‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950–1985

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‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985 Sophie Kahler, Conor Harrison* Department of Geography and School of Earth, Ocean and Environment, University of South Carolina, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 4 February 2019 Received in revised form 1 October 2019 Accepted 20 October 2019

In this article, we examine the role of the University of South Carolina in the urban renewal of the city of Columbia, a medium sized southern city. Drawing on archives of official correspondence and oral histories of neighborhood residents, we chart the various ways by which the University administrators initiated and guided urban renewal and slum clearance in several largely African American neighborhoods adjacent to campus in tandem with the city of Columbia. We place a particular focus on the Wheeler Hill neighborhood to illustrate how university property acquisition occurred alongside the federal urban renewal process, and how the process slowly destabilized and ultimately unraveled the neighborhood. In doing so we contribute to the growing literature on universities and urban renewal and capture the methods and underlying racist intentions through which universities have reshaped the urban landscape. We argue that at a time when universities across the United States are beginning to grapple with their own racial histories, it is crucial to more fully acknowledge the ways in which university expansion has impacted, and indeed targeted, adjacent communities of color. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction In 1965, the City of Columbia, South Carolina’s Planning Department issued a report on the city’s neighborhood conditions. The focus was to target those areas in the city suffering from ‘blight,’ which, in the view of the report, was rooted in social, economic, environmental, and housing problems, including so called ‘minority group problems,’ poverty, crime, juvenile delinquency, poor education, overcrowding of land and housing, ‘improper mixing of land uses,’ and ‘substandard initial construction’.1 The report divided Columbia into twenty five neighborhoods based on the 1960 census tracts, and reported that eighty one percent of Columbia’s nonwhite population was concentrated into just six of these areas. The neighborhoods were ranked based on a metric calculated from the number of deteriorating units, household incomes, absence of plumbing facilities, low house values, total arrests, and tuberculosis cases. The Wheeler Hill neighborhood, a working class African American area located directly

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Harrison). 1 Columbia’s Neighborhoods: An Analysis of Neighborhood Conditions, January 1965, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 28, South Caroliniana University Archives.

adjacent to the University of South Carolina campus in downtown Columbia, was part of the fourth most blighted area in the city and thus would be a target for urban renewal. While Columbia’s blight elimination program also focused on education, employment, health care, public housing, and code enforcement, it was urban renewal that was described as ‘the most important weapon to combat physical blight’.2 Columbia’s aggressive efforts to renew the city via slum clearance were recognized when it was twice named an All-America City, an honor bestowed annually to eleven cities by the National Municipal League and Look magazine. In the award, Columbia was commended for its slum clearance, and, notably, for an urban renewal project in which ‘a number of unsightly acres have been cleared for University use’.3 Recent scholarship in urban studies and history has noted the role of urban universities in remaking the urban landscape to suit their own purposes both historically and in contemporary contexts. Baldwin uses the term ‘UniverCities’ to describe the town-gown interaction, using the case of Chicago to illustrate ‘the growing

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Columbia’s Neighborhoods, January 1965, SCUA. J.H. Moore, Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740e1990, Columbia, 1993, 426e427; Columbia to Receive Award Today as ‘AllAmerica’ City, The State, 11 March 1952, 1; Eugene B. Sloan, Praise, Congratulations for All-America City, The State, 28 April 1965, 1. 3

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008 0305-7488/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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Fig. 1. Locator Map of Columbia. Map produced by the authors.

relationship between institutions of higher education and urban development’. Other scholarship has highlighted concerns stemming from aggressive and entrepreneurial university expansion in the neoliberal mold. These concerns include, for example, gentrification and the displacement of people of color as well as the expansion of university’s often specialized infrastructure that effectively encloses public space and is exclusionary to local populations. It is important to note that current university redevelopment efforts are often layered onto their past efforts to reshape urban space. Indeed, contemporary university led development schemes are often attempting to remedy the unintended consequences of past slum clearance efforts, most notably barren spaces surrounding urban campuses that are lacking amenities to attract and serve faculty and students.4 In this article, we demonstrate that the historic involvement of universities in urban redevelopment was frequently racially motivated and intended to maintain the university as a space of whiteness during a period in which education in the U.S. was

