Dustin Ross (44:59)
Like Beck said, they definitely. Two turntables and a microphone. Where is that? This is where it was at. So even though it was so densely populated, it was poor, right. And actually, actually one third of all the black Detroiters lived within this one neighborhood. So because of this, the homes themselves, like the infrastructure was all fucked up, you know what I'm saying? It was sweeping wave, right? So the houses here would hold like three to four families in one house, right? Because people could not find housing anywhere but in this area. And they were forced to figure it out and share because of this overcrowding, diseases, crime, and even like vermin, like rodents and stuff ran rampant. So again, this is something that was caused by income inequality and redlining. And this also deferred housing upkeep and maintenance. So the buildings and the city was. The area was falling apart structurally and it deteriorated. Specifically the housing conditions. While the entire city of Detroit was struggling with the lack of adequate housing. At the time, Black Bottom actually had the poorest of the living quarters. It was really bad. Some of the homes were single room homes, multiple people in them, no cooking facilities, no indoor plumbing. That type of shit. It was real. But like black people, do we make lemonade out of lemons? You know what I'm saying? If nothing out of something, this arrangement, even though it was fucked up, ended up fostering a very tight knit community. Community, you know what I'm saying? Because people are forced to rely on each other and help each other out. And while this was happening and we were strengthening ourselves in that way and supporting our own businesses. We, we were no longer at the time putting our money into these businesses that wouldn't even let us in the door. We started pouring the money even though it was raggedy buildings that were ours. So we were supporting them, shopping from each other. There was a concentrated effort to do that okay by everybody. Because of this, the city obviously had their eye on the area and they saw the poor conditions right. As an excuse to raise raz the area. In other words, basically bulldoze everything. And they looked at it as a space of opportunity for them and they selected this neighborhood. When the city planners were preparing the area for the thoroughfare known as the new i75, which we all know is a major interstate, major highway in America. And it goes north and south straight through Detroit, all the way up through Flint, the state of Michigan, basically. And you can take 75 all the way from Flint to Atlanta, right? Yeah, you don't never get off the expressway. So Detroit's urban renewal project as it was, it targeted these blighted areas for raising and reconstruction. The author Thomas Segrew, in his book the Origins of the Urban Crisis, Race and Inequality in Post war Detroit, he said, quote, city officials expected that the eradication of blight would increase city tax revenue, revitalize the decaying urban core and improve the living conditions of the poorest slum dwellers. Overcrowded, unsanitary and dilapidated districts like Paradise Valley and the Lower east side of Detroit would be replaced by clean, modern, high rise housing projects, civic institutions and hospitals. Now what did that sound like to y'? All? Some bullshit starts with a G. Gentrification, the usual. Hello. So the destruction of this neighborhood with no warning and no effort on the part of the city to provide any sort of like housing alternatives or assistance was catastrophic for black people in Detroit at the time. Like it imploded our personal communities, our economy, all of that, it fucked Everybody up. In 1958, the Wayne county, which is the county that Detroit sits in, the Wayne County Road Commissioner predicated that little difficulty, or excuse me, predicted that little difficulty would be experienced by families facing displacement because of highway construction. So they tried to say, well, nothing's gonna happen, y' all will be right, it won't be no difficulty. Even though the families that were on the highway sites received, get this y', all, only a 30 day notice to vacate.
