Reverse ‘white flight’ rebuilding old neighborhoods
- By F. Donnie Forde
Macdonough Street in central Brooklyn, New York City, is not a very long street by measurement of distance, and even less so by retention of memory. It begins at New York Avenue, at a perpendicular intersection, and travels eastward to Broadway, where it limps to a halt as if too tired to continue. All told it covers 14 blocks. The homes along its last stretch do not reveal anything particularly noteworthy about the street’s early occupants, other than they were ordinary folks who apparently had achieved a modest level of financial success. Unlike some of the other neighboring streets where many of the houses have been demolished (or are being demolished) for new constructions—mostly boutique condominiums with genre appeal to the “now” generation—these are scaled down brownstones, though neatly kept. This contrasts with those building to the west of Reid, larger four-story brownstones, which even today show signs of their fabled opulence if one cares to look hard enough.
Reid, which was second only to Fulton as the principal commercial artery of Stuyvesant Heights only vaguely resembles its former self. It begins at Fulton and ends at Broadway in a diagonal embrace. Those west of it hopes it would go away, and those east wished it never was. Along its dozen or so blocks there are stark mementos of too many urban battles, too many failed dreams; too little hope, too few successes, each with their own sad story. At the senior citizens’ housing at Gates Avenue intersection, the old men—warriors of the civil rights war—sit around in wheel chairs, and with animated gestures fight yesteryear’s battles in fanciful recreations. And in those fleeting moments of sober reflections wondered what they had really gained. But those at Jane United Method Church, a block away, have not given up, and pray that the neighborhood will once again arises from its ashes, like a consecrated phoenix, expelling the demons of its past. Hope springs eternal.
On Stuyvesant Avenue, the street that lends its name to the community, the last custom-built brownstones of the retreating century still flaunt their stately elegance. Once the residences of the very rich—white and pedigreed—now they are the homes of the not-so-rich—black and striving. Yet they have managed to maintain much of their exterior splendor—thanks in part to the Landmark Preservation Commission citing them as historical assets. This decision has been the magnet that draws the young and enterprising whites to the community.
South of Macdonough is Bainbridge Street, followed by Chauncey. Little is ever said about Bainbridge, which is precisely the opposite of Chauncey. Any conversation that begins on this block invariably leads to a declaration of it being the birthplace of both Lena Horne and Jackie Gleason, though the male comic always plays second fiddle to the female singer. Given the circumstances of the time it is highly unlikely that either of these legendary figures ever met as neighborhood cohorts, or was even aware of the other. But it matters not at all to the legions of Horne’s admirers. To Doris Ramza, who lived on Stuyvesant as a teenager during the 40s and 50s, Lena Horne was special.
“She was our brightest light in a world darkened by despair,” said Ramza. Many remembered fondly Horne’s role in the movie Stormy Weather singing the titled song. Then, she provided a convenient exit out of their hash reality into a fairyland fantasy that allowed them to cope. But the mere fact Horne could have lived on Chauncey without being harassed by whites during this period, would have suggested a harbinger of change—even if seen through a colored tinted lens that allocated preference to a certain shade.
Jane Atwell Meyers, an African-American woman, lives on Macdonough, off of Lewis Avenue, in a Tudor-style townhouse where she has resided since childhood. A pleasant octogenarian who radiates grace and good bearing in her demeanor, Meyers remembers her father’s ongoing complaint of being stopped and quizzed by the beat cop as to what he was doing in the neighborhood. It wasn’t that the police were being particularly malicious; they were just reacting to customs. And the blacks exiting the metro on Fulton Street almost always turn right, which takes them to their homes in the Fulton-Atlantic corridor—never outside of it.
By 1930, the entire length of the corridor, which ran from downtown Brooklyn all the way up to Stuyvesant Heights, and beyond, was predominantly occupied by blacks, who were left to themselves as long as they remained in their assigned boundary, and in “their place.” Their residency in the corridor was not a matter of choice, but necessity, in that it was one of the very few places where blacks could readily purchase homes. A bustling commercial strip for many years, the neighborhood’s vibrancy would be interrupted with the building of the IND overhead rail, which ran paralleled to the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) just two blocks apart. The cacophony of grating steel, noisy horns and conductors’ screams became too unbearable for the white residents living there, who hastily sold their houses at exorbitant prices to eager blacks as they fled the area.
The LIRR, which terminates at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn, even added a stop at Nostrand Avenue, which some have suspected was solely for the purposing of transporting black domestics to the suburbs to work in the homes of wealthy whites. And indeed there were usually several ad hoc employment agencies right beneath the tracks especially for this purpose. Every morning prospective workers would gather to be inspected by the white agents for employment as domestics. But little did they suspect then that the domestics also had a plan.
Paule Marshall, the Caribbean novelist would describe it in a New York Times article. “For the West Indians of Brooklyn, the section of Brooklyn where I was born represented a step up from Red Hook, and no sooner had they arrived ‘uptown’ they began eyeing the nearby white, middle class neighborhoods of Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights, with their neat tree-lined streets and high stoop brownstones. They stood poised and waiting, working two and three jobs at a time; they scrimped and saved their few ‘raw-mout’ pennies; they borrowed from loan sharks when the banks refused them credit because they were black—and they bought houses.” (NYT magazine 11/3/85).
