This investigation will be evaluating the origins of the ghetto and how the ghetto itself has helped to enforce racism within America. The rise of the ghetto has been associated predominantly within the black community, with origins from the late 1920’s. Evaluating the reasons for neighborhood segregation in the 1920’s is important because it shows an increased hostility towards blacks from whites, which further escalates at the beginning of the 1940’s. Looking at the time from the 1910-1920’s is important because it shows a spike in the correlation between increased racism and neighborhood egregation.
From 1910 to 1920 there was a large influx of African Americans beginning to move to Northern cities. As more blacks began to fill up Northern cities, discrimination increased. As World War I was in effect, blacks began to move North in search of factory jobs which were left behind by soldiers who were fighting overseas. As blacks came in the hundreds of thousands they faced an increased amount of discrimination in the North, due to the insecurities that arose from whites as blacks began to fill up employment opportunities.
With a higher status than blacks the white mmigrant population faced their own discrimination and chose to lash out at African Americans to gain status. This increased racial discrimination correlates with statistical data in the rise of segregational housing. The percent of segregated housing in the North rose to 58. 5% and 38. 3% in the South during 1920. Now blacks desired to stay in “one-race neighborhoods”. The comfort and protection that came from staying in “one-race neighborhoods” gave rise to the idea of the ghetto.
By the Great Depression the average African American lived in a neighborhood where over 75% of the population was of the ame race. The Great Depression also helped to create a better divide in the housing between blacks and whites. At the federal, state, and local segregation through housing development was prevalent. To see an example of the correlation between racism and the rise of the African American ghettos this investigation will look into the New Deal’s policy on public housing.
Public Housing was created with specific racial barriers in which housing works were to be used to house only people of the same race. Another way in which the New Deal ostracized African Americans was through Federal Housing Administration Loans. The Federal Housing Administration was founded in 1934, and created a legally accepted way to separate whites and blacks by neighborhoods. FHA loans gave builders loans at low interest rates for banks on the condition that no homes would be sold out to African Americans. Subdivisions and suburbs were now being built with the priority placed on whites.
Blacks were pushed to the inner cities as white-flight increased. The idea of racial segregation in the neighborhoods, especially in the North was favored as a way to keep white purity. Aside from FHA loans restrictive covenants also made it possible to hold ack African Americans into a certain community. Restrictive covenants came about as early as 1910. Baltimore, Maryland was the first city to adopt restrictive ordinances in the country. These restrictive ordinances gave landowners restrictions on who they could sell their property to.
When in 1917 these ordinances were found as unconstitutional they were not unconstitutional because they restricted black movement, but because it limited the white property owners ability to make a profit through more diverse transactions. The housing development in Baltimore is specifically significant because it ighlights how even though at the Federal level restrictive covenants were not seen as constitutional at a local level de jure segregation was still prevalent. The mayor of Baltimore went around the federal rulings to create a Committee of Segregation that indirectly enforced the restrictive covenants.
In a quote from the Baltimore Mayor, J. Barry Mahool in 1910, stated, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance to prevent the spread of communicable disease into nearby white neighborhoods and to protect property values among the white majority. The quote from Mayor Mahool highlights a perspective in support of the segregation of white in blacks that seeks to further purify and keep the white race superior over to African American at the time.
What makes Baltimore unique is, as a northern city it debunks the misconception that Northern states were not nearly as racist as Southern states, but that there was in fact racial tension emanating from the white community over the increased black population. As World War II began and black migration increased in the North the pattern of restrictive covenants rose. In the case of Baltimore, Maryland in the 1930’s he black population comprised twenty percent of the population but only occupied two percent of the land.
With blacks centered in one particularly area it became the habit of study to see the gradual of neighborhood deterioration, lower home values, and overcrowding. Other important northern cities include Chicago and Harlem which are particularly important to look at because they both show an increase in majority black neighborhoods. By the 1940’s 86% of the segregated black population could be found in Chicago and in 70% of blacks in New York were subject to neighborhoods of Harlem. The remise of the ghetto was rapidly becoming clear by the 1940’s.
Separation in itself was due to an outside hatred of a particular group and organizations which would enforce said separation. By the early 1940’s more and more scholarly writing began to introduce the term ghetto in their research of black society. It can be argued that government officials and policies had a greater significance in the adaptation of black ghettos. The Federal Housing Administration, created one of the earliest, and arguably most significant policy of legalized racism: the civilian public housing program which instituted segregation back into ntegrated neighborhoods.
These housing policies themselves began to take on a greater significance by the late 1940’s and onward. In 1947 Wallace Stegner attempted to build houses through a cooperative. It allowed three African-Americans to become members of the cooperative showing an attempt to integrate housing opportunities. The cooperative did not however succeed because the FHA refused to insure or provide construction help to any of the members, because there were three black members. Even as some whites began to take a stance against de facto segregation, de jure segregation still set n place “legal” methods to keep blacks inferior to whites.
The government furthered the segregation of housing through business zoning laws. African American neighborhoods were specifically zoned for industrial plants and waste disposal sites causing these areas to become deplorable. The government offered no relief, allowing black neighborhoods that once thrived to become slums. These areas hurt by racist government policy could not regain the immense equity that was lost, and as a result ghettos are still set in place today and black wealth is within 5 percent of their white counterparts.
In conclusion there was a significance between the adaptation of the ghetto and worsening racial relations in America. Projects such as the New Deal and local restrictive covenants allowed for blacks to be isolated in order to protect the interests of the white homeowner. Officials with power had an openly racist view in America which created lasting effects on black neighborhoods. The idea of the ghetto is directly proportional to the desperation for homogeneity and the steady social deterioration African Americans in society from the beginning of their Great Migration in 1910.
