Hi.

I'm Mark Greer, executive director of the Akron Bicentennial.

And in partnership with PBS Western Reserve, we're pleased to present a forgotten history Forum series.

The Forgotten History forums will explore aspects of Akron's history that, while critical to our development, are not often discussed.

Throughout this yearlong series will highlight seminal points in our history, some undiscovered and others which still challenge us today.

Topics will include women trailblazers in Akron's history, the development of the New Akron History Anthology published by the University of Akron Press, Akron's Native American History, The History of Deaf Rubber Workers, The Impact of Urban Renewal, particularly on Akron's Black community, and the history of the African American Church, among others.

On behalf of the Akron Bicentennial, we hope you enjoy our Forgotten History Forum series.

But now let's get into tonight's forum, which is urban renewal beyond the Innerbelt.

And I want to introduce our panel this evening, starting with to my left, we have Dan Sarvis.

Dan is an urban planner by education and trade from the University of Cincinnati and by work with, real estate, primarily here in downtown Akron.

I have often referred to Dan as kind of an antique planner, which I kind of think is the best type of planner, but we'll talk more about that later.

Next we have Dr.

Hillary Nunn.

She is a professor of English at the University of Akron, and she has taught a number of project based classes that guided students in researching Akron's history.

Two of these UN classes have concentrated on tracing urban renewals impact on Akron's neighborhoods.

Next, we have, Mr.

Terrence Shelton, who is the Co-President of the Akron Rites of Passage Institute, which is an African centered process that guides individuals through various stages of their lives, realigning them to their purpose.

He's also the Co-Owner of Navigate Incorporated, which specializes in men's health, well-being, and grief and loss.

And last but not least, we have Dr.

Shanon Donnelly, who is a professor of Instruction in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Akron.

Shannon teaches a variety of courses on the application of mapping technologies, and the students in the courses often work with community partner organizations in and around Akron.

Please help us welcome our panelists this evening.

So urban renewal beyond the Innerbelt.

Why are we here to talk about this topic?

We wanted to kind of start off by the overall outlook of tonight's forum.

And as you know, here in Akron, we hear a lot about the Innerbelt Project.

And while we are going to talk about the Innerbelt Project, we're also going to focus primarily on the other instances of urban renewal projects.

And so when we look at urban renewal and the Innerbelt, much, much focus again, has been on the infrastructure there that is right adjacent to downtown.

And we've got some before and after pictures there for you.

But how many know that that was not Akron's first urban renewal project?

So we've got a timeline here that Dr.

Donnelly helped us with.

And we're going to pull this up.

And if you look there, you'll see on this calendar for action that, in fact, urban renewal projects started significantly before the Innerbelt.

And we're going to talk about a number of these, including in neighborhoods, right around the University of Akron and in Grant, Washington.

We're going to talk about Cascade, Opportunity Park.

And yes, again, we will talk about the Innerbelt as well.

So looking at this timeline, I want to start with you, Shanon, to kind of give us an overall perspective of how these urban renewal projects were laid out chronologically in Akron and how they kind of picked up steam.

And then, of course, we know that they certainly fizzled in terms of the Innerbelt, which was never completed.

- Yeah.

I think, I was just saying that I grew up in a household, a city planner as a father and when we started doing a class on this at the university last year, we were really focused on the Innerbelt.

So we're sort of going through and we see the word Innerbelt.

We really focus and start to look at that.

We came across this timeline and it really struck me of one, how many rows there are in this table.

Like there's a lot of different projects.

What really struck me, sitting in the basement of a building at the university, was that was the first project on the list.

And then the overlap of it wasn't just, let's do a project, okay?

Let's do another project.

And that was where sort of my background of being part of city planning in my life growing up.

But that's not what I do as a job.

Sort of brought that perspective on everyone, like, this is a story that, you know, rolls on itself.

It's not just these sort of discrete projects.

And so that really took my attention and I think Hillary's attention as well towards this, kind of the role of the university.

And that's led to some really interesting changes and understanding of, okay, the Innerbelt is this scar, this feature on the landscape that changed the city so much.

But that was not sort of the beginning of this, and it's certainly not the end of this.

And so just the notion of a timeline is this process that keeps on sort of rolling on top of itself.