4 D.L. Baldwin, The ‘800-Pound Gargoyle’: The Long History of Higher Education and Urban Development on Chicago’s South Side, American Quarterly 67 (2015) 82; S. Bose, Universities and the redevelopment politics of the neoliberal city, Urban Studies 52 (2015) 2616e2632; M.M. Ehlenz, Neighborhood Revitalization and the Anchor Institution: Assessing the Impact of the University of Pennsylvania’s West Philadelphia Initiatives on University City, Urban Affairs Review 52 (2016) 1078e1087.

moving slowly toward greater integration. We specifically examine the role of the University of South Carolina in the urban renewal of the city of Columbia, a medium sized southern city and the capital of South Carolina. The University campus is centrally located in Columbia, and along with the South Carolina State House, has long been viewed as a focal point of the city (Fig. 1). We draw on archives held at the University of South Carolina libraries that chart the various ways and mechanisms by which the University administrators initiated and guided urban renewal and slum clearance in tandem with the city of Columbia during the years following World War Two. Once held as a prime example of town-gown cooperation, we demonstrate that while the University worked with the city of Columbia to obtain federal urban renewal funds to level some African American neighborhoods adjacent to campus, it also used its own funds and a nonprofit real estate acquisition entity to slowly obtain property in the Wheeler Hill neighborhood outside of the federal urban renewal process. In this way, the University facilitated a slow process of neighborhood destabilization that unraveled the threads holding the historically African American neighborhood together before reimagining and reconstructing Wheeler Hill as a space of whiteness suitable for incorporation into the University community. Our aim in this article is to add to the growing literature on universities and urban renewal, answering O’Mara’s call for ‘Historical, case-based research [that] may help close the gaps in our understanding of the full economic and social impact of universities

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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in American urban areas’. In particular, we choose to focus on the fine details of the redevelopment of the Wheeler Hill neighborhood in order to ‘capture the complexity and contingency of the process by which gown affects town, and vice versa’.5 However, at a time when universities across the United States are beginning to grapple with their own racial histories, we contend that it is crucial to more fully acknowledge the ways in which university expansion has impacted, and indeed targeted, adjacent communities of color. More than simply a case of town-gown relations, the case of Wheeler Hill illustrates some of the ways that universities sought to control surrounding spaces as a method of perpetuating structures of racial power. As such, we reinforce Delaney’s argument that reconfiguring and/or reinforcing space is ‘a central component of the social structure of racial hierarchy’.6 As Rothstein has convincingly established, the widespread belief that the current segregated American urban landscape is the result of individual choices is erroneous. In Columbia, as in the rest of the United States, the ability to control, transform, and differentiate space was enabled by decades of government policy specifically designed to segregate and oppress African Americans. This article therefore supports Rothstein’s argument that de jure, or legal, forms of segregation contributed to what many believe was de facto segregation, particularly regarding federally sponsored slum clearance programs.7 In what follows, we first review the Federal Housing Act of 1949, and subsequent additions to that Act, that enabled universities to legally engage and fund slum clearance. We also briefly review scholarship that indicates the multiple negative impacts slum clearance has had on urban neighborhoods of color. We then chart the efforts of the urban renewal program in Columbia, before turning our attention to the University of South Carolina’s efforts to specifically reshape the Wheeler Hill neighborhood. We first examine the targeting of Wheeler Hill for renewal and the neighborhood’s destabilization, and then trace the period during the 1970s in which the neighborhood was officially razed, redesigned, and reconstructed, displacing the majority of the residents and fundamentally altering the neighborhood’s racial and economic composition. Finally, we reflect on what the case of Wheeler Hill means at a time when universities are increasingly recognizing and commemorating their past misdeeds in relation to slavery and segregation. Urban renewal: history and impacts In the years following the Second World War, the urban landscape of the United States was transformed. With the massive migration of African Americans to cities in search of industrial jobs and the return of war veterans, many cities grew crowded and socially tense. Starting in the early 1950s, white middle class families began fleeing to the suburbs, encouraged by inexpensive and ample land, the availability of mortgages, and the expansion of highway transportation systems. This suburban exodus led cities’ populations to decline, tax bases to shrink, and ultimately a decrease in investment in urban areas. Disinvestment caused inner city deterioration and American cities became a symbol of crime

5 M.P. O’Mara, Beyond town and gown: university economic engagement and the legacy of the urban crisis, Journal of Technology Transfer 37 (2012) 239. 6 D. Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 1836e1948, Austin, 1998, 7. 7 R. Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, New York, 2017, 1e18. 8 S. Haar, ‘Modern City, Modern Campus: Institutional Expansion and Urban Renewal in the Postwar Era,’ in The City as Campus: Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago, Minneapolis, 2011, 49e68; K. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: the suburbanization of the United States, New York, 1985, 3e12.

