Embedded Files
Photograph: Arkansas Democrat, 1965.
The LR Housing Authority, an entity of the city, were willing participants on the expansion of Little Rock. City leaders were very familiar with future plans for Little Rock. It seems Little Rock leaders, representing the city government, and the newspapers, specifically the Arkansas Gazette, turned their attention to West Rock and areas like it when they became what author Mary Douglas termed “dirt.”
“…the old definition of dirt as matter out of place…it implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.”[1]
Mary Douglas, 1966
[1] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, (London:
What gave the Little Rock Housing Authority (LRHA) the authority to decide which neighborhoods, and more importantly, which residents were chosen to move? The answer rest in Arkansas Act 298 known as the “Housing Authority Act.”
ARKANSAS ACT 298:
ARKANSAS ACT 298:
THE CREATION OF THE HOUSING AUTHORITY IN LITTLE ROCK.
THE CREATION OF THE HOUSING AUTHORITY IN LITTLE ROCK.
The abstract for the 1937 legislative act stated it was an “Act authorizing the creation of Housing Authorities in Cities of the First Class and in Counties, defining their Powers and Duties, and authorizing Cities, Towns, Counties and other Public Bodies to aid and Cooperate in the Undertaking of Slum Clearance and Housing Projects.”[1] An analysis of the twenty-six page Act displays the systematic disparagement of the poor.[2] Observations such as “overcrowded and congested dwelling accommodations…cause an increase in and spread of disease and crime and constitute a menace to the health, safety, morals and welfare of the residents of the State and impair economic values;…”[3] While there maybe truth in the statement regarding the spread of disease, it is the words crime, menace, and morals that is problematic. In addition, who were the residents of the State that had their economic values impaired?
Sections 3 and 4 of Act 298 defined the actual terms used in the Act. They are startling in that they provide a clear view of the structural classism and unspoken racism the American government practiced then. The Act gave “the governing body [the authority to] take into consideration the degree of overcrowding, the percentage of land coverage, the light, air, space and access available to the inhabitants of such dwelling accommodations, the size and arrangement of the rooms, the sanitary facilities, and the extent to which conditions exist in such buildings…”[4]
Finally, perhaps the most powerful words in the Act were in Section 12: eminent domain.[5] This legal act of seizing property by a governmental entity is, at best, controversial in that the actual words “eminent domain” do not appear in the U.S. Constitution.
[1] Acts of Arkansas 1935-1937, “Act 298, Housing Authorities Act.” Microfiche reel MG01772 AHC, 1074-1099, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1074.
[2] “Poor” was often a code word for “Negro” during the Jim Crow era.
[3] Acts of Arkansas 1935-1937, “Act 298, Housing Authorities Act.” 1075.
[4] Ibid., 1079.
[5] Ibid., 1087.
EMINENT DOMAIN AND ARKANSAS ACT 289
EMINENT DOMAIN AND ARKANSAS ACT 289
The legal act of seizing property by a governmental entity is, at best, controversial in that the actual words “eminent domain” do not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The origin of the phrase is found in the last lines of the Fifth Amendment: “…or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” These words are referred to as the Takings Clause. It is clearly understood that private property can be taken away by the government with the understanding that the owner must be justly compensated. In addition, to fully understand the concept of eminent domain, the Fourteen Amendment must be understood. Section 1 of the amendment made “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” citizens and, therefore, made them subject to the law. It also guaranteed no “State [shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” In 1855, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) clarified the words, “due process of law,” were undoubtedly intended to convey the same meaning as the words, “by the law of the land,” in [the] Magna Carta.”[2] In essence, the laws of the government had great latitude, especially in the lives of people of color.
In 1897, SCOTUS, for the first time, tied the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company v. City of Chicago, found a “judgment of a state court, even if authorized by statute, whereby private property is taken for public use, without compensation made or secured to the owner, is, upon principle and authority, wanting in the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” In other words, SCOTUS affirmed that private property owners MUST be compensated if forced to move.
The Arkansas State Legislation directed “[a]n authority shall have the right to acquire by the exercise of the power of eminent domain any real property which it may deem necessary for its purposes under this Act after the adoption by it of a resolution declaring that the acquisition of the real property described therein is necessary for such purposes.”[3] These words gave the Little Rock Housing Authority the right to remove the residents of West Rock. It was legal and absolute as sanctioned by the federal, state, county, and city governments. The residents of West Rock were rendered powerless at this point.
[1] Ibid., 1087.
[2] Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land and Improvement Co., 59 U.S. 272 (1855), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/59/272/. Accessed October 15, 2019.
