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Topic: DEMOLITION MEANS PROGRESS-HIGHSMITH ON FLINT SEGREGATION
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Andrew Highsmith wrote his University of Michigan Doctoral Dissertation on how race and class played pivotal roles in the de facto segregation of Flint. It also demonstrates why for some there is a fear of gentrification and the continuation of racist policies that will ultimately continue future segregation. Completed in 2009, Highsmith did extensive research and interviewed some of the remaining oral historians, several who have since passed.

Highsmith wrote that "Demolition Means Progress" was to examine "the grassroots and structural barriers to racial equality and economic opportunity in metropolitan Flint from the Great Depression to the present. Between the 1930's and the mid-50s, racial segregation increased markedly in many of the schools and neighborhoods of Genesee County. Restrictive housing covenants, neighborhood violence, "racial steering", and other private forms of racism and discrimination played an important role in maintaining Jim crow in Flint and its growing suburbs. Yet deliberate government policies also sustained segregation in the Flin region.. Corporate and elected officials maintained the color line in the spacially decentralized yet rigidly divided metropolis by imposing segregationist housing, urban development and educational programs."
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:17 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

While only 13,103 people lived in Flint in 1900, that number grew to 150,492 by 1930. This growth was fueled by the rise of General Motors. (Page 43) Using census figures and other resources, Highsmith notes that over 80 % of the 1930 Flint population was comprised of native born whites of whom two-thirds were Protestant ande only 3.6 5 were Negroes.

The first free persons of color and former slaves inhabited the area known as Floral Park, located in what is now primarily Flint's ninth ward. The original boundaries were Court Street on the north, The Grand Trunk Railroad tracks on the south, South saginaw Street on the west, and Lapeer Road on the east. According to Highsmith blacks could only inhabit only a small area near the Grand trunk Railroad tracks before World War II.

Substandard housing was common in much of Flint due to poor planning and the need to house so many new residents. However residents of Floral Park area enjoyed an economically diverse neighborhood that was located close to downtown and Thread lake with it's recreation area. The area was further enhanced by the Clifford Street Community Center, Clark School, the Golden Leaf Night Club, Lakeside park, Quinn Chapel AME Church and the Michigan Theater.

As a result the blacks in the Floral Park area enjoyed a status that elevated them from the blacks in the north end and the St John neighborhood.

Highsmith qouted Willie Nolden , father of Third Ward Councilman Bryant Nolden, from the 2007 Color Line Project . According to Highsmith, Nolden said: Wheni was a kid, if you were from the North Side you were a nothin'. If you were on the South Side, you were somethin'. It was kind of a class struggle between the North Side and the South Side".

During the 1940's and 1950's as the black population increased, Floral Park became a valued home site, especially since there were few options for blacks in Flint.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:48 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

The St John Street neighborhood on Flint's North side was deemed undesirable as far back as 1924. Much of the housing was deemed to be older and dilapidated with the population being about one-third black. The area had a reputation for gambling, prostitution and related criminal activities.

The area was racially and ethnically diverse with a large number of unskilled factory workers. The area was also deemed undesireable because of the considerable number of immigrants from Asia Minor and Mexico as well as less desirable areas of Europe.

A 1934 land survey evaluated this area as deteriorated primarily based upon race despite the fact that much of the housing was superior to other sections of the city.

During the 1930's these two neighborhoods nearly all of the city's six thousand balck inhabitants.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:02 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

"The St John street area contained the city's largest concentration of poverty and the second-highest proportion of Afraican-Americans. Surrounded on three sides by the Buick factories, the Flint River, and a labryinth of rail lines, the teardrop-shaped community formed the historical heart of the city's North End." (pages 54-55)
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:09 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Racially based segregation during the Depression was perpetuated to a great extent by the "court-sanctioned racially restrictive housing covenants by builders, developers, raltors and homeowners" These covenants were placed on nearly all new housing constructed in flint from 1910 to the end of the 1940's and ensured that these residential districts remained white.

General Motors and local developers designed these restrictive covenants in the 1910's when they were trying to recruit new workers to Flint to work in their factories. In 1919 Gm created the Modern Housing Corporation dedicated to housng construction . Between 1919 and 1933, this Modern housing Corporation in conjunction with other builders built nearly three thousand homes in what becamne Civic Park, Chevrolet Park and Mott Park.

