Between 1935 and 1940, the Home Owner's Loan Corporation of the federal government conducted detailed surveys of many major American cities to determine the condition of their neighborhoods in terms of the factors that would determine their property value. The goal was to determine which areas the bank could consider the safest to invest in and to make loans, and where loans should be restricted, using color-coded city maps to define areas by quality.
While the reports accompanying these maps do articulate relevant real estate factors such as the value, age, and state of repair of properties, they focus significantly on the racial makeup of neighborhoods, overtly making the predominance of black people and other minority racial groups into a definitive reason to downgrade a particular area and restrict home loans to those groups. This practice has directly influenced not only the present-day racial distribution but also the infrastructural development of cities. It's a prime example of how cartography can be used to shape places, and how maps can be used as tools of prejudice.
Today's map draws upon the Mapping Inequality application by Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al. at the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab. Mapping Inequality is an excellent resource for the visualization of how redlining looked from city to city. A link to the Jacksonville map can be found here.
Visualizing Discrimination
This will be one of Hovertown's most important long-running map series. We'll often revisit the work of Nelson et al. as a key resource. Let's look at what redlining looked like in Jacksonville, FL, and compare it to which places have been designated Historic by the National Register of Historic Places. Click to enlarge.
The HOLC used four categories designated by color as a visualization tool to draw distinctions between regions of cities. Mapping Inequality presents a large set of the original maps and the reports that broke down the reasons for the designation of each area in each city. These reports make it objectively clear that race was a major determining factor in this decision-making process that has had lasting effects on the fate of the neighborhoods they praised or condemned.
The map divides the central part of Jacksonville into zones, where the "best" are green, slightly lower quality are "still desirable" in blue, areas under undesirable influences are "definitely declining" in yellow, and the lowest quality, normally synonymous with the places where black people lived, were "hazardous" in red. The term "redlining" comes from the use of the color red in these maps to show the areas considered least desirable, largely by virtue of there being high concentrations of the Black population, and sometimes other racial groups. This practice was highly successful in its intended effect of keeping people of those groups from moving into other areas, thereby preserving what was perceived as the high quality of the areas marked in blue and green. There was a direct and overt conflation of racial makeup with the value and viability of a neighborhood. This turned out to be a way for residential segregation to effectively persist for a time even after segregation itself was no longer legal.
This map combines the zones from the HOLC map with the places listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The NRHP officially designates both addresses and districts that are recognized as historical value of some kind, in order to help preserve them. Jacksonville has some registered historic places outside the scope of this map, but most of them are here. Registered historic locations are shown as a collection of glowing white points, and registered historic districts are shapes outlined in a white dashed line.
That Was Then, What About Now?
Although this racial redlining is no longer legal, it's important to discuss because it has had long-lasting economic effects on many American neighborhoods. The next iteration of the map presents data about modern-day poverty compared to historic redlining. Click to enlarge.
Referring back to the legend, you can see that this map shows the lowest two grades of HOLC zones in hatched patterns. They are overlaid on a choropleth layer showing the percentage of the population with an income below the poverty line in each census tract, according to the most recent data from the American Community Survey. In the areas shown in deeper shades of red, greater proportions of the population experience poverty. There is a visible correlation between the "undesirable" HOLC zones from 1935-40, and the places that are still economically disadvantaged today.
There have definitely been other factors in play, but it's important to understand the prohibitive influence that the HOLC designations would have had over areas like these during important formative years for Jacksonville and many cities across the country. Poverty isn't just a state people find themselves in, it's the product of combined disadvantages, a vicious cycle that's expensive to escape and demoralizing to experience. Like trying to go up a down escalator, on roller skates, and ping pong balls are occasionally being dropped on you. It's not at all uncommon for poverty to remain a long-term localized condition for generations after systemic oppression has been lifted.
The HOLC Report
Let's take a closer look at how HOLC conducted redlining in Jacksonville. You can find the full transcripts of reports describing the qualities of each zone here. The report for each category includes neighborhood names, average annual incomes and often occupations of residents, racial makeup, landscape, architectural characteristics, average property values and conditions, any "detrimental influences," frequency of foreclosure, and vandalism. It's pretty jarring to read the total nonchalance with which race and class are discussed as positive or negative factors, and how it simply went without saying for the people authoring the reports, that some people are of better "quality" than others.
The green or "grade A" zone is praised for being "occupied by 100% whites, which included the best class of residents - executives and retired capitalists; in other words, a stable class o[f] citizens not apt to move." One portion of a blue or "grade B" zone, it was reported that "there is on the northern boundary of the Section a slow infiltration of a slightly lower grade of inhabitants." The yellow or "grade C" section was where the lowest class of white people lived, one comprised of "100% whites... a mixture of lower class clerical workers and low-income white collar workers;" another "almost 100% occupied by whites, and in the portion immediately adjoining this Section in the east there is a scattering of negro houses." Then moving to red or "grade D" zone, which "is classified as hazardous and embraces principally the negro areas of the city," the area is described as "occupied 100% by negroes, except in the outlying portions where white are intermingled to the extent of about 25%." The area is also described as suffering from "the highest percentage of juvenile delinquency, infant mortality, and undesirable criminal elements," and as as having "no particularly beneficial influences."
