African-American neighborhood

The formation of black neighborhoods is closely linked to the history of segregation in the United States, either through formal laws or as a product of social norms. Black neighborhoods have played an important role in the development of African-American culture.^[3] Some neighborhoods endured violent attack.

Black residential segregation has been declining in the United States and many black people are moving to white suburbs.^{[citation needed]} Black people continue to live in poorer neighborhoods than white people and Americans of other races.^[4]

History

Shopping on 125th Street, in New York City's Harlem, the city's historic black neighborhood.

Houston's The Fifth Ward is a predominantly African American neighborhood in the city of Houston.

The Founder's Library at Howard University is located in Washington D.C.'s U Street historic black neighborhood.

New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, is a well-known black neighborhood famously damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Great Migration

The Great Migration was the movement of more than one million African Americans out of rural Southern United States from 1914 to 1940. Most African Americans who participated in the migration moved to large industrial cities such as New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Missouri, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Oakland, and Long Beach as well as many smaller industrial cities. Hence, the Migration played an important role in the formation and expansion of African-American neighborhoods in these cities. Chicago's South Side and adjoining South Suburbs together constitute the largest geographical predominantly Black region in America, stretching from roughly Cermak Road (22nd St) on the north in the Near South Side to the far south suburb of University Park - a distance of approximately 40 miles. There are various races and ethnic groups in this huge expanse such as Whites, Latinos, Asians, and Arabs, but it is predominantly Black.^{[citation needed]}

While the Great Migration helped educated African Americans obtain jobs, while enabling a measure of class mobility, the migrants encountered significant forms of discrimination in the North through a large migration during such a short of period of time. The African-American migrants were often resented by working classes in the North, who feared that their ability to negotiate rates of pay, or even to secure employment at all, was threatened by the influx of new labor competition.^{[citation needed]}

Populations increased very rapidly with the addition of African-American migrants and new European immigrants, which caused widespread housing shortages in many cities.^[5] Newer groups competed even for the oldest and most rundown houses because the poorly constructed houses were what they could afford. African Americans competed for work and housing with first or second generation immigrants in many major cities. Ethnic groups created territories which they defended against change. More established populations with more capital moved away to newer housing that was being developed on the outskirts of the cities, to get away from the pressure of new groups of residents.

The migrants also discovered that the open discrimination of the South was only more subtly manifested in the North. In 1917, the Supreme Court declared municipal resident segregation ordinances unconstitutional. In response, some white groups resorted to the

In some cities, the influx of African-American migrants as well as other immigrants resulted in racial violence, which flared in several cities during 1919.^[citation needed] ^[11]

This significant event and the subsequent struggle of African-American migrants to adapt to Northern cities was the subject of Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series.^[12] This series, exhibited in 1941, was responsible for bringing Lawrence to the public eye as one of the most important African-American artists of the time.^[13]

The landmarked interconnected sculptural towers known as the Watts Towers are located in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood.

The South Side of Chicago is a black neighborhood known for being disadvantaged, and for its most famous daughter, Michelle Obama.

The Hub is the retail heart of the South Bronx, New York City. Between 1900 and 1930, the number of Bronx residents increased from 201,000 to 1,265,000.

The Second Great Migration

From 1940-1970, another five million people left the South for industrial jobs in cities of the North and West. Sometimes violence was the outcome of some of the pressure of this migration.

In response to the influx of Blacks from the South, banks, insurance companies, and businesses began

The creation of highways in some cases divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times within industrial corridors. For example, Birmingham's interstate highway system attempted to maintain racial boundaries established by the city’s 1926 racially based zoning law. The construction of interstate highways through black neighborhoods in the city led to significant population loss in those neighborhoods. It was also associated with an increase in neighborhood racial segregation.^[24]

The riots that swept cities across the country from 1964 to 1968 damaged or destroyed additional areas of major cities, for instance Detroit's 12th Street, the U and H street corridors in Washington, DC, and Harlem in New York City during the Harlem Riots. In 1968, the Civil Rights Act removed racial deed restrictions on housing. This enabled middle-class African Americans to move to better housing, in some cases in the suburbs, and to desegregated residential neighborhoods. In some areas, however, real estate agents continued to steer African Americans to particular areas although that was now illegal.