This picture really brought that home for several of us, I think.

- Yeah, knowing that the university urban renewal project really kind of started it all here in Akron.

And as we're going through tonight's forum, we want to be cognizant of the fact that this was not a unique to Akron story.

Urban renewal happened in practically every city, around the country.

And we're going to, you know, hit on that and touch on that.

But of course, it's so easy to, you know, often think, well, this happened here, but it happened everywhere.

And so many universities had active urban renewal projects that, again, took neighborhoods, raised them, and the university areas were expanded.

But before we go on, we can't talk about urban renewal until we talk about redlining.

And so we've got a map here of the Akron redlining map in 1939.

And in 1939, something came out called the Homeowners Loan Corporation Neighborhood Guides.

The often referred to as redlining guides.

If you haven't read the Homeowner's Loan Corporation Akron Guide, I really encourage you to.

It's great bedside reading, by the way.

I've got my hard copy here.

But you'll see that these these neighborhoods were color coded and graded.

So, A, B, C, D. And we've taken out some of the descriptions that are in the Homeowners Loan Corporation guide.

A was, well planned sections not yet fully developed, and they were homogenous in demand as residential locations.

We'll see a little later that that word homogenous, you know, covered many different bases and then B, were completely developed and so on.

But as we get into grade C and D, the yellow and the red, we see that they were often described, or characterized by age obsolescence and the infiltration of a lower grade population.

Inadequate transportation and sufficient utilities, and then in D, we see that an undesirable populations or an infiltrations there of so-called slum district.

So the reason why this is so important is because we knew that this set the stage where these neighborhoods were systematically devalued, these areas were disinvested.

People couldn't get insurance, people couldn't get a home loan.

The banks were were heavily involved with this.

So let's look at this next map and again, our thanks to Shanon here who helped us with this.

You'll see that, we're going to be touching on a number of these neighborhoods.

You can see here we’ve got University Park, Grant Washington, here's University of Akron Project 1 and 2, and there's Cascade, we're going to get to as well.

We'll also touch on Opportunity Park.

And the next slide you can see the boundaries they’re of.

So, let’s talk a little bit about urban renewal.

Dan, I kind of wanted you to help us frame the context and a lot of the thinking, especially as you are how we call and un planner, how would you really characterize what urban renewal actually is?

- That's a big question.

That's why we have an hour to talk about it.

But urban renewal is basically a redevelopment program funded by the federal government that cities applied for federal funds to basically bring in bulldozers to what were considered neighborhoods that had disinvestment going on in them.

There are a lot of terms that were used.

We've all heard of the term blight.

Blight is a weapon, kind of what cities would do over the years was they would, allow disinvestment, I guess, is one way to say it.

And then after that, process had gone for some time, then declare an area blighted and then come through and, the nice word is raise.

A more appropriate word is tear down or destroy these neighborhoods with bulldozers and all in the name of progress.

So, you know, there were proponents and opponents of urban renewal, and proponents kind of surrounded government and opponents, kind of surrounded neighborhoods.

And what really was the case was neighborhoods changed dramatically from places where people owned homes and owned businesses to places that were leveled, and the people who owned those homes and businesses were given a one time check for the reduced value of their property based on this blight assessment.

So the check wasn't really enough to do anything productive in the sense of buying a new home to replace the one that was taken.

It was under market, it was undervalued.

And the neighborhoods that weren't being considered for urban renewal weren't redlined, if you will, were unaffordable to those folks who received the check from the government.

So they ended up becoming renters.

So they changed from property owners to tenants.

And the generational wealth that results the loss of wealth that results for families is catastrophic really when you analyze how families were impacted, either through the loss of small business or through the loss of home ownership and the opportunity to pass home ownership and businesses on to their children, that was taken away, that was gone, and the amount of money given was was insufficient to replace that.

And I mean, as we look back at the Home Owners Loan Corporation Guide and we will have parts of that guide interspersed in tonight's forum.

But one of the biggest components are at the end of these individual neighborhood guides.

They will say if it's in a nicer neighborhood graded A or B, property should be sold if it's sold at fair market value, and then you'll get to a neighborhood and, graded C or D and it will say, well, you know, property should be sold at any rate, any reasonable rate.

