Historic Newton is co-presenting two free nights of Newton history this week. Both look interesting to me.
Wed, 7PM – Housing Discrimination in Newton in the 1960s – at the Myrtle Baptist Church
Thurs, 7PM – Workers’ Housing and Mill Buildings: Redevelopment in Upper Falls – at the Library
Wednesday, March 19, 7:00 PM
CREATED EQUAL: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT THEN AND NOW
Panel Discussion-Housing Discrimination in Newton in the 1960s
Long-time Newton residents remember a time when Black families had trouble buying homes in the city, and the turnpike extension displaced over half of an African-American neighborhood in West Newton that had been established there for at least a century. Listen to first-hand accounts from the sixties, learn about the changes that have occurred since that time, and join the discussion about how we can impact the future of our city.
Panelists include Rev. Howard Haywood (Pastor Emeritus at Myrtle Baptist Church), Ellen Feingold (a founder of the Newton Committee for Fair Housing and Equal Rights), Shirley Wright (4th generation Newton resident), and Sheila Mondshein (Current member of Newton Fair Housing Committee)
at the Myrtle Baptist Church, 21 Curve St
************************************************************
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 PM
A CITY OF VILLAGES-THE 2014 NEWTON HISTORY SERIES
Workers’ Housing and Mill Buildings: Redevelopment in Upper Falls
Architect Jane Galli will offer a look at worker housing in Newton Upper Falls in the context of Newton Lower Falls’ extensive redevelopment and of New England mill buildings’ redevelopment and adaptive reuse. Why do so many of the original wood-frame buildings remain in the Upper Falls neighborhood, while most of those in the Lower Falls neighborhood have been demolished? Where else can you go on short excursions to see 18th and 19th century examples of worker housing and industrial mill buildings in New England? The talk will address these questions and more!
at the Newton Free Library
The panel discussion on housing discrimination is at the Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton.
Thanks for the correction Ted. I fixed it in the post above
The panel for the Myrtle Baptist Church could not have been better. The venue, in the heart of the scene of the crime 50 years ago, could not have been more apt. And the fourth panelist from Newton Fair Housing Committee brought us all up to date about how little has changed, quoting studies from 2005 and 2012 to show how the practice is ongoing, with the stories that back this up that could only make me gasp. Excellent.
I wish I could attend tonight’s presentation at the Library, Unfortunately that clashes with the Upper Falls Area council monthly meeting.
Marie, it was a terrific panel and the stories told were poignant and compelling. For those who would like to learn more about the history of Myrtle Baptist and how its community survived the Massachusetts Turnpike, I highly recommend the video Myrtle Baptist: Pillar of the Community.
Why does everything have to be on Thursdays? Upper Falls Area Council, Newton Highlands Playground, Austin Street, the Historic Commission and this presentation which looks excellent. I’d like to attend all four, but, as a Highlands Area Councillor, my first loyalty has to be to the Highlands Playground expansion.
@Marie. I was working in Washington when a similar interstate type highway project was proposed for East Baltimore, Maryland during the 1970’s with many of the same inequities built into it. It would have run smack through the middle of several old and densely settled neighborhoods where 18 or so ethnic groups lived in pretty good harmony with one another. Fortunately, there was a powerful community coalition that successfully fought the project as drafted and the paltry amounts they wanted to pay displaced homeowners. The highway was built, but further removed from these neighborhoods. An unsung hero in all of this was our own former governor Frank Sargent who had earlier vetoed a plan to build a similar type highway with similar impacts through many lower income neighborhoods in Boston. I believe Sargent was the first American governor to turn back this kind of highway project in a thickly settled urban area.
Bob, as Rev. Howard Haywood explained last night, if you want to find the African American neighborhoods in any metropolitan area, all you have to do is walk along the railroad tracks and eventually you will find it. The African American neighborhood around the Myrtle Baptist Church, known as “The Village,” was built was on the cheapest land available, which was an area of swampland that had been filled in to build the railroads.
