American involvement in World War I left a dramatic labor shortage in many northern industrial cities. The exodus of blacks from the rural south was well underway before the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914, but accelerated once the war began. Unfortunately, the returning white veterans wanted their jobs back. This led to intense conflicts with blacks over housing and jobs. The resultant violence intensified the separation of the races in urban neighborhoods.
Black Urbanization
Blacks soon found themselves generally restricted to the poorer areas in the city as Jim Crow laws successfully isolated the races. Even though there were some black elite, a majority of blacks lived in dense housing communities that came to characterize the worst aspects of the American ghetto. Even though Thurgood Marshall successfully argued in front of the Supreme Court that segregated schools negatively impacted the self esteem of black children, there was little immediate change. In fact, the Southern Manifesto, signed by those politicians firmly committed to white supremacy, illustrated that the fight had just begun.
Black Inner Cities/White Suburbs
Still, several events had the unintended affect of entrenching the urban model of the isolated, and segregated, black inner cities with white suburbs. First, in recognition of their military service, the Federal government provided returning veterans low-cost housing loans. This led to the phenomena of white flight: the mass exodus of middle-class whites from the minority infiltrated inner cities to the perceived safety and security of new suburban developments. Furthermore, many of these new suburban communities promised a respite from the Brown decision by advertising “good” schools. Such euphemisms came to be recognized as a code for schools with few, if any, minorities.
Secondly, President Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system was intended to improve the mobility of the nation’s military. However, the construction of miles and miles of highways cut a destructive path through the urban landscape, and ultimately urban communities. Many of which were predominately black.
Lastly, policy of urban renewal completely transformed the urban landscape of the 1950s and 1960s. Urban renewal programs razed blocks of dilapidated inner city housing and erected new homes that the previous residents could not afford. As a result, scores of black families found themselves horded into high-rise public housing projects that became havens for crime and drugs. Eventually, blacks came to view urban renewal as merely “Negro” removal.
Segregation, Isolation, and Hopelessness
Individually, these decisions were not totally disastrous. However, when considered together they led to black segregated communities where new freeways facilitated the mobility of the white middle class, allowing them to live further and further from the urban core.
Unfortunately, urban sociologist Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton found that by the 1990s nearly one-third of the nation’s blacks still reside in large, dense, run-down segregated communities, better known as ghettos. These areas continue to be the most isolated and neglected communities in the urban landscapes. Nearly fifty years after the Brown decision supposedly ended segregation and blacks were still found in communities with little contact with other racial groups.
While numerous Cold War-era policies were introduced to ease to burden and monotony of the urban existence, too often the “side effects” reinforced segregation which further served to isolate the black community and the feelings of hopelessness inherent with living at the bottom of society. Now, more than fifty years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, many in the black community still experience spatial segregation, isolation and hopelessness.
References
Massey, Douglas S. 1990. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. The American Journal of Sociology 96(2): 329-357.
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1989. Hypersegregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas. Demography 26 (3): 373-391.
