan (Chicago: Social Planning Associates, 1969). The Wilensky quotation is from Flint Renewal and Housing Department, "Annual Report for 1965," March 6, 1966, 2.
17. Ladislas Segoe and Associates, Comprehensive Master Plan of Flint, Michigan, and Environs (Cincinnati: Ladislas Segoe and Associates, 1960), 95-106. For more on Segoe's career as a professional planner, see David J. Edelman and David J. Allor, "Ladislas Segoe and the Emergence of the Professional Planning Consultant," Journal of Planning History 2, no. 1 (February 2003): 47-78. On the size of the city's urban renewal program, see Flint Journal, June 20, 1964, November 19, 1972.
18. On urban renewal finance, see Fogelson, Downtown, 370-80. On noncash credits and municipal divestment in the St. John neighborhood, see Flint Journal, December 11, 1966, November 19, 1972. On the city's low vacancy rate and the shortage of code-approved housing, see Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 21, GHCC; and Social Planning Associates, Diagnostic Survey. On federal guidelines for rehousing displaced persons, see note 14 above.
19. The NAREB report contained the following warning for city officials: To designate more than a thousand acres in the heart of Flint for renewal treatment at a future date that is only vaguely defined serves to put the blight tag on a major section of the community. The result of such action in other cities has been that owners defer maintenance, cancel plans for new construction, and put off improvements because of uncertainty over what will happen to their property. In other words, the designation of an area long prior to treatment can serve merely to render more difficult the very problem which the urban renewal plan was intended to solve. See NAREB, Flint Faces the Future, 13-14. On North End deterioration, see Flint Journal, March 4, 30, 1969, September 4, 1969. On St. John's air quality ratings, see Flint Journal, March 12, 1972.
20. The last improvement [that homeowners generally make] is the exterior improvement which is the most apparent to the general market. This is of critical importance since it is the market perception of the area which affects the supply and demand and finally price. We have a situation then in which properties in the [North End] area are declining in value because they are being negatively perceived by the market while virtually all of the people are making major expenditures to improve the homes." See William P. Walsh, The Story of Urban Dynamics (Flint: W.P. Walsh, 1967), 25. On land contracts in St. John, see Social Planning Associates, Diagnostic Survey. According to this 1968 neighborhood survey, a sizable majority of St. John Street homeowners purchased their homes via land contracts, which typically entailed extraordinarily high interest rates.
21. Olive Beasley, "Weekly Report," May 25, 1966, Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 16, GHCC. The Dent quotation is from Lawrence R. Gustin, "North Siders Flock to Urban Renewal Parley," Flint Journal, February 11, 1969.
22. On the curtailment of housing code enforcement and other city services for the North End, see Craig Hall, "The Origin, Rise, and Fall of the St. John Community: Memoir of an American Tragedy" (master's thesis, University of Michigan-Flint, 2001), 21-30; Flint Department of Community Development, Annual Reports (Flint: City of Flint, Michigan, 1970-1972); Lewis Morrissey, "Enforcement of Housing Code, Realtors Hit at Rights Hearing," Flint Journal, December 1, 1966; Testimony, Public Hearing on Equal Housing Opportunities, Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 21, GHCC; and Proceedings of the Flint City Council, November 1, 1971. On the city's formal divestment from St. John, see Memorandum, Leo Wilensky to Thomas Kay, November 16, 1965, City Manager Files. The Urban League quotation (with emphasis placed in the original document) is from Urban League of Flint, "Position Paper," Beasley Papers, box 38, folder 11, GHCC.
23. The Cadillac quotation is from Allan K. Wilhelm, "It's 300 Acres of Uncertainty," Flint Journal, June 30, 1967. This is also quoted in Wilberg, "An Analysis of an Urban Neighborhood: St. John Street," in University of Michigan-Flint, History Department, Student Papers, part two, GHCC. On the Butler remarks, see Butler Testimony, Beasley Papers, box 8, folder 21, GHCC. On the cancellation of insurance policies, see Newsletter, Flint Department of Community Development, September 1971, in Community Development Newsletters, GHCC; Peter F. Yost, "Renewal Area Residents Air Insurance Gripes, Flint Journal, n.d. [ca. October 1971]; and Proceedings of the Flint City Council, December 6, 1971. On disincentives for property maintenance, see Alvin Goldberg, "Relocation Problems Tied to Changes in Neighborhood," Flint Journal, December 21, 1966. On the decline in property values, see Newsletter, Flint Department of Community Development, "Save Our City Program Announced," September 1973, in Community Development Newsletters, GHCC. The Beasley quotation is from Olive Beasley to Donald Riegle, May 14, 1973, Beasley Papers, box 1, GHCC.
