Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Master's Project

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Program/Concentration

Institute for the Humanities

Committee Director

Anne H. Muraoka

Committee Director

Marvin Chiles

Abstract

This project is an analysis of the racial impacts of the redevelopment of the downtown area of Norfolk, Virginia in the period of 1939-1959. The overall goal is to understand the ethnic and racial impacts of redevelopment and how populations were treated differently during the two styles of redevelopment that were employed in the city. The existing research on this topic tends to focus on the segregation of the education system in the city over the community population segregation. This makes it difficult to find sources that show the impacts of other factors like redevelopment of minority communities. Through research of media sources, personal collections, legal documentation, and interviews, it is hoped this project can better understand the timeline of events and direct line that redevelopment took from pen tip to shovel tip. Through the digitization and categorization of city directories, it is hoped that the outward spread of population from the study area can be observed in new ways not previously discussed. Using this information in conjunction with the existing Redlining documentation, the impact on community structure between two racially distinct areas can be understood. The expansiveness of redevelopment and the reasonings behind the process are first explained as well as the timeline of events. The area of study is Nicholson Street which was a core road within the Project 1 redevelopment. All residents of this street were identified in the Portsmouth-Norfolk 1939 directory. Errors due to the inclusion of only the primary resident for addresses in the 1939 edition cause a jump in residents in later records. As the residents are tracked through the years a pattern of movement is seen in the data. Residents on Nicholson Street either stay in place up until they are forced out by Project 1 or become homeowners elsewhere. The residents that own property and are not in the direct path of Project 1 maintain their positions for years, while those forced out become renters that quickly leave the city after sporadic residency across the area. At the start of the dataset there are 113 residents on Nicholson Street. By the end date of 1959 when the bulk of the redevelopment for Project 1 is complete there are only 12 residents in the city that previously lived on Nicholson Street. A major deviation from this dataset and conventional reporting of Project 1 is that the project saw residents move into the segregated redeveloped communities the city created. What is visible from the study of the directories for Nicholson Street is that residents more often left the city entirely. There is also a large number of residents who shift from annual or biannual moving to consistent residency, which may indicate at a more macro level the shift in property values and the decline in available housing in the city.

Comments

Visual Data Representation and Media: For visualization of data for this project and further media on the topic go to:

https://arcg.is/14a9mX3

Rights

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