The Federal Housing Act of 1949, which was in effect from 1949 through 1973, authorized cities to use the power of eminent domain to clear “blighted neighborhoods” for “higher use.” According to an excellent paper published by the Institute for Justice, “Eminent Domain and African Americans,” written by Mindy Thomson Fillilove, in 24 years, 2,532 projects were carried out in 992 cities that displaced one million people, two-thirds of them African American.

African Americans, who were 12% of the population in the United States, were five times more likely to be displaced than they should have been given their numbers in the population. Most African Americans were confined because of their race to ghetto neighborhoods. It would appear that two-thirds of the projects, more than 1,600, were directed at African American neighborhoods. This forced more than 300,000 families from their homes. Most were Black, a reality that let to James Baldwin’s famous quip that “urban renewal means Negro removal.”

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