24. According to a 1977 public housing census, the 96-unit Howard Estates project in south central Flint housed only one white family. The 154-unit Atherton East project-located in a sparsely inhabited district on Flint's southeast side-contained fewer than 20 white families. Similarly, out of 151 families in the River Park project-built in a sparsely populated area on the city's northern border-only 11 families were white. See Memorandum, Archie LeFlore to Olive Beasley, November 21, 1977, Beasley Papers, box 22, folder 19, GHCC. On the debates over resegregation and the location of public housing units, see Lou Giampetroni, "Negro Apartments Proposed-Planners Reject Zoning Change," Flint Journal, November 14, 1962; and Memorandum, Robert L. Adams to Olive Beasley, November 5, 1965, Beasley Papers, box 10, folder 47, GHCC. Also see Flint Journal, January 11, 25, 27, 1966, February 3, 1966, May 2, 1966.
25. The Suburban Origins of 'Color-Blind' Conservatism: Middle-Class Consciousness in the Charlotte Busing Crisis," Journal of Urban History 30, no. 5 (May 2004): 549-82.
26. "St. John Unit Opposes Plan for Freeway," Flint Journal, May 22, 1974. Also see Social Planning Associates, Diagnostic Survey, 49. Among the St. John residents displaced by urban renewal, home ownership rates dropped from 32 to 15 percent. See League of Women Voters of Flint, Human Aspects of Relocation (Flint: League of Women Voters of Flint, 1972). Woody Etherly, interview by Wanda Howard, April 1, 1994, Bronze Pillars Project. Also see Memorandum, Olive Beasley to Helen Harris, October 27, 1976, Beasley Papers, box 28, folder 13, GHCC.
27. On urban renewal and civil rights, see notes 13 and 14 above.
28. Memorandum, Dan McRill to Members of the Genesee County Metropolitan Planning Commission, May 21, 1976, Beasley Papers, box 15, folder 29, GHCC. The opening of the 30.5 million industrial park created 500 new jobs-out of 3,600 anticipated-and allowed nine GM suppliers to purchase properties adjacent to the Buick complex. On the St. John Industrial Park, see Theodore J. Gilman, No Miracles Here: Fighting Urban Decline in Japan and the United States (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137-67; and Bryan D. Jones and Lynn W. Bachelor, The Sustaining Hand: Community Leadership and Corporate Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 185-202. In the 1980s, Buick's recentralization strategy culminated in the opening of "Buick City," an integrated manufacturing and assembly facility modeled after Toyota City and its kan-ban production method. See John Koten, "GM Plans to Rebuild Flint, Mich., Plants As a Car Factory in Style of 'Toyota City,'" Wall Street Journal, January 20, 1983. On the similarities between kan-ban and the "just-in-time method" of auto production at Buick City, see Arthur M. Spinella, "Buick City: Hawk Bares Talons," Ward's Auto World (June 1983). On Buick's declining sales, see "Buick Sales in '74 Lowest since 1962," Flint Journal, January 7, 1975.
29. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1942). For urban spatial analyses of creative destruction, see David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Max Page, The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). For a recent biography of conservative Harvard University economist Joseph Schumpeter, see Thomas K. McCraw, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (Cambridge: Belknap, 2007).
30. On de facto segregation as a cultural construct, see Lassiter, "De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Strange Career of a National Myth," in The End of Southern History, eds. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and Andrew R. Highsmith, "From Community Education to Neighborhood Schools: Race, Region, and Jim Crow Schools in Flint, Michigan" (paper, American Historical Association, Washington, DC, January 3-6, 2008). The Beasley quotation is from Memorandum, Olive Beasley to Helen Harris, October 27, 1976, in Beasley Papers, box 28, folder 13, GHCC.