And it gets worse and worse depending on what quote unquote undesirable elements were there.

So when these neighborhoods in Akron, where these urban renewal projects happened, people were not being fairly compensated.

And when we talked about, you know, the overall mission, how urban renewal was branded was okay, we're going to raise these neighborhoods, but then people will be able to move into nice new neighborhoods.

They'll be able to move into nice suburban areas.

But Hillary and also Terrence, I want to ask you about this.

When people tried to and I think I want to start with you, Terrence, is that you actually experienced this firsthand.

So when the thought was that, okay, you'll just move into a better neighborhood, talk about some of the restrictions that were also in place that kept in particular African-Americans from moving into various neighborhoods.

- I know you talked a little bit about the redlining, but to me, there's also this culture of Akron's community that kind of, followed the country.

Yeah, you know, we're coming out of the 60s.

We're coming out of, you know, this whole climate of tension, right?

I remember my grandmother lived on Rhodes Avenue right there on Euclids.

So I have history from family there.

My grandmother, which is my mother's mother, lived on Rhodes Avenue.

My grandfather on my dad's side had a church on Douglas and Euclid.

When my mom finally moved out of the house on Rhodes Avenue, we stayed close to my grandmother, which is right on Euclid, too.

So we were kind of like, right up the street from her.

So the community was community number one because the lack of access to the outside of our community.

So the grocery stores and the restaurants and the beauty salons and the candy stores and all of that was convenient for a community.

It made community, community.

And so I could walk from, almost for like Diagonal Road and Perkins Pool, the swimming pool then all the way over to what we now call Channelwood.

All right, that's a good little stretch of the land as a child.

And I say as a child between, say, seven, ten years old with my cousins.

And all along that stretch of the walk, family knew me saying, hey, tell your mom hi, whatever.

So we never had issues with crime.

We never had issues with problems in terms of fighting or drugs and all this kind of stuff and so, it was a community.

So in the 70s, I left in the 70s to go away to college and came back to this concrete monstrosity.

It's just a continual nightmare for me personally.

I still live in the neighborhood.

I inherited the family house, but it is a trauma ride every day to come through a neighborhood that I remember so vividly to now seeing one that we're now reimagining, right?

And sometimes that reimagining is without even the trace of any history of anybody that might have been there.

Fortunately for me, I'm still alive, and I have memory, and there's still others, but they've all been moved out of the neighborhood.

I remember they came to my mom and I think they offered her and her sisters and brothers about 700, maybe $1,000 for the property of land, which is now where the Edgewood Homes is right now.

So, you know, this is a, this whole topic really is one that is inflammatory, to say the least.

But on the flip side of that, it makes hope really challenging, you know, for, you know, people who look like me, who come from that community and that neighborhood and see that it was systematically destroyed for whatever the reasons, that had nothing to do with making Akron great.

And so we look at making Akron great or the great American city.

It can't be a great American city when you still have marginalized people who have been disenfranchized and are still being disenfranchized, you know.

So I’ll stop there because there’s so much more to say that was out there.

- I think it's an overarching theme that's going to come back is, and you talked about the fact that it wasn't just that homes were torn down, but community.

- Yes.

- Was destroyed.

And yes, we know homes were raised, but businesses were raised.

Churches were raised.

- Absolutely.

- Schools were raised.

These were and are the building blocks of community.

And when everyone knew each other.

I think, you know, that's an overarching theme.

One of the slides that we had here.

And I'd like Hillary to talk about this.

I know that Hillary, you've done so much of this tangible work with your courses at the University of Akron the past several years and getting your students to do really, really valuable research in terms of here's what the neighborhood looked like around the university.

And I love on this site how you can see, of course, that's the ball field.

You can see where the soccer field is.

All of these yellow marks were houses.

The orange were, you can see apartments and just looking at this and over here we have the current roads.

And then the orange roads were the roads in 1958.

We talk about a number of people who were, who lived in these neighborhoods.

By the way, if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Akron at 200 The Akron History Anthology, there's my shameless plug.

But, Julia Perry, an African American composer.

We have a chapter about her.

She lived on the corner of Berg and Scott.

This was her community that is no longer there.

Can you really expand on this, Hillary?