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and decay.8 Minority populations, however, were limited in their ability to move as they were restricted by de jure housing discrimination including mortgage redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and unfair lending practices.9 As the fear of a decreasing white population and contagion from urban blight spread, municipal officials sought to redevelop cities into modern urban centers through the elimination of slums, with the goal of replacing them with white middle to upper income housing, green space, and commercial developments. The passage of the Federal Housing Act in 1949, and specifically Title I of the Act, was viewed by urban boosters as the solution to so called urban problems. Title I was variously viewed as a panacea to decreasing property values, a way to eliminate substandard housing, and a method to better house low income residents. Title I provided federal funding to cover two thirds of the net cost of cities’ urban renewal projects. However, while the policy was intended to only subsidize projects of slum clearance and urban redevelopment in primarily residential areas that would remain residential after redevelopment, developers soon exploited loopholes that allowed for nonresidential and commercial development on the cleared land.10 Cities across the United States were reshaped by urban redevelopment and slum clearance made possible by the 1949 Housing Act. Urban renewal efforts during the 1950s and 1960s demolished nearly 600,000 housing units under federal slum clearance programs. Notably, only a fraction of this housing was replaced as affordable housing.11 Indeed, the Housing Acts of 1954, 1959, and 1961 allowed more federal funding to be used for nonresidential projects, which encouraged the use of urban renewal in the expansion of hospitals and universities in cities.12 Section 112 of the revised Housing Act, passed in 1959, specifically allowed federal aid for urban renewal projects including colleges and universities where the project would promote public welfare and community development.13 The ability to take advantage of federal funds for slum clearance proved a boon to many urban universities. No longer solely sites for the education of elites, universities d including the University of South Carolina d now considered themselves instruments of ‘national purpose’ on the cutting edge of research, education, and community involvement.14 In the post war years, higher education had expanded in every sense, fueled by the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly called the GI Bill), the baby boom, and the growing belief that a college education was necessary for participation in the new, postindustrial society. Urban universities, in particular, underwent a transformation as the city environment around them began to change. As city centers experienced disinvestment during the twentieth century, many urban universities found themselves surrounded by low income areas, often largely occupied by African Americans. These African American neighborhoods were thought to hinder universities’ recruitment of faculty and students and facilitated a fear of crime and unsafe

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Rothstein, The Color of Law, 1e18. J.C. Teaford, Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath, Housing Policy Debate 11 (2000) 443e465; W.J. Collins and K.L. Shester, Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal in the United States, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5 (2013) 239e73. 11 E. Talen, Housing Demolition during Urban Renewal, City & Community 13 (2014) 233e53, https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12070. 12 Teaford, Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath, 443e465. 13 Summary of the Housing Act of 1959: Public Law 86e372, 73 Stat. 654, 86th Congress, (S. 2654) Approved September 23, 1959, Housing and Home Finance Agency, Office of the General Counsel, 1959, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1. b2503027 last accessed 14 August 2018. 14 H.H. Lesesne, A History of the University of South Carolina, 1940e2000, Columbia, 2001, 135. 10

