Mindy Thompson Fullilove M.D.
We interviewed Mindy Fullilove to discuss her take on Urban Renewal. She was a great subject for an interview, not only for extensive research on Urban Renewal but also for her input from a psychological perspective. Fullilove works as a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and is a professor at Columbia University. Both her perspectives, whether historical or relating to emotional impact were incredibly valuable to hear. Check out her book on Urban Renewal, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It. (Image via StructuralCompetency.org)
Listen to the interview here:
Mary Bishop
Mary Bishop worked as a reporter for the Roanoke Times. Her writing has been integral to the coverage of Roanoke’s Urban Renewal, and it has been cited as inspiration for other researcher’s work, including Mindy Fullilove. Take a look at her 1995 story for the Roanoke “Times, Street by Street, Block by Block: How Urban Renewal Uprooted Roanoke” and her other article, “Racial Remapping: How City Leaders Bulldozed Black Neighborhoods” which was featured in Local Quarterly: Roanoke VA Magazine (Issue #2) by clicking on the links below. (Image via RothsteinsFirstAssignment)
Mary Bishop on the Social Effects of Urban Renewal by Celine Anderson
The physical effects of Roanoke’s Urban Renewal are clear. You can see them in the Civic Center, built on land cleared by the Commonwealth Project, the Old Lick Cemetery, which was divided and partially relocated in 1961, and other landmarks or lack of landmarks changed by Roanoke’s former leaders. However, the psychological and economic impact of Urban Renewal are not as easy to spot. To get a better idea of what Urban Renewal really meant for Roanokers, we sat down with journalist, Mary Bishop.
Soon after Bishop opened the door for us, we were greeted by her friendly pet dog, and a view of all kinds of interesting knick knacks and wall hangings, decorating her home. Souvenirs and art works were displayed in her living room. From the scenery, it was clear that Mary had wound up in situations with all types of people in all types of places. So of course our first question for her was how she wound up writing about Urban Renewal.
It was 1991, and Mary was chosen to cover a neighborhood reunion of people who had lived in NE Roanoke. At first, she expected the event to be nothing out of the ordinary, just a normal get-together. Instead, it turned out to be an opportunity: the chance to meet relocated people and learn about where they used to live. The stories of these Roanokers intrigued her, and she dove into writing about the effects of Urban Renewal, (which the Norfolk paper had never covered before.)
In fact, even during the Urban Renewal, sects of the public were sheltered from knowing about the consequences. According to Mary, Roanoke’s black community was not consulted as much as Roanoke’s white community during Urban Renewal. Mary frowned as she resentfully noted that even today, there is no memorial or anything to stand for the people who were relocated: no plaque to acknowledge their hardships– not just emotional hardship but also economic.
Mary explained that many of the evicted people were not paid as much for their property as they should have been- which lead to their financial debt. Mary said of the debt: “This is what destroyed the community.” The best that she had heard from people was that they were now living in safer homes, but the new homes were still expensive. As blacks had to move into different neighborhoods in NE, a lot of whites gradually moved away from public housing areas like Lincoln Terrace or Lansdown due to bad advertising of the neighborhoods. This whole process stems from a system called “blockbusting,” which was not uncommon at the time. “Blockbusting” is when realtors play on their white clients’ fears of minorities moving into their neighborhoods and buy their property for a steal.
The whole social aspect of the Urban Renewal, particularly with things like the “blockbusting,” was difficult for me to grasp by reading through old city plans and 1960s newspaper articles, but Mary Bishop made things very clear. I left her interview with an enhanced understanding of the aftermath of Roanoke’s Urban Renewal. The city had punished black tenants in the neighborhood for their white landlords’ negligence in keeping their houses unsafe. As Mary talked about Urban Renewal, I realized that the manipulation of the public was a common theme.
Reginald Shareef PhD
Reginald Shareef has written for the Roanoke Times and was a key witness to Claytor v. Roanoke Redevelopment Housing Authority. Shareef has a strong knowledge of the legal system which really strengthens his information about Urban Renewal. Shareef teaches Public Management at Radford University and Virginia Tech. Follow the link to see a column he wrote for the Roanoke Times on eminent domain.
http://ww2.roanoke.com/columnists/shareef/wb/12617
Question and Answer with Reginald Shareef
Q: What sparked your interest in Urban Renewal?
A: I had a grant from the Dept of HUD in 1990 to do a study on the economic impact of urban renewal on three Roanoke neighborhoods (Commonwealth, Kimball, and Gainsboro). The grant was through Howard University’s School of Urban Affairs. The project was interesting to me for two reasons: (a)as a native Roanoker, I had always heard residents talk about how the Housing Authority had used Eminent Domain to get people’s property and turn it over to commercial developers (and I was a teenager when this was happening in Kimball or old NE where the Main Post Office, the Roanoke Civic Center, and Magic City Ford are currently located) so I had an interest and (b) I have always been interested in the intersection between economics and public policy. Below is a link to the study I did for Howard University:
http://books.google.com/books/about/An_Evaluation_of_the_Impact_of_Federal_U.html?id=RNJdGwAACAAJ
Below is a commentary I did two weeks ago in The Roanoke Times about this intersection between economics and public policy
http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/commentary/article_337cdecc-6e79-11e3-acac-001a4bcf6878.html
Q: Would it be at all possible to consider the building of a Magic City Ford or a Civic Center economic (and not public) use? Would these projects then be considered inappropriate use of eminent domain?
A: Yes, the taking of MCF and the Roanoke Civic Center were taken for “public use” but they were really taken for economic development purposes (what “public use” does the “public” derive from the government taking private property and turning it over to a business organization like Magic City Ford??). Ditto for the Roanoke Civic Center. In fact, one lady (Ms Ross) would not sell her property to the city because she had a nice house exactly where the Roanoke Civic Center parking lot is today. She dared the city to evict her so the city built the civic center and parking lot around her house. Years later, the city relented and gave Ms Ross “fair market value” for her property.