- Well, this is a really interesting community in the first place, because when we first started researching it, we were looking for information about who lives there and we could find some names.

And we found the maps that showed that there were residences and some gas stations, but that didn't really tell us what we wanted to know.

Further research showed that it was really a very integrated neighborhood, which surprised us at first, because people would talk about it as being predominantly black.

But then we found that a number of 42% black put on there, which says something about how people perceive things, I think.

But yes, Julia Perry lived there.

This was one of the first areas where a university was going to be enabled by the, the urban renewal legislation to take this land.

And it was something that was enabled by a conference that was actually held at the University of Akron in the late 1950s.

The university was not one of the first, it was one of the first universities.

At times it seems really proud of being supposedly the first one, but we've not found that evidence.

We don't think that's really true.

But this neighborhood had people who were war veterans, who were pictured in the Beacon Journal on the day that that peace in Korea was announced.

There was one young black woman who was instrumental in setting up libraries for Korean veterans and libraries in Korea.

There were people who made their living teaching music, who were very instrumental in Julia’s success.

There were people who became very active in integrated groups, in Akron.

Bertha Moore is someone that I didn't know anything about until I started this.

And then I began to realize how central she was on Democratic women's committees.

And her son, Kermit Moore, became a cellist who is world renowned.

So all of these people began their sense of their lives in some cases, but had a sense of community here.

And little by little, they were moved out of here.

They did not have— They were offered prices for their houses.

It took many years for this to happen.

But yes, during that time, their land values were going down little by little by little.

One of the people who lived in this area actually filed a lawsuit to prevent the word blight from being used in the newspaper about this, because it would appear in the universities and the city's communication about this effort.

He did not win the lawsuit, but they did stop using the word.

So that was a victory in its own way.

But this kind of fight was not something that they could keep up.

- I think that's so interesting that, you know, that term blight, it really was the target word.

And if your neighborhood was considered blighted, then it was targeted for urban renewal whereas, as we can see though in so many of these neighborhoods that were graded C and D and so on.

That was planned.

So, so many of these areas, while they may have been described as blighted, the people who lived there didn't see them in that way.

When we look at the Homeowners Loan Corporation map, there are literally, at the tops of these neighborhoods, they'll always show the percentage of foreign born.

They'll ask for nationalities, and then they'll always say, and then what's the percentage of Negro?

And there are literally neighborhoods there, well, there's a half percent.

And some of my favorite commentaries are there as well.

Well, there's a half percent, but there's only three Negro families and these are quote unquote, the better type colored because they own their own homes.

And so when we look at these neighborhoods being targeted, looking at the university again.

So there's more of our before.

That was the target area and the after from 1961 to 68.

And we're seeing, seeing just... Going back to our timeline, you can see with these urban renewal projects.

And we're going to talk a little more about Grant Washington.

I find it interesting now that even a lot of people who have lived their whole lives in Akron, when we say Grant Washington, they're not quite sure what neighborhood you're referring to.

Just a quick scan in the audience.

How many of you are aware of the Grant Washington neighborhood in Akron?

Okay, so not a big number, right?

But, this was, you know, a major urban renewal project here.

If someone would like to speak more about that.

- I was just going to say the sort of the previous four slides, a story that was not obvious to me and this is, I'm the one that makes the maps.

That's the way I sort of see the world in a lot of ways.

The HOLC maps, so literally the red line is the same outline as those.

It's not like, oh, that's close.

That has something to do with it.

It was a map made in the 1930s by a U.S.

federal government division.

And it's the same roads like the... Yeah.

Any one of these maps has the same pattern.

They're a little hard to pick out in some places, but that sort of weird almost rectangular area is the universities R-30 project.

and the Grant Washington project has that sort of unique shape to it.

It's on every map like that carried through very directly.

And it was the language that's applied that represents this sort of concept, but it shows up in the pictures as well.

And so, we've got a lot of picture, a lot of maps of sort of aerial photos here that really show the same thing from different perspectives, but that's the same lines in all those maps.

And so, as the story of red lining has become more well known, I think, people think, oh, a map in 1930 that was maybe important.

Now it's literally Exchange Street.

Like, that is where that map has drawn that line and that's still defined so many things, in terms of processes and funding.