GM also persuaded the Flint Board of Education to build two new schools in these areas to influence familir=es with children to buy they homes.In addition, GM offered lucrative financing to influence working-class and professional home buyers to purchase their homes. These covenants had many restrictions and also stipulated that homes "could not be leased to or occupied by any person or persons not wholly of the white or Caucasian race." (page 59)

By the end of the 1930's. the use of racially restrictive covenants had made Flint one of he most segregated cities in the US.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:31 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Highsmith discussed how racial segegation pemeated almost every aspect of life for blacks in Flint through a rigid Jim Crow system that kept whites and blacks separated at work, in schools and in most public accomadations. Before World war II blacks were unable to find work with GM except as janitors or foundary workers. Downtown businesses refused to hire black salepersons and clerks until sfter the war ended. The Durant Hotel refused black occupants until lightweight boxing champion Jimmy Carter broke the color bar in 1954. (page 64)

The Michigan Theater allowed black patrons if they sat in the balcony and the IMA held separate acts for blacka and whites. White patrons could go to the IMA between 9 pm and midnight while black patrons could only attend between 1 am to 5 am. (Charlotte Williams interview in the Perry Archives)

Black pedestrians and motorists who went outside of the well defined borders of Floral park or the St John area were frequently harrassed by officers of the Flint Police Department. Revernd Eugene Simpson of Mt tabor Baptist Church was quoted as saying that during the 1930's, "Blacks were'nt allowed across the river unless they were going to school". Simpson also said that as a child "Blacks weren't even allowed to walk up and down Welch Boulevard... unless you were going to work for some white person".


Last edited by untanglingwebs on Sat Aug 10, 2013 6:43 am; edited 1 time in total
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:50 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Central High School and other public school facilities as well as the Board of Educatio prohibitted black children from using swimming pools until 1944. Then Black boys could use the pool one time per week for segregated recreation.

Berston and other public facilities kept separate schedules for swimmers in the 1930s and 1940s. Berston allowed black swimmers on Wednesday and the rest of the week the city officials operated sprinklers across the street from the field house.

max Brandon said in an interview that after blacks used the pool the water was drained and fresh water refilled the pool for the white swimmers.

Flint Journal stories from 1934 and 1935 describe how the Kiwanis Club and other civic organizations "blacked up" and performed minstrel shows to raise money for charitable causes.

"During the 1933 Kiwanis show, Flint's mayor, raymond A. Brownell, city commissioners Harry m. Comins and George A. Barnes, school superintendent L.H. Lamb, city parks chairperson Arthur H Sarvis, and Forest W. Boswell, a member of the Flint Board of Education, donned "blackface and grotesque attire ," hoping to raise money for a children;s health camp." (page 67)

Some in the black community such as mary Helen Loving stated these minstrel shows "were used to remind black people of their position"
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:20 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

The concept of "redlining" was predominant in the 1930's when federal housing officials began to be interested in Flint's real estate practices.

Arthur Raab was a real estate broker that had served as the primary marketing agent for the Gm homes. As Gm began phasing out of the real estate market in the 1930's. Raab turned to a survey of Flint area homes, the CWA survey.This survey purported to describe the quality of housing throughout designated zones, these zones were often ranked on a basis of ethnicity of the residents.

"In June 1933,, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Home Owners' Loan Act, which created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, to help reduce housing foreclosures. " Delinquent home loans were purchased from lenders and the houses were refinanced with new long-term, low iinterest loans in an effort to stabilize local housing markets.

"By 1936, HOLC officials had purchased and refinanced the mortgages of more than 20 percent of the nation's nonfarm, owner-occupied housing units" (page 71) HOLC ended in June 1936.

