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 The people of Kinston may quite easily be mixed up on the specific question of What Urban Renewal really is. Although we do not pretend to be an expert on this matter we believe we have been exposed to enough facts about urban renewal to attempt to answer this question. Urban Renewal is first a program intended to arrest and prevent residential and commercial blight. Blight is the gradual decay of property values and living conditions in a given area caused by either refusal or inability of property owners to standardize or keep in reasonable repair their properties in such areas. In an urban renewal program in cities of less than 50,000 population the cost of projects is split three-fourths federal government, one-fourth city government, with whatever improvements in utilities, streets and sewers the city may install counting as payments “in kind” rather than in cash. What does a project cost?: 1. The price of the land, 2. the cost of clearing the land, 3. the administrative cost of supervising the purchase, clearing and sale. How is the land purchased?: By direct negotiation between the owner and the urban renewal officials. If the private owner refuses to negotiate, then the property may be acquired through the established procedures of eminent domain. Who fixes the price in an eminent domain procedure? A jury of men and women in the superior court of whatever county the action may be entered. Naturally, for Kinston it would be a jury in Lenoir County Superior Court that would fix the price. What happens after the land is acquired? Its re-use is determined by the renewal commission with the approval of the City Council. By re-use the commission determines which areas would be most suitable for residential, commercial or industrial purposes. After the re-use determination is made the property is cleared and sold at public auction, and the only restrictions are similar to zoning regulations. These restrictions differ from zoning in only one particular: In zoning one may buy a commercial or industrially zoned lot and build a home on it. But in a renewal area one may construct only those type buildings in it that are specifically indicated for it in the re-use plan. In short, if you buy a renewal tract designated for industrial use, you can use it only for industrial purposes. If the re-use plan of an area determines that an area is to be allocated for residential purposes no standard residential buildings in that area would be acquired. If the re-use plan determines that an area is to be allocated to commercial usage no standard type commercial property in the area would be acquired and the same pattern follows for industrial. In an urban renewal project nobody’s property is “taken, seized or confiscated.” It is purchased at a price generally much more than fair to the property owner, and when a negotiated purchase is impossible the full protection of the courts is available to every property owner. It is the identical system used to acquire lands for road building and everyother [sic] kind of public project. How much control does the federal government have over the project? After a project has been accepted as economically practical and sound from a planning viewpoint federal controls end. There are no federal controls on the sale of the land.

"What is Urban Renewal," The Jones County Journal

This article from The Jones County Journal, aimed at residents of the town of Kinston, attempts to explain and clarify urban renewal. Using a Q&A format, the article answers questions like “what does a project cost?” and “what happens after the land is acquired?” The article also claims that urban renewal does not cause the seizure of land, and that redevelopment commissions buy houses at prices “much more than fair to the property owner.”

Contributed to DigitalNC by Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library, Neuse Regional Library

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Trenton, N.C. (Jones County, Lenoir 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