Black Economic Development Intentionally Sabotaged Throughout U.S. History

Its sad to say but I’ve had people suggest to me in conversation that Black people haven’t done much during our time in the country. Though some may recognize the effect that slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws and mass incarceration has had on African Americans ability to develop economically in this country; others surprisingly do not. Even so, I’d like to point out that Black economic development has been happening but has also been intentionally sabotaged again and again by racist individuals, organizations and institutions throughout American history. 

Gentrification is a widely discussed as topic in the United States, often under the guide of urban re-development. There are cases in every state where minority communities are pushed out of the areas where they’ve settled by higher rent prices and property taxes. Here in Seattle the historically Black University District was re-developed, pushing hundreds of Black people out of the communities they’d lived in for decades. Gentrification is a practice we’re fighting against because it disturbs our process of economic development. We’ve recognized the pattern that once we’ve built up our communities, we’re priced and pushed out of it. This is a practice that stems from former ways that whites violently pushed Blacks out of communities. 

Redevelopment Wipes Out Detroit’s Black Bottom

The history of Black Bottom is very close to my heart. Detroit is a place were many Black refugees, formally enslaved Africans suffering from racially charged violence in the South, would migrate to. These refugees included my own family, my grandmother’s parents were pastors whose church had been burned down by the KKK in retaliation to their strongly worded messages empowering the local Black community. Black Bottom was a neighborhood in Detroit that was thriving through the 1950s as more Blacks migrated into the area. The area was nationally recognized for its music scene with popular musicians from Detroit’s own Aretha Franklin to Duke Ellington performing in the area’s clubs and bars.

Black Bottom is where Reverend C. L. Franklin, Aretha’s Father, first opened his New Bethel Baptist Church on Hastings Street that had formally been the center of Eastern European Jewish settlement prior to World War I. With more Blacks concentrated in the area it was booming with Black owned businesses and night clubs. 

During the Great Depression, Black Botton suffered much more severely than other areas. Many of the Black wage earners that spent their money in the area were some of the first to lose their jobs. During WWII as spending continually declined, so did the physical structures in the area. In an effort to combat what city officials called, “Urban Blight” with their Urban Renewal program that was launched in the early 1960s. Like many programs that fail to consult the community being effected, the program was cloaked with language that seemed to help impoverished communities and communities of color but showed no evidence of doing so.

Mob’s Burn Down Tulsa’s Black Wall Street

Before the ‘redevelopment’ of Detroit’s Black Bottom, city officials were much more direct about forcing Blacks out of communities where they collected wealth and developed economically. The 100th anniversary of the destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street passed last year. Black Wall Street has been called the Wakanda before Wakanda, the place were Blacks came together looking and doing their best, covered in style with wealth and ownership. Greenwood Avenue was the epicenter of Black entrepreneurship in Oklahoma during the 20th century.

Black Wall street was a place were you could go grocery shopping, catch a movie, buy clothes, go dancing or eat at a nice resturant and support a Black business owner at every turn. Black men and women owned businesses close to their homes and could easily support their families. Black Wall Street was a place were the Black dollar could stay in the community longer, Blacks didn’t need to go outside of themselves and deal with the stresses of racism and discrimination in order to find what they needed. Blacks people were empowered by Black Wall Street, they built it for themselves and it thrived because of it.

Disturbingly, because of its success it was targeted by racists mobs and is now the sight of one of the bloodiest massacres in American history. The town was attacked, businesses were looted by thieves and buildings were literally burned down in a racially charged riot motivated by hate and jealousy. After the attack 300 African Americans lost their lives and 9,000 people lost their homes.

Massacre of Black Landowners

White violence towards Black economic development wasn’t limited to market centers in urban areas. Along with displacement of Blacks from the communities they built, the United States also has a history of more physical mass violence towards Black entrepreneurs. Some Blacks, like my own family in Atlanta, inherited land from the slaveowners that they’d labored under for free for their entire lives. Others had purchased their freedom and invested in purchasing their own land. Either way for those Blacks that were able to secure land for growing their own crops were heavily exploited by competing white landowners.

In response to the discrimination that Black landowners were facing native farmer, Robert Hill, established the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, a sharecroppers union to support Black farmers suffering from racism and discrimination negatively effecting their business. White elites economic prosperity in the area depended on the exploitation of the Black farmers by keeping them in constant debt. The union advocated for Black farmers having control over their own earnings. White elites often settled ever growing debts by seizing all of the Black landowner’s possessions, forcing them out of business. As Blacks began to unite against this practice and seek independence in the agricultural industry white elites sought to destroy the sharecroppers union.

The elites reported a death of a white land owner to the Sherif who assembled a large white militia that went after the Black sharecroppers and as a result 237 Black people who’d been seeking compensation for the crops they harvested were killed that day. No one was ever charged for the  Mass Lynching of 1919. These Black farmers were all land owning entrepreneurs whose wealth failed to transfer to the next generation because of the horrendous violence that occurred. For those that actually believe that Black people have little to show in wealth for our time here, they fail to recognize the hundreds of landowners that were killed as a result for advocating to be paid equally and treated fairly in business. 

White Wealth Depends on the Exploitation of Black People

Throughout history white Americans have been very intentional about disrupting Black cooperative development and destroying black owned businesses. The bases for all of these crimes against society was to reassert white supremacy and ‘put Blacks in their place’ who attempted to seek economic liberation for themselves. For those who continue to believe the false idea that Blacks have been lazy during our time in the United States, let this be evidence that we continually work hard to rebuild though we have yet to ever be compensated for the countless attempts at destroying our economic progress.  What if Blacks did this? or were destructive to this equivalent due to jealousy or rage. With all of the historical basis for feeling rage, we have that right.

In an attempt to right the wrongs that have been committed against Black economic development, the government should provide grants to Black people looking to buy property in areas close to their homes. We should be enabled to rebuild the communities that we were pushed out of. For as long as the government refuses to do so, they’ve failed at any attempt to repair the damage caused by institutional racism. No one should be defending the practice of gentrification, especially no one who is disgusted by the former ways that whites violently pushed Blacks out of communities, from mass lynchings to bombings and arson, gentrification is just the evolution of those violent practices. 

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