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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conditions on campus.15 With the addition of Section 112 universities were encouraged to use urban renewal as a tool for expanding campuses, ‘improving’ (read: whitening) their urban surroundings, and accommodating greater enrollments. Many universities began acquiring land for campus expansion in surrounding residential neighborhoods to construct new academic buildings, dorms, and student centers. Universities located adjacent to so called slums and blighted areas sought to acquire and clear these areas for their campus, or to redevelop them with more favorable, higher income housing to attract faculty and students. Some institutions did not expand into bordering neighborhoods, but rather attempted to upgrade or revitalize these areas by working with local housing authorities, bringing in businesses, and acquiring land to redevelop and sell. Cities were, in general, receptive to university led urban renewal projects, and by the early 1960s around fifty universities were making use of Section 112 of the Housing Act. Leading universities across the United States would become involved in urban redevelopment, often partnering with prominent white churches and downtown hospitals in seeking to stabilize neighborhood change.16 Through their involvement with urban renewal projects, universities transitioned from being academic enclaves within cities to acting as one of the major forces shaping the urban landscape. However, like urban renewal efforts in general, expansion and redevelopment efforts involving universities were generally marked by community tension and disregard for residents.17 While university led urban redevelopment projects promised to remake the urban landscape in ways desired by universities and urban business elites, the practice also led to widespread residential displacement and conflict between powerful institutions and politically weak communities.18 In many cities, urban renewal programs predominantly affected, and indeed targeted, African American and low income minority communities. As Baldwin describes in the case of Chicago, ‘campus neighbors of color are prime targets of higher education urban development, not just because of proximity, but also because they live in zones of relatively cheap and divested land, while holding little political influence’. O’Mara echoes this observation, noting that universities and local residents approached neighborhood decline as ‘a matter of aesthetics rather than a reflection of deeply rooted economic inequities and systemic racism’.19 Recent years have seen the issue of race, and racial histories, loom large on university campuses around the United States. As geographers have documented, Confederate monuments and academic buildings named for racist political leaders have often been at the center of these debates, and rightly so, as these structures reproduce the university campus as an exclusionary space that is unwelcoming to faculty, staff, and students of color.20 Some universities have begun slowly coming to grips with how their own histories are deeply intertwined with slavery and the slave trade. In

some cases, universities have even taken steps to commemorate, or at least acknowledge, the role of slaves in building and maintaining university buildings, as well as memorializing the first African American students and faculty.21 However, universities are continuing to struggle in coming to terms with what Mustaffa refers to as systematic anti-Black oppression, a force that extends far beyond historic university integration into the slave economy.22 For example, in the post World War Two era, universities benefitted from the selective use of the GI Bill, which did little to increase college enrollment of black war veterans. Universities have also been the site of physical and mental violence against black students, staff, and faculty.23 Indeed, despite ‘institutional apologies and revised histories’, Stein argues that little has been done to ‘identify nor disrupt the structuring anti-Blackness that continues to organize US higher education’.24 And even with recent acknowledgment of the contributions of African Americans, many universities continue producing new landscapes of higher education that obscure the human costs associated with land acquisition to build new sports arenas and centers of innovation.25 It is in this context that we now turn our attention to the role of the University of South Carolina in urban renewal in the city of Columbia during the post war era. Fighting blight in Columbia: an ‘insidious cancer’ The post war years brought significant changes to the city of Columbia. Between 1940 and 1960, the population of Richland County (in which Columbia is located) nearly doubled, growing from 104,843 to 200,102. Much of this growth can be attributed to the expansion of nearby Fort Jackson during World War Two, and later to a region wide increase in manufacturing. While some population growth undoubtedly occurred in already urbanized areas of Columbia, this period was also marked by rapid suburban expansion and inner city disinvestment.26 As in other cities across the United States, the local government in Columbia was concerned about blight. In 1954, the Columbia City Council passed an ordinance that set safety standards for dwellings and formed the Urban Rehabilitation Commission to provide a local approach to urban redevelopment focused on slum clearance and enforcement of housing standards. The newly formed organization got to work. In the mid 1950s the Commission reported that the city had 7500 substandard dwellings and that roughly one fourth of the city’s residents lived in what they defined as slums. Slums, the Commission argued, were not only unsanitary and unsightly, but were also a drag on future economic development and investment in the city. To address these problems, the Commission sought to improve living conditions and open for ‘business and commercial development land which had been previously stagnated by its slum burden’.27 The Commission published photos of blighted areas, inspected housing conditions in slums, demolished substandard housing,

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Haar, Modern City, Modern Campus, 50e53. K.H. Ashworth, Urban Renewal and the University: A Tool for Campus Expansion and Neighborhood Improvement, The Journal of Higher Education 35 (1964) 493e96, https://doi.org/10.2307/1978844.; O’Mara, Beyond town and gown, 234e250. 17 Talen, Housing Demolition during Urban Renewal, 233e238; Teaford, Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath, 445e450. 18 D.C. Perry and W. Wiewel, eds., The University as Urban Developer: Case Studies and Analysis, New York, 2005, 3e22. 19 Baldwin, The ‘800-Pound Gargoyle’, 95; O’Mara, Beyond town and gown, 244. 20 J. Brasher, D.H. Alderman, and J. Inwood, Applying Critical Race and Memory Studies to Campus Place Naming Controversies: Toward a Socially Responsible Landscape Policy, Papers in Applied Geography 3 (2017) 292e307; D. Purifoy, Shrieking Sam, Scalawag Magazine, 2019, https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/ 2019/01/silent-sam-essay/last accessed 28 September 2019. 16