- I have to say to you that when I started doing research on the neighborhoods around the university, I researched Grant Washington without knowing I was researching Grant Washington, which I think is really interesting.

And there was a debate among the city planners at the time as to where to start.

Do you start with the university or start with Grant Washington, and the mayor at the time wanted to start with Grant Washington, but, the money I think, we're still trying to piece this together, but it seemed like the money was more easily accessible for working around the university.

But yes, it was a back and forth in the newspaper, a debate about where to begin and it just happened to turn out this way.

- Speaking of that debate of where these projects should take place, I think we have to also talk about the, the influence or lack thereof, that residents in these neighborhoods had in relation to where these projects actually took place.

For example, when they were looking to implement the new highway, initially they were looking at an area of Fairlawn to run a part of the highway through.

Well, the neighborhood there got galvanized and said, no, we don't want it coming through here.

And they had enough political and social influence to get that stopped.

But those same protests happened in these neighborhoods that were directly impacted, but they did not have that same influence.

And, knowing that, I think, I was talking to someone about urban renewal a few years back, and they actually asked me, well, didn't anyone think to complain at the time?

And I said, well, no, people definitely complained, but that didn't mean that everyone listened.

Right?

So looking at Grant Washington, we see some of the before and after pictures.

Here's the start of the urban renewal in 1963.

And then here's before and after from 63 to 67.

Here's 68.

You can probably make out some of the areas here, there.

But we look and see and going back to our our handy timeline here.

And by the way, as we're talking, get your questions ready.

It's going to be a very hot button Q&A.

And so we're looking how this lays out.

One of the things I also wanted to talk about I love the timeline, but the timeline doesn't mention some of the other predominant events and periods that were happening, like the civil rights movement.

Like civil unrest even here in Akron, the 1968 riots, which I contend was kind of the the death nail for the neighborhood and surrounding area.

We're talking about Wooster Avenue, now the Odom.

And one of the things I wanted us to talk about is the long term impact of these several urban renewal projects.

We know that, Terrence, I know you spoke about being able to, you know, have everything you needed right there in your neighborhood.

And so when we talk about a term that we know well and planning about revenue leakage, meaning you have to go outside of your neighborhood to shop for essentials.

This has a big effect, right?

On these neighborhoods, long term stability.

So I want to talk about how even though a lot of these urban renewal projects, they happened in the 60s, they happened in the 70s.

Can we and how and if so, how do we see the impact of them even now in 2025?

- So there's a lot that I can say about that.

One of the things I think about, you use the word a lot, weaponized.

I think that word blight and stuff, that's a weaponized word.

I think when I look at how the system of what happened, especially going from the 60s, right?

60s was hot in terms of civil rights and, you know, the tension between black and white and, you know, the struggle for freedom and independence and justice and equality, that was a real struggle that seemed like no one heard it but us, because it didn't impact anybody but us, right?

And so when I look at the long term benefits or long term damage that's created there, again, as I'm driving through the neighborhood and I'm looking at this concrete highway that goes to nowhere, and I remember the families that were there, and I remember the businesses that were there.

And I talked to the city about, you know, how do we repair this damage?

You know, we’re working on a project right now called, the Legacy Building Project, which kind of helps to repair some of the damage and harm that was created by all of this.

And as we look at the ideal of repairing harm, there's on one side of the mouth is that, yeah, we want to do something to repair harm.

We even got grants and funding from the federal government to actually repair of harm.

But then when you begin to move towards repair, you get so much pushback and resistance, and that whole idea of redlining comes right back up in your face, because the real support is not there.

It’s there verbally, but is not really there from the standpoint of allocating the dollars that way that were inequitably stolen from the community that should have gotten it, right?

So, this right here to me, there's got to be an honest, genuine, intentional, purposeful and planful way of really dealing with this harm.

And it can't be the harm that was done to those people.

It has to be the harm that was done to Akron and those people who live in Akron were got the blight of it or the blunt of it.

Right?

The harm is for Akron.

And when I talked to several mayors that I've, yeah, at least for the past three decades, it's like, you know, we got to be intentional about this thing.

You know, Akron is not going to move in any kind of way progressively until it repairs on.