The language isn't overtly malicious or hateful, very matter-of-fact. There is even some sympathetic language to "this particular race of people (negroes)" who "have been the greatest sufferers during the depression, chiefly because they were laid off first and will be the last to be re-employed..." It's also worth noting that the HOLC survey is not the reason that such distinct residential segregation existed, or that many Black people were living in relatively inferior conditions to white people. Much of the area in the red zone consisted of vital and thriving African-American neighborhoods, many of which didn't survive the century precisely because of redlining and related practices. But the racial prejudice operating in systems of authority like HOLC has had real and lasting effects on Jacksonville.
Sugar Hill was one of several Black neighborhoods whose existence was cut short by racially discriminatory practices. It was located under what is now a portion of 1-95, a little east of Springfield, where a mural now commemorates it. There were Black citizens living here who owned businesses and played roles of leadership. Their success was threatening. Another area was Brooklyn, which is along the north edge where the river bends. That's where 1-95 goes southwest before meeting 1-10. There's a Burger Fi and a high-end grocery store there now.
Infrastructural Interruption
Note the light-colored lines crossing through Jacksonville that represent the major interstates that exist today. Most of those didn't exist when the map was made; 1-95 and 1-10 were built in 1957, and most of the rest were built in the 1940s. Redlining provided a way for those responsible for planning the interstates not only to make sure they didn't cross too close to the richer, whiter parts of town, but also to draw them directly over Black neighborhoods, eliminating valuable businesses and architectural resources. To be sure, there were also white people affected by the construction of interstates. But as the map clearly demonstrates, predominantly Black neighborhoods were preferred as the location of new infrastructure, even over the less occupied and more industrial regions on the outskirts. Besides the destruction that took place where the Interstates were introduced, everything left in their vicinity stood to suffer diminishing property value and the economic disadvantages that come with losing a big portion of your neighborhood.
Consider the areas outlined in white dashed lines, indicating their registration as districts of historic importance. Riverside and Avondale, blue and green, with a little bit of yellow, are gorgeously preserved historical areas. This is where I grew up, and it's where I am right now. There are houses here over a hundred years old, that were only about 20 at the time of the HOLC survey. There has been loss and change, but it's an old, healthy region of town that has only benefited from the increased connectedness that new infrastructure has provided. Note the sharp line on the northwest edge of Riverside, where the border of the historic district run exactly along the edge of the red zone, which in turn is where 1-10 and Roosevelt Boulevard branch apart. Springfield, north of downtown, is the oldest neighborhood in the city. Before the Great Fire of 1901 it was a very wealthy area, but during the time of the HOLC survey it was much less affluent, a white neighborhood in which "the detrimental influences... are its proximity to large negro areas, its preponderance of obsolete type of improvements," etc. This is the only historic district that includes a portion that was in the red zone, but it was the whitest neighborhood in the area, bordered to the east and west by black neighborhoods that were directly affected by new infrastructure.
Historic Durkeeville
There's one more historic district on the map, and during my research it became a fascinating mystery to me for a while. There's a gap in the red zone in the same place where Durkee Gardens is now registered as a historic district. I wondered, why does this area have enough historic importance to be on the National Registry of Historic Places, but not enough to be assigned any category at all by the HOLC survey? I took a closer look, and I learned that Durkee Gardens, otherwise known as Durkeeville, was the home of some of the wealthiest and most influential Black residents of Jacksonville, and I found an explanation for its exclusion.
In the middle of the HOLC report about the "hazardous" area, there is a reference to a region matching the boundaries of Durkeeville, occupied by "a community of the best class of negroes." I didn't make the connection at first because the area isn't mentioned by name, like many of the other Black neighborhoods are. The report describes the area as follows: "The predominant type of building in this best grade negro portion of this section is one- and two- story brick veneer, stucco and frame residences ranging in price from $2,500 to $7,500, which are occupied 100% by home-owners, the highest type of colored citizens." This is immediately followed by a description of the low value and poor condition of most residences in the surrounding area, a reference to "slums," and a recommendation that some areas be demolished.
It's significant that even though it was occupied solely by home-owners and the property values were very comparable to those of blue zones like Riverside, Durkeeville was not given a better category. Instead it was just left out, a hole in the red zone where it would be too offensive to report a 100% Black neighborhood as being an area of any quality. It's discussed in the "grade D" section of the report as though it is included in that section, but the map clearly leaves it out of that zone; there's only a hatch pattern indicating "undeveloped," which is clearly innacurate. It's an incredible example of how prejudice finds its way into cartography: maps can tell us as much by what has been left out as by what is included, and can indicate the priorities of the people who produce them.
History in the Making
Modern day Durkeeville is still part of a predominantly Black residential area, and having been spared by development it has survived to be designated as historically significant. But what about the Black neighborhoods that were negatively impacted either directly or indirectly by redlining? Why shouldn't Sugar Hill have become a historic district? Why is there a perpetual need for redevelopment so prevalent in LaVilla, formerly the culturally rich "Harlem of the South"? It's because white neighborhoods were considered fundamentally better by the people in the highest roles of decision-making power, and the effects of their decisions are still felt 50 years after segregation was outlawed in 1964 and the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, at which time many people departed from the area once they were allowed to live elsewhere.
The City of Jacksonville doesn't always do a good job of protecting and maintaining its historic resources, especially downtown. But it's a city that's coming to terms with its history, and where community efforts are being made to educate people about what's here and what used to be here, and to preserve pieces of the history that has shaped the city. LaVilla's Ritz Theater is still running, and there are walking tours of historically Black neighborhoods. Downtown is growing in strength and cultural vitality, and new history is being made, this time with more equal opportunity.