Racialized displacement in alley communities of Washington, D.C.

Keywords: Segregation, displacement, historical GIS, race
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

Washington, D.C. once contained many inhabited alleys which were home to marginalized Black residents, widely dispersed throughout the city’s neighborhoods. Across the first half of the 20th century, elite reformers and planners waged a determined battle to clear alleys, on the grounds that they were irredeemably unsanitary and vice-ridden slums. In this paper, I chart the destruction of alley communities over time, and critique the assumptions and biases of clearance advocates. I track declines in population in and ultimate disappearance of alleys, also identifying where possible the subsequent use of cleared alley space. I show that cleared space rarely provided replacement housing; instead, residents often lost homes for unimportant purposes such as parking, while many government and community institutions were also built on a foundation of Black displacement. I further demonstrate the injustice of alley clearance by dissecting the social construction of alleys as “slums”. The perception of alleys as breeding grounds of disease and vice was shaped by reformers’ preconceptions of Black communities as inherently pathological, and built on statistical misinterpretation and manipulation. Further, reformers were in large part driven by a desire to protect white Washington rather than by concern for alley residents – alarmed by alleys’ proximity to their own homes and institutions. Rather than advocating for alley residents, planners formed an Alley Dwelling Authority for the specific purpose of razing alleys. Clearance of D.C.’s alleys thus contributed to increasingly segregated neighborhoods built on Black displacement, and provides a unique case study of the workings of dispossession.