Perhaps recognizing the historical value of the neighborhood, or because of some other hidden motive, landmark designation was also extended to several of the blocks further west, but taking in only a few blocks north, which explains why the decay and the deterioration found along Stuyvesant and the parallel streets is not evident of the homes nearer to Fulton Street, even though they, too, were occupied by blacks after the white had taken flight. This abandonment by whites began as early as the 1920s when blacks began deserting an over-saturated Harlem for residence in the Brooklyn, stirring white concerns. Fearful that what happened to Harlem—with whites being driven from that community—could be replicated in Brooklyn, the white members of Bedford-Stuyvesant began seeking measures to combat the problem. Given their financial sacrifices, not to mention the emotional investment in their homes, these concerns were neither unwarranted nor unreasonable.
Not surprisingly, the anxieties they spawned gave rise to a number of block associations, whose sole purpose was to stymie any initiative by blacks to buy homes in white neighborhoods, north or south of the Fulton-Atlantic corridor. The largest and most influential of these organizations was the Gates Avenue Block Association. But nothing done by it, or the other associations, could stem the influx of blacks into the community. In a last ditch maneuver, the association would draw a line in the sand at Gates Avenue, but to no avail.
By 1929, the whites of the community had become so concerned over the racial development that they recruited a young preacher of Southern heritage, and an impeccable war record, named William Blackshear, to deal with the problem. Blackshear decided to tackle the matter head-on, and on September 15, just six months after his installation as rector of St. Matthews Episcopal Church, he would announce from the pulpit that from that day onwards blacks would no longer be allowed as members, nor welcome as communicants, in his church.
But far from solving the problem, his bold announcement would only make matters worse. For many years, St. Matthews had been the bastion of the well-heeled white Protestants. It was situated on the north corner of Macdonough where it intersects Tompkins Avenue, a mere stone throw away from Fulton Street. But at the time of its construction in the 1800s, the black procession had not gotten up to Nostrand, which was the main thoroughfare nearest to the church. The historian, Harold X. Connolly, would credit the Blackshear incident with being the birth of Bedford- Stuyvesant as a black community.
Other historians disagree and argue that the community might have been spared its trauma were it not for the Great Depression, which followed Blackshear’s action exactly one month later. This allowed many blacks to purchase homes in the white neighborhoods that had been foreclosed by the banks. But all this, of course, is pure speculation. The only fact that matters is that by 1950, Bedford-Stuyvesant had become virtually a black community, with consequences that were dire for its continued progress.
Almost overnight all the harbingers of social decay would multiply many times over. Belatedly recognizing the problem, New York City as a whole would undertake a massive program of slums clearance, replacing the demolished homes with federal-funded housing complexes, with the idea of keeping the poor—mostly Irish—whites present.
But just when it looked like the plan would work, along came the civil rights movement, which would deposit great hordes of impoverished blacks into New York City, courtesy of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, and his southern colleagues, who openly encouraged the migration by paying the passages of those from their state wishing to resettle in the north. A professed segregationist, Wallace’s action was solely vindictive, seeing it as a way to stir tension between whites and blacks, already at a peak, in many of the great northeastern cities.
If nothing else, this created a boom in social engineering as everything imaginable was tried, few with any significant or lasting impact. Eventually it dawned upon city planners that the solution would have to wait upon a change in generation. Ten years ago, the solution announced its arrival. Nurtured from the very earliest stages on tolerance and moderation, the area was only too eager to put these new ideas into practice—which brings us to where we presently are.
“Perception! Perception! Perception!” bellowed the white lecturer with a discernible foreign accent as he tried to hammer home a point at a summer seminar at New York University. Twenty-three later, we would be treated to a real-life manifestation of his lecture with the ascendance of Barack Obama, a black, to the U.S. presidency. Tolerance and moderation has gotten us there. That is not to say, however, that whites perceive blacks as being anything other than black, but they have learned to disengaged their visual perception—a fact—from its correlation of a personal threat—an emotion—in relating to people of color. In their journey through life their tolerance would be tested and their resolve challenged at almost every turn, and they would be called upon to stay the course. On a stoop deep in the heart of what until very recently was a crime infested black neighborhood, two white, twentyish males sat chatting one Saturday morning. One lives in the house, the other across the street; one has a kid, the other—not yet. Was there any concerned in moving to the neighborhood? None whatsoever, they assured me. But their action is not as thoughtless as it first seemed. Walk down the street and you would quickly understand why. The spoken English emanating from the houses is cruel as idiom but absence of malice. The homeowners are the last of the great West Indian wave.
Two blocks up from where the two whites live is a small community park. Some 35 years ago, I was on the way home from my brother’s house when I was jumped by four black youths, who put me through my first experience of a mugging. Luckily for me a police car entered the intersection at that critical moment. One of the officers would later explain to me that the muggers use the park to case their intended victims. Now young mothers use it to stroll their toddlers. It was the first time since that eventful night that I returned to the scene. I’am too, a black was is being put to the test of tolerance.
As I walked around the neighborhood –a neighborhood I once knew very well having first lived there some 50 years ago, I was astonished by the changes—the whites have returned (or are returning). Gone are the abandoned buildings and the gaping holes that cruelly punctuated every block. Gone too are the vandalized cars along the curbs, litter strewn-sidewalks, ubiquitous liquor stores and their alcohol stupor patrons loitering aimlessly. Coming into vogue are the sidewalk diners, internet cafes and Starbuck chat rooms; and even the adoption by the local wannabes of the irritating habit of the parvenus walking behind dogs scooping up dodo and greeting them with kisses on their mouth. But these are peccadilloes that can be easily overlooked in light of the other happenings. The great development is that after the absence of so many years, the whites are once again finding Bedford- Stuyvesant a suitable place to live and rear their children, and that could only be good news for the community.