No Reparation for Slavery… Yes Restitution for Renewal

The obvious answer here and throughout the country is urban renewal, also known as public housing.   Interestingly, renewal has created social unrest in Chicago for generations as poor neighborhood after neighborhood was bulldozed in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.   The land then became public property or was sold to developers.   Several books have been written about Chicago renewal alone.

Renewal came late to the South but with the same devastating effects for blacks.   Some black leaders have called for reparations for slavery while remaining silent about renewal.   The silence may stem from a desire not to criticize the Democratic party.

Comparing slavery, segregation, and renewal leads to startling conclusions.   Indeed, they are different forms of the same peculiar institution.

• Slavery ended 140 years ago.   Segregation ended a half century ago.   Renewal replaced segregation and remains the law of the land.
• Slavery denied all rights to blacks.   Segregation meant blacks could own property in areas zoned for blacks, but most other rights were restricted.   Renewal denies the right of individuals of any race to own property by taking it from the private sector and selling it to more desirable individuals.
• No court order was needed to enslave or segregate blacks.   No court order is needed to take property from anyone anywhere if the land grab is for the purpose of urban renewal.
• Slavery and segregation were typically enforced by violence of individuals with government sanction.   Urban renewal is a government program, usually a housing authority, backed by the same deadly force.
• No slave is alive today.   Segregation survivors are an aging and shrinking population.   The total number of renewal victims is growing.
• Slavery and segregation applied exclusively to blacks.   Renewal targets whoever owns the cheapest property when a grant is awarded to improve housing or economic development.
• Whites never feared they would be enslaved or segregated.   But today whites have no protection from renewal.
• Slavery and segregation violated the Bill of Rights but somehow were interpreted as legal at the time.   Renewal violates the same but has not yet been struck down.

The specific rights violated by renewal are these: (1) The owner sets the selling price, not the buyer.   (2) The owner does not have to sell at any price.

The Fifth Amendment allows two exceptions.   A court can force the owner to sell when he is found guilty of a crime.   Also any agency can force the owner to sell if the property is to be used by the public (eminent domain).   The minimum requirement for public use is believed to be public ownership, such as schools, highways, and reservoirs.

The problem with renewal is its goal of redevelopment, the desire that private developers buy and develop the land after government clearance.   In order to declare eminent domain to take property for private use, public use must be equated to public good.

A renewal project is doomed for failure.   Investors fear lawsuits from previous owners charging the program is a property transfer, not public use.   The new investors fear what happened to the previous owners will happen to them when a new development idea comes along (Preston Commons?)

Investors also do not want to involve themselves in controversy.   Here in Charlottesville, they did not want to appear to benefit from the destruction of the city's premier black neighborhood or the city's industrial base.

Vinegar Hill was vacant for twenty years after clearance.   Except for a privately owned public housing project, the Garrett renewal area has a tenth of the businesses there in the '60s.   Only one business has not been displaced or gone under - Standard Produce since 1910.

How do controversies like slavery, segregation, and renewal live on for decades and generations? Because they violate Fifth Amendment due process, a core American principle.   Such a violation is a felony without a statute of limitations, outweighing all other injustices except treason.

This lack of a time limit is why blacks can claim the injustice of slavery can be righted with reparations.   If a slave were alive today, he could sue for enslavement and receive compensation.   Whether next of kin can bring suit is not so clear.

Reparation is a kind of restorative justice where the transgressor makes amends before ordered to do so by a court.   This good will gesture is intended to minimize the penalty if found guilty or simply to make right a wrong without involving a court.

Unlike slaves, renewal victims and witnesses are still alive.   The documents of slavery are not well preserved.   Renewal was widely reported and well documented.   Locally, Vinegar Hill assessments cross-referencing deeds have been lost.   The city assessor has safeguarded the Garrett renewal record for public inspection and research.

Vinegar Hill may be a fifth of the total area affected by renewal.   The exact percentage is not known because there has been no study of which projects had the most impact.   Such a study would be a form of restorative justice.

How do we make right the injustice of urban renewal? First, we acknowledge the history and admit the offense occurred.

Charlottesville is in denial.   One day before the Democratic convention to select council candidates in February, a former official and candidate denied renewal.   Bern Ewert said he was deputy city manager 1971-1976 after the 1972 Garrett clearance.

Second, we must realize the problem will not go away on its own.

The first opponents to Vinegar Hill renewal appeared in 1960 before the first structure was torn down.   They made the same Constitutional arguments I have outlined.

The opposition to public housing was strongest in the mid '70s.   Black independent Sherman White ran against the Democrats in 1976 blaming them for renewal.   At the time, Vinegar Hill and now Garrett lay vacant.   Also in 1976, Thomas Dowell ran for council a third and final time on a platform to stop renewal.   The following year, his mother's house was demolished in the 1977 clearance of Ware Street, the last historic neighborhood to be razed.   Whites had lived on this street surrounded by blacks.

Renewal seemed unstoppable and undiscriminating.   Opponents began moving away along with county residents who had become city residents in the 1963 annexation.   Urban renewal accelerated urban sprawl.

