Primary Source Set

Urban Development and Renewal

Beginning in 1949, the federal government provided funds for cities across the United States to seize and demolish buildings in “blighted” areas with the intention of inviting in new industries and improved housing. Neighborhoods with a high percentage of Black residents, many of whom were displaced by redevelopment efforts, were disproportionately targeted by urban renewal. This set uses photographs, maps, pamphlets, scrapbooks, newspaper articles, and government records to depict the impact of urban renewal on communities throughout North Carolina, with a focus on two neighborhoods in Durham and Raleigh.

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Time Period

1954-1974

Grade Level

Undergraduate

Transcript

What is Urban Renewal? Today many citizens live and work through necessity–not choice–in slum and blighted areas in Durham. In these areas crime, delinquency, health, moral and physical hazards abound. Tax dollars are spent here in far greater amounts than tax revenues received. These areas discourage and repel new development and like human cancer, they spread unnoticed to healthy areas of the city. Urban Renewal is a name for an effort to overcome this problem. It attempts to put new life into decayed areas and to prevent good areas from starting to decay. It does this in three ways: –through the use of code enforcement and public improvements in order to prevent good areas from becoming blighted. –through the removal of spots of blight and the rehabilitation of structures in areas that can be saved. –through the clearance and redevelopment of slum areas that cannot be saved. By entering into such an effort, Durham joins an ever-growing group of American cities turning slums and blighted areas into sources of civic pride, replacing economic liabilities with economic resources. As a citizen with an interest in your city, it is important that you be kept informed of Durham’s Urban Renewal effort.

Durham Urban Renewal Brochures and Booklets

This booklet is one of several pamphlets distributed to Durham citizens during redevelopment in the city. Its contents include a definition and explanation of urban renewal, a map of the Hayti area that outlines when and where renewal projects would take place, and a Q&A section for residents. Additionally, the booklet contains a map that depicts how Hayti might look in the future, after renewal. Areas that were to be impacted by urban renewal are described negatively, with one page comparing the “blighted” neighborhoods to cancer.

Contributed to DigitalNC by Durham County Library

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Durham, N.C. (Durham County)

Urban Development and Renewal

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Background

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the term “urban renewal” was used to describe the redevelopment efforts passed into law by the Housing Act of 1949. The Act spawned a federal program that funded the seizure and demolition of “blighted” or “slum” neighborhoods for redevelopment purposes. Although the intended goal of urban renewal was to build better housing and revitalize urban areas, redevelopment efforts disproportionately targeted predominantly Black neighborhoods. In North Carolina, Black communities in cities like Durham and Raleigh were displaced from their homes in the name of urban renewal, though many of the redevelopment promises made to those communities never arrived.

Urban renewal came to Durham’s Hayti neighborhood in the early 1960s, when the commission that oversaw the city’s redevelopment began to map the area, evaluating elements like the structural condition of buildings and creating plans for future land use. The Durham Redevelopment Commission also conducted appraisals on properties in Hayti to estimate their value. As the project progressed, the Commission distributed pamphlets that explained urban renewal as a way to revitalize “blighted” areas, promising that better infrastructure and new housing would come to Hayti. Initially, many of Durham’s Black citizens supported urban renewal, as they believed that the federal funds would be used to benefit their communities. City officials, eager to use those federal funds with little oversight, also approved of urban renewal. With the construction of the Durham Freeway (NC-147) included in redevelopment plans, white business owners who hoped that the freeway would relieve traffic congestion were also supportive of renewal efforts. 

Urban renewal forced citizens to leave their residences. Although the Durham Redevelopment Commission provided compensation to Hayti homeowners before they seized and demolished their houses, many residents felt that the prices they received were unfair. Residents who were displaced from rental housing experienced similar frustrations about the lack of new low-income apartments in Hayti, which the Durham Redevelopment Commission had said they would build. Low-income housing and other redevelopment promises made by the Commission never materialized, even many years after urban renewal began. Similar events transpired in Raleigh, where redevelopment displaced residents of a predominantly Black neighborhood called Fourth Ward (also referred to as Southside).

While the Housing Act allowed redevelopment to occur across the United States and in North Carolina, this primary source set places its main focus on the areas of Hayti and Fourth Ward to illustrate how urban renewal impacted primarily Black neighborhoods, causing people to lose their homes, businesses, and communities for little in return. 

Discussion Questions

  1. While the existing land use map depicts Raleigh’s Fourth Ward neighborhood before urban renewal, the preliminary site plan map shows a proposal for land use after redevelopment. Compare the two maps, making sure to notice how the types of land (residential, commercial, industrial) change from one to the other. What changed? What do the changes indicate about what the Durham Redevelopment Commission valued?

  2. What did urban renewal attempt to accomplish? What did it actually accomplish in neighborhoods like Hayti and Fourth Ward? Do the goals and outcomes of urban renewal conflict with each other?

  3. Consider this article from The Carolinian, in which residents of the Fourth Ward neighborhood express their opinions on urban renewal potentially occurring in the area. What are their perspectives on renewal? What may have caused residents to be supportive of or concerned by urban renewal? Do you think the opinions of some residents changed after redevelopment occurred in Fourth Ward, and if so, why?

  4. Review this booklet distributed by the Durham Redevelopment Commission. How does the booklet describe and portray urban renewal? How does it differ from the portrayal in other sources, like the one in this The Carolina Times article?

  5. The Asheboro Finer Carolina scrapbook features before and after photos of many old buildings that were demolished as part of the community improvement contest. The scrapbook refers to the effort as “beautifying.” How does the scrapbook describe the buildings that were destroyed? In what ways does Finer Carolina relate to urban renewal?

  6. In this The Carolinian article, the director of Raleigh’s United Poor People’s Organization refers to urban renewal as a removal: “The whole project should be geared to rehabilitation rather than removal.” In contrast, this The Jones County Journal article claims that “nobody’s property is ‘stolen, seized, or confiscated’” during urban renewal. Why do the two articles hold such different views on urban renewal? What does each perspective indicate about that era’s attitude on the well-being of communities, particularly Black communities?

  7. Several sources in this set use terms like “blighted,” “decayed,” and “slum” to describe areas that were set to undergo urban renewal. This booklet states that such places were a “cancer.” Considering that redevelopment mostly occurred in low-income Black neighborhoods, what do these negative descriptions reveal about the people that supported urban renewal? What do the descriptions indicate about urban renewal as a program?

  8. Take a look at aerial photographs of Hayti here. How did the area change from the 1950 photo to the one from 1972? Considering the aerial photos and the sources on Hayti in this set, how do you imagine the impact of urban renewal is still felt today? 

This primary source set was compiled by Isabella Walker.

Updated January 2025