HOLC created the concept of "redlining". HOLC devised a system for rating neighborhood stability , housing quality, and property values for residential neighbohoods. They devised "residential security maps" and used a descending scale from A to D. The least desirable neighborhoods were ranked C and D. Colors were assigned to the areas to indicate their ranking and the color for D was red.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:47 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Local realtors and bankers were used to help develop these security maps. Ratings of A or b had an implicit assumption that the neighborhood was all white. Neighborhoods rated C or D had the race and ethnicity factors playing prominent roles. The least desireable neighborhoods in the opinion of the HOLc officials "are characterized by detrimental influences in a pronounced degree, undesireable population or an infiltration of it, low percentage of home ownership, very poor maintenance, and often vandalism present.' (page 74)

Surveyors were required to list the "percentage of Negroes, foreign-born residents, and relief families in each neighborhood and to assess the risk of 'infiltration" by these undesireable social groups". Thus race and class segregation were key compaonents of the federal rankings of neighborhood stability.

At the end of the 1937 survey most of the 50 designated residential areas in Flint ranked poorly. Only Woodcroft and Woodlawn Park received A ratings. There wer seven B neighborhoods and all of them "contained no negroes, only a few foreign-born occupants and few-if any families on relief."

In the remaining 41 residential areas, 18 received a ranking of C. This rating was due to the presence of "substandard housing, the encroachment of rental units and commercial establishments, the presence of foreign-born and poor families and proximity to factories, slums and other nuisances.: None contained Negro residents.

Sometimes even all white working neighborhoods were colored yellow or even red if they contained many idled factory employees. Of the twenty three redlined neighborhoods only three contained negro occupants in 1937. Even being close to an area containing Negoes could influence a lower rating, despite the condition of the housing.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:09 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

An anomoly of the rating system is the western edge of Woodlawn Park. It maintained an A rating despite it's close proximity to Floral park. This area maintained it's blue color because it was the residences of of business executives and the western edge consisted of all white middle class and wealthy property owners.

Lapeer road was the dividing line between Woodlawn Park and Floral Park. During the 1930s and 1940s some referred to lapeer road as the Mason-Dixon line.

Suburbs outside of Flint received low ratings because of poorly developed physical and political infrastructure.
Post Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:25 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

The Federal government passed the National Housing Act in 1934 which created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). During the years of 1934 to 1972 the FHA insured mortgages increased homeownership nationwide from 44 to 63 percent. A Flint Journal story on May 7, 1984 (page 84) showed Flint homeownership rising from 63 to 77 percent in the years between 1942 and 1947.

Like the previous neighborhood evaluations, the FHA appraisers and underwriters used racially based criteria to rate residential neighborhoods to determine what areas were eligible for FHA insured mortgages. While FHA did not always use the same color scheme as HOLC in rating neighborhoods, much of the reasoning used remained the same.

Homer Hoyt, a real estate official with the FHA Economics and Statistics Division, wrote an instructions report in 1935 on how to divide the City into neighborhoods. Appraisers were to draw lines around the central business district, industrial areas, and areas that included apartment buildings with eight or more units. The city was further subdivided into single and two family residential districts according to rental values.

Hoyt wrote"You are now to draw a blue pencil around all areas m in which there are more than 10% Negoes or race other than white; alo indicate areas in which there are a considerable number of Italians or Jews in the lower income group". It was to be determined that neighborhoods marked by dilapidated housing, low rental values and residents who were non-white were "undesireable for loan purposes".

Being in close proximity to Negro residential districts and whether or not there was physical barriers to separate black and white neighborhoods remained a criteria for ratings by FHA appraisers.

"A neighborhood should be graded down even though it is now a very good neighborhood if it is in the path of a low-grade neighborhood that is growing in its direction. In estimating the stability of a neighborhood, the strength of the barriers dividing it from the pooor neighborhoods should also be considered."

Note: Hoyt was an intellectual and author who popularized the concept that racial integration was a negative influence on property value.

Hoyt's instructions to appraisers became part of the FHA's official Underwriting Manual which also advocated the use of racially restrictive housing covenants.
Post Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:02 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

It was not until February 1967 that the national Committee Against Discrimination in Housing (NCDH) released How the Federal Government Builds Ghettoes, a pamphlet detailing the manner in which the federal government sustained residential segregation. (Richard and Diane Margolis were authors of an essay in this pamphet in which they wrote an assessment of how the government, through FHA, was one of the primary promoters of racial segregation.

