The Argument to Create Suburbs in 1909

[I-10east]

Hey Lake, by any chance do you know what year was that incinerator town down? My Mom left for New York in 67' (How I was born there) and the incinerator was still there. Thank you so much for posting that pic. I printed it and I will show my aunts and uncles (my Mom saw it) old memories on 5th Street.

[thelakelander]

But Zoning excluded whole areas by public law to one or another race.

We never instituted this kind of zoning.  Our planner came from MIT and worked in Boston before coming here to spread the evangelism of City Planning to the rest of the south.  His mentality was for public health.

I went back and read the link you posted on racial zoning, so I now see where you're coming from.  However, I'm one who believes in environmental racism, which falls outside of the narrow definition applied to "racial" in the link. Historically,  we've certainly implemented exclusionary zoning practices (such as minimum lot-size requirements and land-use segregation) and still do today. Call it race, environmental, exclusionary or whatever but you still end up with the same overall results.

A local example of this is the the minimum lot-size requirements in the Springfield Zoning Overlay.  The overlay requires lots of minimum of 75' in width to construct multifamily. Historically, the majority of residential lots in Springfield (including multifamily) are closer to 25'-50' in width.  That's a direct exclusionary practice with the intention to reduce the area's accessibility to those deemed socioeconomically or ethnically undesirable. I even remember coming to town and hearing people actually talk about the decreasing population density of the area like it was a good thing.

A historical example would be the zoning of heavy industry in minority neighborhoods as opposed to other areas.  In Mixontown, you had kids playing the streets where blood drained into McCoys Creek from slaughterhouses and poultry plants operating next door to residences. Then the air the residents are breathing is filled with ash from the city owned incinerator sitting in the neighborhood.  that's something neighborhoods like Riverside, Murray Hill, San Marco, Oretga, Venetia, etc. never had to worry about. Btw, Mr. MIT planner was in town when some of this stuff was taking place.

[thelakelander]

Hey Lake, by any chance do you know what year was that incinerator town down? My Mom left for New York in 67' (How I was born there) and the incinerator was still there. Thank you so much for posting that pic. I printed it and I will show my aunts and uncles (my Mom saw it) old memories on 5th Street.

I'm not sure but probably in the 1970s.  That incinerator closed in 1969.

[thelakelander]

I'm just saying many of our zoning practices, even in Simons day were race based in that they were implemented to separate groups of people from one another and overwhelming set up in a manner to where one environment for a group of people in town was completely a couple of steps below others.  Whether some scholar wants to attempt to separate "racial" zoning from "exclusionary" zoning doesn't mean that the same goals weren't achieved.  With that said, I do understand that the mindset of many were different during that era but it doesn't change the fact that a certain population received the short end of the stick.  From that perspective, Jacksonville was no different from the rest of the South.

[Lunican]

Here is a photo on Dearborn Street in Chicago in 1909, which may help in understanding the issues surrounding congestion and overcrowding being discussed at the National Conference on City Planning that very same year.

[Lunican]

Which of course gave rise to the 'L' and advertisements like this from 1926:

[thelakelander]

From the perspective of whether or not there was racism present in jville, I think you can even make a case for historic exceptionalism in the way that Jville dealt with the virulent racism of the times.

And I think that has a lot to do with the city being such a multiracial port town.  Its hard to be an overt asshole when half of the wealthy men you have to deal with are of a different color.

I suspect that the city has dealt with the race mixing through demolitions rather than through legal codes historically.

Historically, we did it through legal codes as well.  We weren't a trend setter or abnormality when it came to early 20th century race relations at the public level.  To get a sense of Jacksonville from a black perspective during the early 20th century, the writings of James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston are decent reads.

For example, in his autobiography Along This Way, James Weldon Johnson claimed the Great Fire of 1901 got out of hand because of the authority's racism at that time. Plus Hurston claims Jacksonville was the first place she encountered racism, which, in her words, "made me know that I was a little colored girl."
http://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/hurstonarchive/?p=communities

While we certainly had a very enlightened black community during this era, I'm not sure that crossed over into an enlightened local government picking up the cause. Like many in my family throughout the South, Johnson, Hurston and others eventually became a part of the Great Migration by heading north to take advantage of opportunities that were not available for blacks in smaller communities like Jax.

[thelakelander]

My point is that we did in the form of exclusionary zoning and we continue to do the same today.

But you don't disagree with the idea that Jacksonville has approached its racist policies mostly through neglect and demolition do you?

I'm not sure I can agree or disagree on this point, outside of what has happened in Jax has also happened in most cities across the country during the same general time periods. 

Well Jacksonville was also the first large city that Zora Neal Hurston visited.  It would have been the first place outside of the black townships that she would have been able to experience it.

I'm not sure. Tampa isn't that far from Eatonville and she also spent time living with another brother in Nashville. During that era, Tampa would have been slightly smaller and Nashville slightly larger than Jax.