[3] Acts of Arkansas 1935-1937, “Act 298, Housing Authorities Act.” Microfiche reel MG01772 AHC, 1074-1099, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1087.
"Editorial Cartoon," Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, Arkansas, May 9, 1950.
The problems of slums in Little Rock was addressed by Ordinance No. 8163, passed by the City Council on December 19, 1949. This ordinance, under the banner of “urban renewal,” was, on its surface, a much-needed consideration of poor tenants’ health and welfare. However, when the documents are analyzed, it cannot be denied the need for better housing in Little Rock. However, the financial benefits of the land West Rock occupied could not be denied and city leaders did not hide this fact. Over and over, this is seen. The editors of the Arkansas Gazette wrote pointed out to readers that a “proposed development east of the airport would provide 24 to 30 blocks, which could be developed for industrial purposes.” According to Jack Pickens, chairman of a new entity entitled Industries Committee of the Chamber, no “private industry could afford to undertake so large a project alone. With aid of the Little Rock Housing Authority and its right to condemn the needed land, we may hope for development of an industrial area of the same type as that so magnificently laid out in Dallas.”[1]
[1] Mort Stern, “Chamber Directors Back New City Slum Clearance Program,” Arkansas Gazette, Thursday, May 4, 1950, Front page.
PUBLIC HOUSING IN CHICAGO
PUBLIC HOUSING IN CHICAGO
Cabrini-Green and a horror film that captured
Cabrini-Green and a horror film that captured
the fears of public housing
Chicago TribuneBen AustenAugust 16, 2018the fears of public housing
In the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” Helen, a white graduate student researching urban legends, is looking into the myth of a hook-handed apparition who appears when his name, Candyman, is uttered five times.
She ventures to the site where the supernatural slasher supposedly disemboweled a victim. Alone, of course, she enters a men’s public restroom at Cabrini-Green Homes, which in real life was Chicago’s most infamous public housing complex.
Decades before writer-director Bernard Rose’s horror flick arrived in theaters, public housing had come to represent the unruliness and otherness of U.S. cities. And Cabrini-Green stood as the symbol of every troubled housing project — a bogeyman that conjured fears of violence, poverty and racial antagonism.
Cabrini-Green was conceived as a model of civic redevelopment, and as a source for a more democratic form of urban living. It was built in stages on Chicago’s Near North Side beginning in the 1940s. Ultimately it contained 3,600 public housing units and more than 15,000 people.
Its reputation became complicated. Other public housing developments in the city were larger, poorer and had higher rates of crime. But in the extreme segregation of Chicago, Cabrini-Green, near the Gold Coast, remained that uncommon frontier where whites still crossed paths with poor blacks. The public housing building entered the popular imagination as the embodiment of the “inner city,” becoming the setting of the prime-time sitcom “Good Times,” of movies, urban crime novels, documentaries, rap songs and endless media coverage. There was a “Saturday Night Live” skit in the 1980s about a teenage single mother — her name was Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson.
By 1992, Chicago was home not only to three of the country’s 12 richest communities but also to 10 of the country’s 16 poorest census tracts, all of them including large public housing complexes.
More than 250,000 units of public housing have been demolished across the United States. The last Cabrini-Green tower came down in 2011. The clearing of these high-rises was touted as an effort to rescue families trapped in multigenerational poverty. “I want to rebuild their souls,” Mayor Richard M. Daley declared.
Mixed-income developments — blending market-rate and heavily subsidized households — replaced many of the same public housing buildings that were used to clear the slums of a half-century before, but by design only a small number of the old tenants were able to move into the new buildings.
With Section 8 housing vouchers, most former residents (along with their souls) ended up renting private housing in predominantly black and under-resourced sections of Chicago’s South and West sides. The demolitions didn’t do away with the poverty and isolation of public housing; these problems were moved elsewhere, becoming less visible and no longer literally owned by the state. Today, for the first time, the United States has a greater number of poor people living in suburbs than in cities.
In 2014, the Chicago Housing Authority opened up a lottery for people to get onto the waiting list for either a public housing unit or a voucher. Despite the stigma of dysfunction, danger and dilapidation, 1 in 4 of the city’s million households entered the lottery. The real horror of people going without adequate housing remains.
Cabrini-Green, 2006
Cabrini-Green, 2006
Cabrini-Green Public Housing Project, Chicago. 2006. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cabrini-Green_(8038096318).jpg
"Life in Chicago."
1982 Pulitzer Prize, Feature Photography, John White, Chicago Sun-Times
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