Highsmith (page 89) "In Flint. 'community education'- the brainchild of Charles Stewart Mott, Flint's leading citizen-played a decisive role in keeping neighborhood schools as segregated, and sometimes even more so, than the segregated residential neihborhoods they served.
Post Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:15 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

CHAPTER 2: THE BIRTH OF COMMUNITY EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS
After the UAW organizing drives and factory occupations that led to the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strikes, Charles stewart mott created a citywide health, recreation, and education program in an attempt to restore civil order. Together with other civiv leaders and industrialists the Flint Public Schools received millions of dollars to promote the concept of "community schools"

Community schools were extremely popular for the next 45 years. They offered job training for the unemployed, taught illiterate citizens to read and write, and delivered essential health services to indigent children and their families.

"Because of the tangible educational, recreational, socialandd public health benefits it provided to working-class families and the poor, the Mott program was extraordinarily popular throughout Flint, especially within the working-class white neighborhoods that benefitted disproportionately from its programming." (page 91)

"Though its charitable contributions undoubtedly bettered the lives of thousands, the Mott initiative also institutionalized patterns of racial segregation, educational dis advantage, and economic inequality that helped make Flint one of the most racially and spatially divided cities in the United States." (page 92)

Highsmith states the creators of the Mott program also believed that successful community education depended upon segregation, both racial and economic. Depending on homogeneous neighborhood groupings, Mott and his "powerful contingent of supporters on the school board" reaffirmed both social and spatial boundaries in the neighborhoods.

"In exchange for the foundation's sponsorship, the Flint Board o Education refashioned its existing school infrastructure to create segregated, neighborhood-based 'community schools' that also served as civic centers for each of the city's neighborhoods.....
For racial conservatives, such as MOtt, whobelieved implicitly in the naturalness of racial and economic distinctions, true community schools depended upon exclusionary policies that sorted and separated citizens by race, space and class." (pages 92-93)
Post Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:44 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

While the automotive industry helped create thousands of jobs for new workers, the economic nature of the automotive industry combined with the undeveloped infrastructure of the city made it difficult for ordinary workers to have decent housing and economic security in the 1910's. Durant had a corporate acquisition program that left GM on the verge of bankruptcy. Mott took out $9 million in loans and Durant was pushed from the company and layoffs and speedups were used to increase profits.

This reorganization created discord and as a result the Flint Socialist Party had members elected in 1911 to the Mayor's office and three council seats. "In response, Mott and a large group of Flint's leading citizens formed the Independent Citizen's party- a bipartisan, ad hoc political organization created with the sole purpose of defeating municipal socialism." (page 98 )

Mott agreed to run for mayor and in 1912 won a huge victory over John A. C. Menton, the Socialist incumbent.
Post Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:02 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Mott was mayor in 1912, 1913 and in 1918. Mott fulfill his promise of a business-friendly municipal administration and modernized city hall. The city's accounting and records procedures were updated, new cost cutting purchasing policies were put in place. He improved the water delivery and sewer systems, developed a new building code, modernized the road and bridge construction and reappraised the city's municipal assets. As a result Chevrolet announced the creation of a production base on the city's west side, a major political coup.

After losing a 1920 bid for the Governor's seat, Mott turned to his philanthropy and his duties as a GM executie. Mott took advantage of federal tax incentives for charitable contributions allowed benefactors to donate up to 20 percent of their income. The Mott Foundation was established in 1926. (page 100) Mott hated the federal income tax and transferred lare amounts of his stock assets to the foundation.

Frank Manley came to flint from New York and in 1928 became the citywide supervisor of physical education for the Flint Public Schools. Manley was also deeply concerned about child safety and juvenile delinquency which led to his role in developing community education.

The Great depression created a crisis in Flint's education system because of a declining population and decreased tax rlls. Juvenile delinquency rose and children were killed by automobiles as they palyed in the streets and other dangerous places. Manley developed the Flint Plan for Recreation in 1934, aided by federal work relief programs that helped develop a citywide program of neighborhood playgrounds, summer camps, sports leagues and other supervised recreation sites. He nearly went bankrupt after the first year and sought out benefactors.
Post Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:28 am 
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