It's almost like Ichabod, in my opinion, I told him that another Ichabod has written over Akron.

Ichabod in the Bible was the spirit of the Lord has departed.

And yeah, we can do some things that are fun, that are exciting, that seem to have an appearance of Akron moving.

But until that harm is repaired, is not going to move, it’s going to continue.

Our young people are going to continue to graduate from here and leave and not come back.

Right?

That was my desire.

Leave here and never, ever come back to Akron.

And the thing that got me here was one of my professors at school and he said that it’s people like you who are bright and smart, they leave your home and don't come back.

Don't go back and because you're the change they need.

You're the change they need, and our kids who are leaving are the change that we need, whether it's Black or White or Hispanic, whomever.

They're the ones that we need here.

So we got to make sure that we positioned this for tomorrow.

Otherwise we'll be just repeating what we, what we have here, which is horrible.

- And what Terrance is saying, I believe is critical.

What he's saying is it's not them, it's all of us.

You know, it's a we, not a they.

And when we address our future in this city and how we build community, how we rebuild community, we're repairing and creating a place where younger generations are going to feel excited to be.

You know, I, I look around the room and I see folks, you know, who's hair might be my color.

And I'm wondering, you know, this has not been that long ago.

This is the 60s, 70s, you know, it's our lifetime.

So this is us.

You know, this is not something that we aren't part of.

So I believe what Terrence is also saying is, let's figure out a way together to come up with solutions so that when we meet for Akron's 225th birthday, the story is told differently about what we've done in the last 25 years.

- I think when we look at, you know, generations later now, right?

And we're seeing the impact.

Whereas, we know, for example, homeownership is the still, since world War Two in this country, the dominant way of building generational wealth.

And we look at urban renewal projects, again, not just in Akron all across the country.

And the significant impact that that loss of homeownership, including even when we talk about rentals, if you research back the rental market in Akron, in the 40s and the 50s, then you'll also see inequities in the cost of rent and again, the lack of access to affordable housing.

I think that it's just amazing.

You talked about this, Dan, about this being during our lifetimes.

You know, I have an aunt who is 90 years old and she and my uncle, had to move three times during the whole urban renewal and the impact, I mean, she still feels that now.

She still talks about it.

So one of the areas I wanted us to, of course, touch on when we start looking at Cascade.

And we've got some great slides great slides here with the Cascade Project of course.

Here’s a little reminder for those of us who were, you know, perhaps not around then, 1950s, downtown Akron.

You can see there's Main Street and Howard.

And here's a little closer look.

And here's the before and after from 1959 on your left to 1965.

So there's Cascade.

Here's our our our great and sorely missed Flatiron Building on your left there, 1963.

Which was on the corner of Howard in Main.

- Which if you go back to the previous slide, you see that that building could have actually stayed.

- Yeah.

- I mean, how smart would that have been?

I mean, having a Flatiron Building in downtown was one of the biggest flexes for Akron and it is no more.

So from 63 to 67.

And again 63 to 67.

This was during the Superblock construction.

So I mean, you know, so much of this is told in pictures, but it resounds across decades.

And going back of course, to our timeline now, now this timeline starts to have even greater impact when we look at this and here's going back to our trusty, Homeowners Loan Corporation guide.

And you can see again, we reference this earlier, but you can see, here's our percentage of foreign families are nationalities in this respective neighborhood.

Here's the percentage of Negro.

And by the way, these guides, the systemic discrimination wasn't just, focused on African Americans.

When you go through this guide, you'll see, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Italians, Hungarians were also described very poorly.

And as the infiltration again of undesirable elements, I really can't stress the importance of seeing these things up close.

And going on, here's our Innerbelt area.

And we see that here.

Here's February to June in 1970.

Again this is after the Wooster Avenue riots.

But when we talk about the impact, how many of you know what Howard Street looked like then?

Okay.

How many of you know what Wooster Avenue looked like then?

Okay.

Do you know what Wooster Avenue, now the Odom, looks like now?

Not many businesses.

I think you can count, just in the section that's right adjacent to the Innerbelt, you can count about 4 or 5.

Used to be five, but now I believe, you know, one of the dollar stores is now closed.

But, there's about five on (unknown).

West Thornton is a lot less.

here's again— - It’s five if you're counting the schools and the Urban League.