At the public hearing to name the Tenth Street Connector after Sally Hemings on June 5, 2000, that campaign was born again when I asked Mayor Virginia Daugherty to investigate urban renewal.   In other words, I was asking her to explain why the Housing Authority should not be abolished given its record of performance and damage to the black community.

The Jefferson School controversy in January 2002 showed that the issue is real and contemporary.   Do the Democrats want to tear down Jefferson to finish the job they started forty years ago? The fate of Jefferson School is now in committee.

Third, we must acknowledge the magnitude of the problem.   Like slavery and segregation, renewal touches almost every issue.   Perhaps the greatest damage is to history itself when old buildings are destroyed and old people are reluctant to talk about the past.

When mandatory water restrictions began in August, nobody knew about the last restrictions in the drought of 1977.   RWSA board chairman, Richard Collins, Housing Authority board chair in 1977, didn't tell anybody.   Interim RWSA exective director last year, Cole Hendrix, city manager in 1977, didn't tell anybody.   RWSA director, Eugene Potter, RWSA operations director since 1977, didn't tell anybody.  

In bipartisan spirit, Charlottesville Republican Committee chair, Robert Hodous, Housing Authority board member in 1977, did not write a letter to a paper or call a radio station to say, wait a minute, the last water crisis was 1977.   There has been a breakdown in communication.

Fourth, we should stop honoring those who support urban renewal.   The Charlottesville Democratic Committee this year gave the Drewary J. Brown award to Francis H. Fife.   Fife was mayor for 1972 Garrett clearance and vice mayor for 1977 Ware St. clearance.   The late Brown was president of the local NAACP.   But somehow the committee claims the award is not a civil rights honor.

Fifth, we should explain how renewal is wrong and harmful and promise not to do it again.   We must make institutional changes.   Abolish the Housing Authority so urban renewal can come to an end.   Abolish the Board of Architectural Review, which is an attempt to blame the private sector for the loss of history caused by government renewal.

Major reform must occur with city inspectors.   I’ve heard more complaints about inspectors than all other issues combined.   I respond that it didn’t get this way overnight.   Many people, black and white, argued against it.   But the fear of urban renewal has now arrived at every doorstep.   Nowhere are the assumptions of renewal more apparent than with city inspectors.   The idea is that you must improve your property or the city will destroy you literally.

If these good will steps do not prevent a trial, will the accused plead the Fifth when they are charged with the Fifth? Will they continue their silence?

If a black leader made the same statement as Trent Lott, that we would have been better off with segregation, the sentiment would make perfect sense.   The lesson of integration for many blacks is be careful what you wish for.   The glory days for the black community in Charlottesville was the 1950s, the height of segregation and separate education.

Urban renewal did what segregation never tried to do.   It took real property that could be used to secure civil rights.   The legal system favors landowners.   Take away the land and you put the citizen at a disadvantage.

Integration allowed white schools to prove that blacks are less smart.   In the '50s, Jefferson School was proof that blacks are no less intelligent than whites.

Sherman White thought it inconceivable that blacks would vote Democratic.   Government programs weaken the fabric of society.   Public housing perpetuates poverty, violence, and segregation.

The Dixiecrats did not become Republicans here.   The Democrats of urban renewal are the Democrats of today.   City Republicans generally opposed public housing for the damage it would do to the black community.   They opposed renewal to protect the economy.

Since the '60s, the nation has become more suburban and more Republican.   People fled renewal and rejected its poisonous fruit, public housing.   The Republican party will become stronger in the black community until urban renewal is outlawed.

The year 2004 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.   Urban renewal will have been ongoing for half a century.   Is now the time to evaluate whether voters made a mistake in 1954? If a mistake was made, how do we make it right?

The only thing to prevent a fresh wave of forced renewal is nothing.   "Philadelphia embarked last [spring] on a $295 million, five-year plan to demolish 14,000 largely abandoned homes, renovate 2,500 buildings and clear 31,000 vacant lots...Not since the 1970s has an American city undertaken such a vast clearance...The second largest city on the East Coast, with 1.5 million people, Philadelphia has lost 500,000 residents since 1960...government plans to build several thousand apartments for the elderly and poor in the next five years" ("Raze of Sunshine in Philadelphia? City Pins Renewal Hopes on Clearing Vast Areas of Blight, Inviting Development," Mar. 19, 2002, The Washington Post).

An alternative to clearance is to give the parcels of land and abandoned houses to people in public housing.   They would instantly become landowners with long-term interest in the community.   They would have equity to get loans for business or home improvement.   Or let the buildings crumble some more until the property is cheap enough to attract investors.   Or reduce regulation.   If clearance is inevitable, compose the historical markers before the demolition.

If, back in Chicago, you're still seeking the solution to black poverty, maybe you’re looking in the wrong place.   "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.   The answer is blowing in the wind."

Blair Hawkins    12-19-2002
Posted 12-29-2002

Mr. Hawkins is a member of the Charlottesville Republican Committee, ran for Charlottesville city council in 2000 as an independent, and began this website in January 2002 in an attempt to save from destruction the city's oldest grade school, all-black Jefferson School since 1865, five years before the city's first all-white public school opened on Garrett Street.

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