The Destruction of a Community

The end of the Black Bottom/Paradise Valley area came slowly and gradually. The neighborhood was not destroyed in one fell swoop but was rather chipped away bit-by-bit as urban renewal programs made false promises to communities, highway construction work demolished neighborhoods and livelihoods, and racially-discriminatory practices in employment continued forcing folks to find opportunities elsewhere. Historian Jeremy Williams notes in his Rise and Fall of Black Bottom that while the destruction was preceded by the fallouts over the Sojourner Truth Housing Projects and the 1943 race riots, the “death knell” (2011, p. 70) came with urban renewal programs such as those created in the 1940s by the City Plan Commission.

In the end, what would become the Chrysler freeway rolled over an area once home to a thriving community. Examinations of city records by the Archives show that all parts of the neighborhood were destroyed by the mid-1970s. The destruction caused businesses to shut down and families to leave for other areas (e.g. the West Side) as their homes were demolished. What was once a refuge for Black Americans of the early 20th-century Great Migration itself became the starting point for even more migrations.