- Five, if you're counting the school and the Urban League.

Right, right.

Exactly.

But again, here's the downtown before and during the Innerbelt construction.

You can see from left to right.

We referenced this last time, but you can see that here is, they'll actually say, heavily populated by.

And you can see these were literally on the books these guides.

All stores and, and, you know, this blatant... Blatant discrimination.

And I think it's important that we also note that this was not just done by the Feds coming in.

The people who were a part of these guides, you know, were quote unquote, you know, pillars of society here.

And these neighborhoods were graded and described with such terms.

We look at them now and that, you know, it, it kind of makes your skin crawl.

But, going back again and we're looking at Opportunity Park.

Here's on the left, you can see where the proposed new developments were.

And you can see that there was a newly proposed industrial park.

There's B. F. Goodrich, of course.

And then, between Bartges and Thornton was a proposed apartment community and then you can see a single family residential area.

But I want us to talk about with urban renewal, it was often put forth as, again, we're going to see better housing, we're going to see better neighborhoods, we’ll build better urban renewal.

But let's talk about the reality and when we see that public housing would be implemented.

But there was heavy segregation in public housing.

Even here in Akron, there were public housing developments that were restricted to white only and then colored only.

Can you talk more about the promise versus the result?

- Well, there was promise.

And that was the kind of thing that was picked up on and is evident in the materials that were sent out to homeowners who were about to have their houses taken over.

The city had some guidelines that they would just mail to people.

I can only imagine finding this in my mailbox.

“How I'm going to buy your house.” Right?

And they would walk through and interview people who had managed to buy a second house and they would be featured.

There's one picture I just love of a man who had lived on, I think Scott Street, who had moved to Ellet, and he has this nice little brick ranch house and a riding mower on the front lawn, just totally unnecessary because the lawn is really pretty small.

But he's very proud of his riding lawn mower.

And this is the thing that would arrive, for you to think about as you were having your house go through this process.

And yet that was not a thing that, as you're saying, could happen to most people who found themselves in these situations.

- Speaking of, if we look at this renewal is opportunity advert.

And one of my favorite sections there in paragraph two, it's a successful relocation means that every family moves into decent, safe and sanitary housing in conformity with all city housing and building codes in an area of their choice.

- That language is repeated over and over again.

- Absolutely.

And the part where it says an area of their choice, we know that we had racial restrictive covenants in place in Akron.

So that you couldn't move into the neighborhood of your choice.

Talk about that.

Talk about, you know, I mean, obviously we're going back to redlining but again, these restrictive covenants would really determine where someone could or could not live.

And it was not depending on their financial condition, our feasibility our eligibility to pay the mortgage it was, what color are you.

- I’ll take up the end, you guys weigh on this.

- I don't have expertise in the covenants themselves, but what has struck me through this was those covenants existed before the HOLC maps.

So they influence the actual writing of the HOLC maps.

And then that feeds back on itself of the HOLC maps.

I think the two areas we've been looking at here, universities and hospitals were grouped together in this.

And so the Federal Housing Act was revised in 1959, and there was a new addition to it of, okay, universities and hospitals can get urban renewal money and there doesn't have to be any residential put back that the language that used was waive the requirement for new residential.

And so the Federal Housing Act, like, it's a complete shift in language not practice.

But I think the restrictive covenants, you know, existed before it influence these things and it feeds back on itself such that they're all endogenous processes in this.

They're all influencing each other.

And then to bring in large, what they were calling public organizations like, universities and hospitals as sort of this other category.

And that happened in 1959.

And that’s what shows up on the timeline of like things changed and really, all the projects here in Akron kind of started at that point.

- And they were finally outlawed in 1968.

But again, we see, we see the impact thereof and how even after they're outlawed at the federal level, how these practices and trends and, and also the economic conditions continue to contribute to the perpetuation of those restricted areas.

I think that when we look at the maps here, here's again, the University Park area, 1967 to 69.

Here's the demolition.

You know, I'm always struck by the crowds that, you know, gathered to see that house come down.

And Opportunity Park there, and here's Opportunity Park in 1977.

Again, when we're talking about this, this long term impact.