21 C.S. Wilder, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, New York, 2013. 22 J.B. Mustaffa, Mapping violence, naming life: a history of anti-Black oppression in the higher education system, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 30 (2017) 711e727. 23 B. Tomlinson and G. Lipsitz, Insubordinate spaces for intemperate times, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 35 (2013) 3e26. 24 S. Stein, Universities, slavery, and the unthought of anti-Blackness, Cultural Dynamics 28 (2016) 170. 25 D. Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape, Minneapolis, 1996, 13e17. 26 Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 392. 27 Columbia, South Carolina Urban Rehabilitation, 1959e1960: A Program of Action to Eliminate Columbia’s Slums, South Caroliniana Library, 1.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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Fig. 2. Clarence Dreher swings sledgehammer at blighted building. Source: used with permission from the South Caroliniana Library, 1200 Block Gervais Street, Joseph E. Winter Photograph Collection, University of South Carolina. http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/ cdm/ref/collection/jwp/id/873.

rehabilitated repairable homes, and aggressively campaigned for citizens to ‘fight blight’ through community action. In leading the fight against blight, city officials staged photos, such as one of Mayor J. Clarence Dreher Jr. enthusiastically swinging a sledgehammer at a condemned building, to garner public support for slum clearance (Fig. 2). During these campaigns, the city sponsored Fight Blight Month, which included a slogan contest, elementary school cleanups, house painting activities, and, most grandly, a citywide parade encouraging citizens to clean up blighted neighborhoods. The menace of blight d what Columbia Housing Authority administrator John A. Chase referred to as an ‘insidious cancer’ d was personified through a cartoon ghost known as ‘Creepy Blight’ that was plastered on billboards and posters throughout the city (Fig. 3).28 It is important to note that by the mid twentieth century the terms blight and slum were used by government officials as synonyms for African American neighborhoods.29 In Columbia, eighty one percent of the nonwhite population resided in six areas considered to be amongst the most blighted areas in the city.30 The desire to wipe out slums, therefore, coincided with a desire to wipe out black communities. While the city was fighting blight, the University of South Carolina was experiencing significant growth. In the post war era, the University aimed to become a nationally recognized research and education facility, which translated into ambitious plans for expansion. In 1945, the University was home to 2693 students. A decade later, this had climbed to 4657, and by 1965, enrollment had nearly doubled again to 9150.31 With more students came the need for more academic buildings and housing for the increased number of faculty and staff. As previously noted, the campus of the University of South Carolina is located within downtown Columbia directly southeast of the South Carolina State House. Until urban redevelopment commenced, the historic University campus was surrounded on two sides by the largely African American working class

28 J.A. Chase, Organized Efforts in Community Planning, 1965, Manuscripts of John Alexander Chase, folder 5, South Caroliniana Library; J.M. Sherrer III and Historic Columbia, Remembering Columbia, Charleston, 2015, 136e140. 29 Rothstein, The Color of Law, 127. 30 Columbia’s Neighborhoods, January 1965, SCUA. 31 University of South Carolina Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics, Enrollment Data, http://ipr.sc.edu/enrollment/last accessed 27 September 2019.

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Fig. 3. Fight Blight 1962 Billboards. Source: used with permission from the South Caroliniana Library, Fight Blight 1962 School Displays and Clean Up, Joseph E. Winter Photograph Collection, University of South Carolina. http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/ref/ collection/jwp/id/3447.

