“Urban Renewal a Farce or Reality,” Carolina Times, September 25, 1965.
The discussion surrounding urban renewal in Durham, N. C. began in the 1950s, a few years after the federal government began allocating funds for “blighted areas” under the Housing Act of 1949. In 1957, a stagnant Durham realized that if it wanted to grow as a city, it would have to make some drastic improvements to its downtown area in order to recruit new businesses. Additionally the city wanted to capitalize on the fledgling Research Triangle Park and resist the growing trend toward suburbanization sweeping the country. Much like urban renewal in most cities, which targeted all black sections, Durham was no exception. In April 1957, the North Carolina State legislature passed an act authorizing cities in the state to participate in programs of urban renewal allowing them to receive federal funding. That same year, the city of Durham commissioned a group of University of North Carolina graduate students from the Department of City and Regional Planning to assist in preparing a report. In 1954, several years after Congress passed the 1949 Housing Act, it expanded the urban renewal program so that there would be money for the prevention of “urban blight” as well as money for fixing the problem. The plan identified the Hayti section of Durham, the city’s major black section, as a “blighted” area. Under the previously mentioned Housing Act, the federal government provided qualified cities with two-thirds of the total costs for redevelopment in proposed areas. The program of urban renewal was advertised as something positive that would assist the city in removing unwanted problem areas.
Louis Austin, editor of the city’s black newsweekly the Carolina Times, gave overwhelming support to the urban renewal program in the beginning. But, by 1965 Austin began expressing skepticism about the urban renewal program. In this newspaper article Austin called the whole idea “about the biggest farce ever concocted in the mind of mortal man” because of “the swiftness and efficiency with which Urban Renewal acts in tearing down houses and the lack of speed which it has exhibited in replacing them…” According to Austin:
So far as the Hayti section of Durham is concerned, Urban Renewal is not only a farce but just another scheme to relieve Negroes of property they own too close to the downtown business section of the city. Austin went on to point out that the low income apartments that were promised by urban renewal had not been built.
Moreover, he explained that blacks’ sentiment at the misconception of urban renewal can be found in a black citizen who remarked:
I have already put it in my will that when my grandson’s great grandson moves into one of the apartments erected under the Urban Renewal program to not forget that his old great great grandpappy dreamed of such a day.
This newspaper article exposes the failures of urban renewal in Durham in addition to the truth about its role in the “New South.” In Durham urban renewal was no more than a way to make room for a proposed thoroughfare that would provide an easy travel route for commuters making their way to Research Triangle Park. The loss of businesses and residents in the Hayti district, as it turned out, were part of a relentless process. As a result, it did little to eradicate poverty and revitalize the city.