I know, Terrence, you deal a lot now with trauma and grief and those who have gone through that.

Is there a way to, you know, surmise how how this continues to affect people like you who, I mean, you lived this firsthand.

- Well, so I think that part of the whole trauma piece is the fact that even though we see this and we are shown this, in forums like this, it falls back on black people to be the healers of it, to be the solutions of it, to be the, the ones who have to suck it up, so to speak, right?

Even though the language is right there, you know, been told, hey, is going to be a better situation for you if you move, but it was just a flat out lie.

And then when we present it in the community with facts and data and all that, and you hear that, oh yeah, we're going to, we're working on that or we're going to help them through that and it still doesn't happen.

I mean, I'll be 70 years old my next birthday, and we're still dealing with the same stuff.

And so it's not our problem to fix, right?

It's not our problem to fix, it’s Akron's problem to fix, and that we have to own it, right?

The people who did this don't look like me.

The people who were perpetuating of these crimes against humanity don't look like me.

Right?

And so somewhere, somehow, people have to say, this is enough, and we got to do something to fix this and repair this.

And so I'm at the point I’m tired of talking, right?

I'm tired of talking.

We have the money, you know, grant dollars come into this community all the time, you know.

And so if we're looking at genuinely repairing the harm that has taken place with this, in this community, then we have to be genuine about putting the dollars in.

And we got to be genuine about allowing the people who were harmed to be the leaders of the solution.

Right?

We may not have the money, but we know what needs to be done to fix it, right?

So we can't come to meetings that have these conversations and then, you know, you go behind back the doors and say, okay, this is what we're going to do, right?

We see this and we understand that game is just not an honest game and then the propaganda around the game continues to push the same narratives that people buy.

You know, and it's insulting to say the least.

It's really insulting to say the least, and to have good faith.

And so, you know, I need to hear from y'all.

I want to know what y’all think to make this right, how do you see what steps do you see?

How do you see participating in the solution.

Right?

Because it's not just a black solution.

That's the main thing I think I need to say at this point.

- So I think before we get into our Q&A and we've got a lot of great questions here, but we'll get to as many of them as we can.

Dan, I do want you to weigh in on... Just to kind of concisely point out for us, you know, is urban renewal just a thing of the past, or is it still happening?

- You know, the words change to protect the guilty, as they say, you know, in the old TV show to protect the innocent, but in this case, the guilty.

And the guilty is leadership that doesn't address the issues that Terrence is talking about.

Terrence and I were at a community meeting, about the end, about 2 or 3 months ago.

And it was the same song.

It was federal funds are going to be coming in over the course of 30 years to redo this stuff and we're all going to be sitting pretty in opportunity and things, you know, the words change, but the plans don't.

And until we address as a collective body the fact that we're looking at a problem through the same solutions, the results won't change.

So we have to address this as a community where we say, homeownership is important, not housing.

You know, words are important.

You got to really watch what words leaders or government is using.

When they say housing, they don't necessarily mean homeownership.

And when they don't mean homeownership, that means no family or generational wealth is offered.

Business.

You know, we had some slides on, North Howard Street, which no longer exists.

North Howard Street was one building after the other, after the other after the other of small, locally owned businesses.

And those businesses were wiped out.

And the wealth that came and the opportunity that came with those businesses was wiped out.

So watch out for words being misused.

You know, there's, they might not call it blight anymore, but they'll just say it's not worth saving.

You know, the the words change, the ideas don't.

You know, I, went to a meeting about the Firestone Headquarters, which is in the news right now, and city council voted 13 to 0 to tear that down.

Nobody saw any value in 1,000,000ft² of built space, concrete, walls, brick, foundations.

It's all there and the focus is not.

The idea is state tax dollars are going to come in and fund the tear down of that, you know, opportunity for redevelopment and it's going to be weeds.

You know, I'm a lifelong Akronite, I was born in Saint Thomas Hospital.

That's weeds.

You know, there's just... There's just no appetite at the city from the top down to address these problems like Terrence is saying.

He's right in saying, and he's tired of talking about it.

Let's get something done.

Let's do some things about this that include business ownership, home ownership in those plans.

We hope that you enjoyed this Forgotten History Forum and that you learned something new and exciting about Akron and the people who shaped it.

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