“Public Use” is the taking of property by government so that all citizens use and benefit from the “taking.” In the Founding Period, eminent domain was used to build canals, railroads, etc and in the 1960s to build the Interstate Highway system. However, in the 1950s (beginning with a law passed in 1949) local governments across the country began a process of “slum clearance” of poor black neighborhoods which was fine except . . .the people were not paid “fair market value” for their property. The property was seized under Eminent Domain and then turned over to business enterprises to revitalized the core Downtown areas. “Public Use” then became a “sham” for economic development. Black people screamed for years about this but it was only in the 2005 Kelo case – -where white residents in New London, CT – -were impacted that everybody realized the improper use of eminent domain was linked to economic development, not “public use.” Noted Columbia University Professor of Psychiatry, Mindy Fullilove, looked at the psychological impact of “forced displacement” of black citizens in six cities in her 2004 book “Root Shock” and Roanoke was one of the cities. I wrote about Fullilove’s visit to Roanoke in the 2004 column below:
http://ww2.roanoke.com/columnists/shareef/wb/7017
The only black person in Roanoke who had both the courage and money to challenge the RRHA’s improper use of eminent domain was Dr. Walter Claytor. He won and the law was changed. However, the RRHA had the outlandish legal position that they could hold a citizen’s property under condemnation status “in perpetuity” or forever without paying them for the property. There were five U.S. Supreme Court rulings that said this violated the citizen’s 5th and 14th Amendment rights. Claytor won in court and the law was changed in Virginia.
Black people’s were “targeted” for this improper use of eminent domain because (as a group) were are (a) poor and don’t have the resources to fight, for instance, the Commonwealth of Virginia and (2) courts often treat blacks as “second-class” citizens and tend to ignore legitimate constitutional issues when it comes to the group.
Q: Can you say anything about people’s compensation for having to leave their homes in Roanoke? Where they paid the fair amount?
A: No, many people were not paid fair market value for their property. This is one of the things Dr. Fullilove documents in her book. Say a person had a modest home in Kimball (this is actually what happened to my Grandparents in the 1950s) and the home was paid for. Now, here comes government (wanting the property for Magic City Ford and the Post Office) and offers you less than fair market value. Your neighbors are selling so you have no “bargaining leverage” but you will have to buy a new home in upper NW and once again have mortgage payments.
That was the type of stress that killed a lot of people in Roanoke and elsewhere. If the people had been given fair market value for their property as the 5th Amendment requires, urban renewal would not have been so controversial. However, not to be given fair market value and then have to take on a new or bigger mortgage was unethical and unconstitutional.
Q: In your article, “The Eminent Domain Free Fall,” you point to “neighborhood revitalization” and “economic development” as disguises for private development. Is there a similar situation to this in Roanoke? Was the public lead to believe that “neighborhood revitalization” would be an outcome of the Urban Renewal projects?
A: Yes, Gainsboro was supposed to be “neighborhood revitalization” but Dr. Claytor, seeing what had happened in both Kimball and Commonwealth, knew the city wanted the property for economic development reasons. In his trial, it came out that the city promised black leaders at First Baptist Church on Wells Ave that if they would turn neighborhood residents against Dr. Claytor (i.e, the Claytors have money and they just don’t want you to live better), the city would give the Church property on Wells for a parking lot and also the Claytor’s property on Gilmer Ave! How can the city promise a citizen’s property to a third-party (it would be like me promising my son your car after we complete this interview). However, today the church has the property on Wells Ave and rents the parking spaces to the people who work at Hotel Roanoke, the Social Security Building, and other downtown workers. All you have to do is look at these areas where homes/neighborhoods once stood and see the commercial properties that now exist. All of this property was gotten through eminent domain so the city won because of an enhanced tax base and the businesses won because they got property cheaply so only the displaced (black)citizens lost.
Ride by the Coca-Cola plant on Center Ave. Same deal. Moreover, the economic benefits of these property takings don’t benefit the communities because the workers don’t live in the communities. Take a worker at the Coca Cola plant. He/she gets paid but spend their money in the neighborhoods where they live. In 1980, President Reagan said that black communities were poor because ” a dollar only turns over one time” while in white neighborhoods “a dollar turns over eight times” and this is true. I live in a “white” neighborhood and buy my gas, have my clothes cleaned, go to Krogers and CVS, etc so my dollar turns over a lot. Not so in poor black communities and thus, they stay poor.
Q: What are some of the long term effects of Urban Renewal? (On economics, people, the structure of the city.)
A: Because of the misuse of eminent domain in Roanoke, citizens don’t trust either Roanoke City or the RRHA. In the language of public policy, these are “low trust” institutions. Prominent whites, for years, watched what happened to black Roanokers and were quiet, but when Carilion Hospital began to expand on Jefferson and Reserve Ave, they went and hired Joe Waldo, Dr. Claytor’s eminent domain attorney from Norfolk because they knew the city was going to (figuratively) ‘screw them.” Waldo made sure they got fair market value for their property; however, the city did try and get the property of a tile business on Reserve Ave (“Surfaces”) for less than fair market value. There was a long court case (Waldo represented the property owners) and the owner got paid fairly.
In the column above with Dr. Fullilove, I talk about the placing of a methadone clinic in black Roanoke. The black community was outraged. Their “point of reference” for “making sense” of this public policy decision was . . .Urban Renewal. The mistrust of Roanoke City and the RRHA – -now by both blacks and whites – -exists for real and valid reasons.
Gilmer School Project 