Late 20th century

By 1990, the legal barriers enforcing segregation had been replaced by decentralized racism, where whites pay more to live in predominantly white areas.^[18] Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.^[25]

At the same time, however, middle-class and upper-class Black people have also paid more to live in the suburbs and have left the inner cities of former industrial powerhouses behind. In the

Despite these pervasive patterns, many changes for individual areas are minor.[27] Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which both blacks and whites inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.^[27][28] Cities throughout history have contained distinct ethnic districts. But rarely have they been so isolated and impoverished as the African-American districts found in U.S. cities today.^[18]

Black middle class and white-collar areas

See Gentrification in the United States for development and gentrification of Black neighborhoods

Due to advancements caused by the Civil Rights Movement, the social and political activism of the African-American community (religious and educational institutions), have been a strong prominent advent of the black middle class and black white-collar professionals. This has helped produce majority black populations with significant middle to upper class black neighborhoods. Many of these communities are found in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, MD as well as the suburbs of Atlanta, GA, and scattered around the country such as Cedar Hill, Texas, Oak Park, Michigan, and LaPlace, Louisiana.^[29] The residents of these communities are highly educated and work in white-collar professional jobs. Such communities have also developed in many of the larger cities of the United States. Even some of those that traditionally have high poverty and unemployment have also had neighborhoods with middle class and affluent blacks. Cities' policies of gentrification, the process of renovating a district so that it conforms to middle-class taste, has also played a factor.^{[citation needed]}

Ghettos

Racial segregation in the United States is most pronounced in housing. Although people of different races may work together, they are still unlikely to live in largely integrated neighborhoods. This pattern differs only by degree in different metropolitan areas.^[30]

Due to segregated conditions and widespread poverty, some black neighborhoods in the United States have been called "the ghetto" or "the projects." The use of this term is controversial and, depending on the context, potentially offensive. Despite mainstream America’s use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor urban area (predominantly African-Americans), those living in the area often used it to signify something positive.^{[citation needed]}

The black ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home", a place representing authentic

Although some black neighborhoods may suffer from civic disinvestment,^[33] with schools assumed to be of lower quality due to some schools showing lower test scores, less effective policing^[34] and fire protection, there are institutions that help to improve the physical and social capital of black neighborhoods. And with the social mobility of many African Americans, there has been the rise of many communities with better schools and safe neighborhoods. But these issues may be more due to economics than race since middle class blacks with middle-class neighborhoods tend to live in better neighborhoods and children attend better schools than those from lower income neighborhoods or schools districts.

Churches

In black neighborhoods the

The African American Museum Movement emerged during the 1950s and 1960s to preserve the heritage of the black experience and to ensure its proper interpretation in American history.

Lincoln Academy was the first school for African Americans in Tallahassee, Florida.

The historic office of the Omaha Star, an African American newspaper.

Newspapers

Many African American neighborhoods produce their own newspapers, including the

in Omaha.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2008)

Education

See also:

Black school

Segregation in schools and universities led to the creation of many Black schools. Public elementary, junior and senior high schools across the United States existed during the period of legal segregation. Students that attended school went through either vocational classes or regular high school. Vocational school offered several subjects such as cosmetology, tailoring and welding. On the college level, a handful of historically Black colleges and universities developed before the Civil War and many more established after 1865.^[43] These colleges and universities are historically often surrounded by Black neighborhoods.^[44][45]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it . (May 2008)

Festivals and holidays

See also: Odunde Festival, Emancipation Day, and Juneteenth

In the U.S. city of Philadelphia, the Odunde Festival (also known as "African New Year") claims to be the largest gathering of African Americans that happens annually on the second Sunday of June in the Southwest Center City section of town.^{[citation needed]}

Also, the

District of Columbia celebrates April 16 as Emancipation Day as a public holiday, which is an observance of the emancipation of slaves of African origin.^{[citation needed}

]

Although

Galveston, Texas when enslaved persons learned of the Emancipation Proclamation two years late, because slaveholders had purposefully kept this information from them.^[46] Today, several Black communities in Texas and beyond recognize June 19 as a complicated but celebratory holiday. It is also known as Jubilee Day.^[47]

Odunde Festival is celebrated in Philadelphia's Southwest Center City the largest gathering of African Americans on the East Coast of the United States.

Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant (also known as BedSty) is in New York City.

Crowds gather at the beginning of a George Floyd march in front a police station in Roxbury, Boston's historic black neighborhood.

Built environment

Many African American neighborhoods are located in

apartment buildings.^{[citation needed}

]

Shotgun houses are an important part of the built environment of some southern African American neighborhoods. The houses consist of three to five rooms in a row with no hallways. This African American house design is found in both rural and urban southern areas, mainly in African-American communities and neighborhoods (especially in New Orleans).^[48]

The term "shotgun house," is often said to come from the saying that one could fire a

African architectural heritage, perhaps being a corruption of a term such as to-gun, which means "place of assembly" in the Southern Dohomey Fon area.^[49]

During the periods of population decline and

community gardens. Community gardens serve social and economic functions,^[50][51] providing safe, open spaces in areas with few parks. Organizations such as Philadelphia Green, organized by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, have helped communities organize gardens to build community feeling and improve neighborhoods.^[52] They can be places for socialization,^[50] fresh vegetables in neighborhoods poorly served by supermarkets, and sources of traditional African American produce.^[53]

See also

• List of African-American neighborhoods
• List of U.S. metropolitan areas with large African-American populations
• List of U.S. communities with African-American majority populations
• Gentrification
• Colonia (United States)
• White flight

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