neighborhoods of Ward One and Wheeler Hill (Fig. 1). The University’s location adjacent to these largely black neighborhoods was not a minor factor in their expansion plans. In 1958, University president Robert L. Sumwalt created a faculty committee to organize long term development plans for the school. The proposed expansion initially targeted the white neighborhood to the east of campus but quickly shifted its view to the more affordable areas south and west of campus d Ward One and Wheeler Hill d which were overwhelmingly African American occupied.32 This shift in approach was likely facilitated by a letter President Sumwalt received from a local lawyer, David W. Robinson, concerning the expansion of the university. Robinson noted that most of the neighborhoods surrounding campus did not have racial restrictions in the housing deeds, which had caused ‘a tendency for Negroes to fill the vacuum’ left from white families moving to the suburbs. Thus, Robinson suggested that it would be favorable for the university to buy up some of this residential land as it comes on the market, creating a university controlled barrier between campus and these racially shifting neighborhoods.33 In March of 1959 d boosted by the recent creation of Section 112 d the University Board of Trustees passed a resolution requesting the city of Columbia to initiate its first urban renewal project, which would be a joint venture with the University. The targeted land was a four block area on the border between Wheeler Hill and Ward One. This area was extended in 1960 by two blocks, reaching into Wheeler Hill. The city’s first urban renewal project was received excitedly among city officials, and the Columbia Housing Authority (CHA) created a Citizens’ Advisory Committee of around twenty local leaders, including President Sumwalt, to act as a liaison between the CHA and the local community.34 In 1960, after the announcement of the urban renewal project, The State

32 Letter to John A. Chase from William H. Patterson, 30 May 1960, Office of the President, Robert Sumwalt, 1959e60, Box 2, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 33 Letter to Robert L. Sumwalt from David W. Robinson, 20 August 1958, Office of the President, Robert Sumwalt, 1958e59, Box 2, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 34 Minutes of the First Regular Meeting of the Citizens’ Advisory Committee: University of South Carolina Extension Urban Renewal Project, 25 October 1960, Office of the President, Robert Sumwalt, 1960e61, Box 2, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1; Letter to Robert L. Sumwalt from S.L. Latimer, Jr., 7 September 1960, Office of the President, Robert Sumwalt, 1960e61, Box 2, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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newspaper reported that in keeping with the public spirit of Section 112, none of the redeveloped land would be for private use.35 The plan called for the University and the city to acquire land parcels in the urban renewal area based on negotiations with property owners; however, if these did not result in a satisfactory agreement, the University planned to use eminent domain to acquire land.36 To facilitate land acquisition, the university established the Carolina Research and Development Foundation (CR&D) in 1965. CR&D was a quasi-official, nonprofit organization used to acquire land on behalf of the University, which could not directly buy land without approval by the South Carolina General Assembly.37 Once CR&D was established, the University and city worked quickly to acquire property in the Ward One area, and was able to clear enough land to build a new sports arena in 1968, with the additional cleared land serving as a parking lot until a second arena was built in 2002. Many residents of Ward One were displaced to hastily constructed and poorly managed housing projects in other parts of the city to make way for University expansion. In 1965, during a public forum with the CHA, dozens of relocated Ward One residents walked out, stating that the Housing Authority administrator ‘refused to talk to them’ about the mismanagement of public housing, poor condition of many of the units, and the high cost of rent that forced many of the black inhabitants back into slums.38 However, while University acquisition of property in Ward One was a relatively rapid (albeit incredibly disruptive) process, their activities in Wheeler Hill were marked by long periods of inactivity, confusion, and obfuscation. University plans for Wheeler Hill were always unclear to those living in the neighborhood, and thus led to decades of uncertainty as to how, why, and for what purposes d public or private d the neighborhood would be renewed. In what follows, we focus on how the University played a key role in the slow destruction of Wheeler Hill by variously employing a mix of paternalism, neglect, and ultimately, deception. Setting their sights on Wheeler Hill Wheeler Hill is located just south of the University of South Carolina’s central campus and today comprises about four city blocks. In the 1950s, however, the neighborhood called Wheeler Hill was larger, bleeding into the aforementioned Ward One. Wheeler Hill’s name derives from Dr. Ezra Wheeler, who came to Columbia from Ohio in the 1870s. He purchased large amounts of real estate, some on what was known as Pickens Hill, where he built a home, and the area was informally renamed for him.39 In 1871, he sold a portion of the land on Wheeler Hill to the St. James African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church for one dollar, with a deed stipulating that the land may only be used for an AME church.40 By the end of the 1800s many black families began living in the area, attracted by the nearby industrial and domestic jobs, the growing Ward One neighborhood, and the community created by

