History and implications of racial segregations in post-WWII American cities. Explains the dynamics that created overwhelmingly white suburban areas and restricted people of color to decaying urban cores. Our doughnut cities are no accident. Government aided the many at the expense of the few. Our public policies reinforced racist attitudes, reaffirming and reinventing American whiteness.

1. Suburbs and Ghettoes:
Eric Beckman
Anoka, HS (MN)
Racialized space, identity, and
privilege in postwar America

2. Parallel Parades 1940-1970
❖ Millions of Americans moved
❖ American cities became even more racially
segregated
❖ White people received many benefits
❖ People of color were penalized financially.

3. Americans on the Move Segregation by Race
Benefits for whites
Disadvantages for people of
color
Segregated
Neighborhoods

4. Migrations during WWII
❖ Millions
moved

5. Racial Tensions during WWII
❖ Overcrowded cities were often
racially tense
➢ Riots: Detroit, LA, and NYC
White American Sailors
during the Zoot Suit Riots in
LA (1943)

6. Racial Violence in War-time Detroit
“Early in June 1943, 25,000 Packard plant
workers, who produced engines for bombers and
PT boats, stopped work in protest of the
promotion of three blacks… During the strike a
voice outside the plant reportedly shouted, "I'd
rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work
beside a n***** on the assembly line.”
–Detroit News

7. Post-war Housing Crisis
❖ Housing shortage
➢ Millions of vets
■ 100,000 homeless
➢ 17.5 million needed
❖ “ threat or an opportunity.”
❖ Government assistance, for white folks
➢ GI Bill
➢ Housing Act of 1949
■ Mortgage insurance, almost all for all-white suburbs
■ Public housing, racially segregated
■ Urban renewal, destroyed housing in city neighborhoods

8. The Second Great Migration
❖ 5 million African
Americans left the
South,1940-1970
➢ Largest ethnic
relocation in US
➢ North, West cities
■ 1940s: 85% ↑ in
black pop
➢ Southern cities, too
❖ Lack of quality
housing
Chicago’s “Black Belt,” 1941

9. Making the Second Ghettoes
❖ Crowded, high rents
❖ Houses subdivided
➢ Apartments →
“kitchenettes”
❖ Run down
❖ Difficulty finding
good jobs
➢ Business to suburbs
➢ Education
➢ Discrimination

10. Resistance to Integration
Counterdemonstrators in Milwaukee
opposed Father James Groppi and the
NAACP Youth Council’s marches for
open housing in very clear terms in 1967.
❖ Nonviolent, but
mean-spirited
demonstrations
❖ Underreported,
but real,
violence
directed at
Black pioneers

11. Suburbanization
❖ Suburban population 2x,
37 million-74 million,
1950-1970
❖ Massive government
assistance
➢ Half of homes had
federally guaranteed
mortgages
➢ Highways
➢ Water and sewer
❖ Almost no federally
guaranteed mortgages in
cites
❖ FHA guaranteed 60x to
suburbs, 1934--1960 Levittown, Pennsylvania

12. Whites-Only Suburbs
❖ Federal government
underwrote $120
Billion in new housing,
1934-1962
➢ 98% for white people.
❖ Levittown, NY:
➢ largest city (70,000)
without a single black
resident in 1953
❖ Many developers only
sold or rented to white
people
Bloomington, MN 1956.

13. Redlining: Denying loans to buy houses
in certain neighborhoods
Federal Government Map of Philadelphia,
1936
❖ Government maps showed
neighborhood ratings
➢ In1930s red =lowest
rating (nonwhite, low
income)
❖ 1930s and 40s: Federal
Housing Administration
officially recommended only
loaning money to buy
houses in all-white areas
❖ Result: Very few loans in
“redlined” areas
➢ People of color with loans
usually paid more interest

14. Federal Government Map of St. Louis, 1937

15. Impact of Redlining
In the 1940s developers built this wall
near 8 Mile Road in Detroit to divide a
new white neighborhood from an older
black neighborhood. Otherwise, the area
would have been redlined and white
people would not have been able to get
mortgages. (Photos taken August 2009)

16. Impact of Redlining
❖ No loans for most city neighborhoods
➢ Property values and conditions declined
❖ Wages of whiteness: more valuable house
❖ White homeowners, even if not prejudiced,
had reason to fear black neighbors

17. Destruction of Urban Housing
❖ Urban renewal
❖ Highway construction
❖ Racism limited
relocation possibilities
Urban renewal, Chicago,
mid 50s

18. Public Housing
❖ Built, in part, to control
where people of color lived
➢ People leaving destroyed
housing
“Public housing was now
meant to collect the ghetto
residents left homeless by
the urban renewal bulldozers”
~ Mark Condon of Harvard’s John
F. Kennedy School of Government

19. Poverty, Isolation, Segregation
❖ Public Housing increased
segregation
➢ Chicago riots
➢ Federal rule
❖ The projects concentrated low-
income people in areas with
decreasing numbers of jobs and
businesses
❖ > half poorest neighborhoods in
US were CHA, in 1980
Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago

20. Housing as Wealth
❖ Housing costs per month in
the late 40s:
➢ Rent in NYC: $100-150
➢ Mortgage payments in
Levittown: $65
❖ Home ownership=wealth
❖ Housing wealth=possibility of
more loans
❖ Housing wealth passed to
children
This 1990 photo shows a Cape Cod cottage in
Levittown, New York remodeled into a larger,
two-story Dutch colonial. This shows how
residents of white spaces were able to add
value to their homes.

21. Implications
❖ white people reaped advantages, communities of
color suffered
❖ Identification of whiteness with nice neighborhoods
and blackness with bad neighborhoods
❖ Concentrated poverty
❖ Racial divisions deepen
❖ Opportunity lost
Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white––separate and
unequal... Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American
life; they now threaten the future of every American.
Kerner Commission, 1968
(at least 20 years late)

22. “geography does the work of Jim
Crow laws”—john a. powell
❖ Racially segregated housing
➢ Segregation increased during Civil Rights Movement
❖ Average white-black advantage in 2000
➢ Income 1.5 times
➢ Wealth: 8 times