[thelakelander]

Interesting numbers from the Great Migration. Percentage of African-Americans in Jacksonville by decade:

1900 - 57.1%

1910 - 50.8%

1920 - 45.3%

1930 - 37.2%

1940 - 35.7%

1950 - 35.4%

More Southern and Northern cities are included in the link. For the most part, most city's black population percentages have increased since the 1950s, directly corresponding to the growth of GI Bill fueled suburbs after WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)

[thelakelander]

It doesn't mean they never visited other Central Florida communities before 1904. For example, Sanford would have been large enough at the time for them to experience racism.  Anyway, the reason I posted the quote was to suggest that Jax was not an exception to the rule when it comes to southern cities and race. I don't think an effective case can be made for historic exceptionalism in the way that Jacksonville dealt with racism of the era.  Our enlightened African-Americans got out of here and headed north just as fast as they did any place else. That's a statistic that suggests opportunities for blacks in the region were limited.

[thelakelander]

Much of Jacksonville's 19th century African-American population was already here because of the railroads. Nevertheless, Randolph didn't really get involved with community organizing and the railroads until he had already left Jacksonville. By that time, educated blacks were already leaving Jax in droves and heading north.

Btw, another early Jacksonville great. Also more references to a city were African-Americans had little opportunity to succeed, while also enduring racism.

Randolph was born April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, the second son of the Rev. James William Randolph, a tailor and minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891 the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which had a thriving, well-established African-American community.

From his father, Randolph learned that color was less important than a person's character and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of education and of defending oneself physically against those who would seek to hurt one or one's family, if necessary. Randolph remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his father tucked a pistol under his coat and went off to prevent a mob from lynching a man at the local county jail.

Asa and his brother, James, were superior students. They attended the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, for years the only academic high school in Florida for African Americans. Public education was segregated. Asa excelled in literature, drama and public speaking; he also starred on the school's baseball team, sang solos with its choir and was valedictorian of the 1907 graduating class.

After graduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting and reading. Reading W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk convinced him that the fight for social equality was most important. Barred by discrimination from all but manual jobs in the South, Randolph moved to New York City in 1911, where he worked at odd jobs and took social sciences courses at City College.

Randolph's first experience with labor organization came in 1917, when he organized a union of elevator operators in New York City. In 1919 he became president of the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, a union which organised amongst African-American shipyard and dock workers in the Tidewater region of Virginia. The union dissolved in 1921, under pressure from the American Federation of Labor.

His greatest success came with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who elected him President in 1925. This was the first serious effort to form a labor institution for employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African Americans. The railroads had expanded dramatically in the early 20th century, and the jobs offered relatively good employment at a time of widespread racial discrimination. Because porters were not unionized, however, most Pullman porters were exploited and underpaid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Philip_Randolph

[thelakelander]

Randolph would have only been 18 around 1909, when this conference in the thread title was held.  I doubt he had many union connections established before moving to NYC in 1911. Also, there were two distinct migration periods of blacks from the South to the North.  This is reflected in the rapid population percentage increase of blacks in industrial Midwestern and Northern cities after the turn of the century.  Most of the moves were made because of the opportunity for jobs and to simply get out of the Jim Crow south. 

Many of my great uncles and aunts headed north during the migration because it offered a chance to do something different from manual labor and reduced the possibilities of getting lynched.  During the second migration after WWII, they tried to convince my dad to move up with them as well.  I suspect what was going on in Jax was not significantly different than the rest of the black south.  At this point, I'm not seeing how Jax was an exception to the rule.

[thelakelander]

I didn't post migration numbers after 1950 specifically because of consolidation. Nevertheless, the core principle here is that Jax was not an exception to the rest of the south with the issue of race. We were just as backward. No need to split threads. It's related to the conference of 1909.

[thelakelander]

If the point you are making is in response to my post about Jacksonville not having instituted race based zoning codes, then I think you would be wrong in saying that the city which did not institute them was as backwards as the cities that did.  Pretty much by definition. ;

There's two specific comments I'll agree to disagree with instead of continuing to go back and forth.  They are quoted below with my reasoning below them:

Here in Jax, we were literally the first Southern city to implement zoning, and city planning as well as the only city to implement a zoning plan that wasnt race based.

You don't get the 20th century development pattern we had without years of zoning with race as a major backdrop. Whether we want to call it specifically raced based zoning, exclusionary zoning or whatever is irrelevant because the same goals are achieved.

From the perspective of whether or not there was racism present in jville, I think you can even make a case for historic exceptionalism in the way that Jville dealt with the virulent racism of the times.

And I think that has a lot to do with the city being such a multiracial port town.  Its hard to be an overt asshole when half of the wealthy men you have to deal with are of a different color.

I suspect that the city has dealt with the race mixing through demolitions rather than through legal codes historically.

Nearly every major american city at the time was a port or railroad junction. How was Jax different from any of the other regional ports? Also, I haven't seen anything presented to suggest that we dealt with racism of the times with historic exceptionalism. 

However, we've both presented our cases and I'd like to move on to focusing on some other things, so I'll agree to disagree.

[thelakelander]

I've already shown examples of race based exclusionary zoning tactics applied in Jax over the years.  They can be found around page two of the thread.