Until 1968, when the Fair Housing Act was passed, banks could decide not only whether to lend to people of color but also where they would live, resulting in housing discrimination and racial segregation in housing. Indeed, this discriminatory practice of “redlining” as it was called was a longstanding federal policy! In addition, until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional, many property owners, including right here in Newton, put in deed restrictions which prohibited their property being sold to African Americans. That is how Myrtle Village came to be along the side of the Boston & Albany RR tracks. Their story of displacement and diaspora was repeated many times and many places around the country while the interstate highway system was being built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Unfortunately, the land along the railroad tracks was also the most desirable land for the Turnpike authority to take by eminent domain, since it was cheap and led straight to downtown Boston. Rev. Haywood noted that there was stanuch opposition from Newton’s Mayor, Board of Aldermen, and Legislative delegation, but that the state’s DPW commisioner very shrewdly negotiated for air rights over the pike that would benefit Newton’s coffers and (falsely) floated an alternative of building the turnpike along the Charles River while secretly designing the highway along the railroad tracks in order to keep them off balance. Through heroic efforts described by Ellen Feingold, although Newton’s community leaders and elected officials were not able to stop the takings of many houses and businesses all along the railroad through Auburndale, West Newton, Newtonville and Newton Corner, they were able to get more money for displaced property owners to allow them to be able to relocated somewhere else.
I too regret that I cannot attend tonight’s presentation on housing in Upper and Lower Falls, because I am celebrating the 18th birthday of one of my most important constituents with my youngest child tonight.
@Ted. Thanks for this great and informative update and congratulations to your daughter. I’ll be honest. I grew up in Newton during the 40’s and 50s. I had no interaction of any kind I can recall with the West Newton African American community or African American kids at any time when I was going to school here. We weren’t hostile or bigoted. We rode our bikes through that neighborhood. We waved and exchanged hellos, but that was about it. I didn’t even know what redlining was or that Myrtle Street Baptist existed, let alone all the things it did to hold the people of that community together. I’m pretty certain, however, that almost all the kids I grew up with would have been incensed at these forms of discrimination had they known. I’m hoping they would have been.
It was only when I was in naval pre-flight training in Pensacola, Florida and saw the overt discrimination of local businesses to the African American cadets in my class that I had any kind of an awakening about this. JFK came into office while I was there and he appointed a Base commanding Admiral who told the town that if some of the cadets couldn’t go to shop, eat and drink in Pensacola than none of us would. That very quickly put an end to that nonsense.
I also recommend the video “Myrtle Baptist- Pillar of the Community” that Ted noted above.
@Bob, the stories that were told last night were chilling. I hope someone recorded last night’s forum, because all of these stories were extremely powerful. Racial discrimination in housing did and does exist, even thought it is often invisible to white residents.
Several of the panelists talked about how up until the 1960s, there was an informal list of the few property owners in Newton who were willing to sell to African Americans. A block from my house is the only house on Watertown Street that was owned by an African American family in the 1960s. The story I heard from a family member was that the black couple who bought it had a white “straw man” purchase it on their behalf. When the neighbors found out, they pooled their money and offered to buy it to prevent an African American family from moving in.
In addition, many Newton properties had deeds containing restrictive covenants prohibiting sale to non-whites, right up until the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional. Indeed, to my absolute amazement, one of the speakers noted that even the deed for the Oak Hill housing development, which was supposed to provide affordable housing for veterans returning from WWII, contained a racial covenant.
Shirley Wright talked about how hard it was for her mother to get a bank to give her a mortgage to buy a house in Newton Highlands, even though she was qualified, because it was in an all-white neighborhood. She added that the owners were Jewish and had themselves felt housing discrimination, which only made them more determined to sell the house to an African American family. Shirley also noted that if the bankers were bad, the realtors were worse. Indeed, Hubie and Katherine Jones have often recounted how only two realtors in Newton would even show houses to African Americans when they bought their house in 1961.
Although the federal Fair Housing Act prohibiting housing discrimination passed in 1968–shortly after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated–it did not end discrimination. As Sheila Mondshein explained, in 2005, Newton became the first Massachusetts community to employ “testers” to survey Newton realtors to see if there was racial discrimination in housing. The city obtained a grant from HUD to have similarly qualified black and white testers go to realtors and inquire about advertised apartments and houses for sale. Sadly, the results showed that around 48% of African Americans and 42% of Latino Americans were discriminated against when they tried to rent or buy homes through realtors. There were numerous examples of black testers not being shown as many or the same houses as white testers, or white testers were told apartments were available after black testers were told the same apartments were not available. The most startling example was one black tester who was offered a lease that would have cost almost $3000 a year more than a similarly qualified white tester for the same apartment. The black tester was told he would have to pay a higher rent than advertised, plus two month’s rent in advance and a security deposit, while the white tester was not required to pay anything in advance and was even offered a half month’s rent free!
This is why I joined the Fair Housing Committee.
And there are still people who will argue we never needed anti-discrimination laws–that it would all take care of itself in time.