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City Joins in Move To Get Land for USC, The State, 18 February 1960, 26. University of South Carolina Extension No. 2 Urban Renewal Area S.C. R-5 Columbia, South Carolina: Urban Redevelopment Plan, December 1964, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 29, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 37 Landlord of the Hill, The Columbia Record, 30 August 1976, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 19. 38 A.N. Bouknight, ‘Casualty of Progress’: The Ward One Community and Urban Renewal, Columbia, South Carolina, 1964e1974, University of South Carolina thesis, 2010, 20e21. 39 D.P. Thompson, Wheeler Hill and Other Poems, PhD Thesis, University of South Carolina, 1987, iii-vii; L. Dannhardt, Wheeler Hill Getting Closer, The State, 18 October 1986, 35. 40 B. Reilly, Church Draws upon Its Roots, The State, 8 August 1996, 52. 36

the presence of African American churches. By 1950, over 200 families lived in Wheeler Hill, and the community was home to local businesses, several churches, and, central to the neighborhood and the black community in Columbia, Booker T. Washington High School. The high school opened in 1916 and became the only African American high school in the city. The school, located on Wheat Street on the periphery of Wheeler Hill, attracted black educators and students from across the city and state, and was an important symbol of the African American community in a largely segregated era. While Wheeler Hill was geographically unmarked in the mid twentieth century, it was physically and psychologically separated from the neighboring wealthy white communities, called Wales Garden and Myrtle Court, and especially from the University of South Carolina. Dorothy Perry Thompson, a poet who grew up on Wheeler Hill, recalled that she ‘quickly learned the significance of the Hill’s location … I understood that I could not cross Wheat Street at the bottom of the hill. That was the dividing line between our territory and the University of South Carolina campus’. Wheeler Hill was starkly separated from Wales Garden and Myrtle Court residents by a tall, vine covered wall adorned with a sign that read ‘Keep Out’. As Thompson noted, the black residents of Wheeler Hill were geographically segregated so that ‘surrounded by all of these elements of whiteness, the people of the Hill respected the spatial limits’.41 Because of its residents and its self contained location, Wheeler Hill was a self sufficient, vibrant community of working class African Americans. Residents, such as Gloria Jackson Elliot, lived in a community where ‘everybody knew each other. It was very closeknit. The next-door neighbors would share with one another what they had’.42 To many Columbians, the neighborhood was on the wrong side of the tracks d the Southern Railway/Norfolk Southern railway literally runs through the neighborhood d but to those who lived in Wheeler Hill, it was a respectable community. Despite being next door to the University of South Carolina, residents were unable to even aspire to attend the University, which refused to admit African American students until 1963. All the same, oral histories portray ‘The Hill’ as a proud community that produced lawyers, educators, ministers, doctors, postal workers, and bankers.43 In the words of one resident, Wheeler Hill was ‘a smorgasbord of so many people, so many things, and so many different personalities’ d a community of poor but generous and fiercely proud people.44 However, to the Urban Rehabilitation Commission, Wheeler Hill contained many of the characteristics of what they classified as a slum. The neighborhood consisted primarily of small, wooden shotgun style houses, unpaved roads, and little green space (Fig. 4). Families often lived in these small homes without plumbing, electricity, and proper sanitation. While there were some homeowners on Wheeler Hill, most residents rented from absentee landlords, which contributed to infrequent repairs, overcrowding, and housing code violations. Even though Wheeler Hill’s location near downtown and its skyline views made the neighborhood prime real estate in Columbia, in the 1950s and 1960s it fit the

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Thompson, Wheeler Hill and Other Poems, iii-vii. Interview With Mrs. Gloria Jackson Elliot and Ms. Crissandra Elliott, June 2002, Lessie Jo Frazier collection, 2002e2003, transcripts of interviews, South Caroliniana Library, 1. 43 Transcription of Interview with Mrs. Celia Phelps Martin, 25 June 2002, Lessie Jo Frazier collection, 2002e2003, transcripts of interviews, South Caroliniana Library, 1e2; C. Farrington, Special Years at Wheeler Hill Remembered, The State, 17 July 1994, 7. 44 Interview With Mrs. Gloria Jackson Elliot and Ms. Crissandra Elliott, June 2002, SCL, 9. 42

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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Fig. 4. Rice Street in Wheeler Hill, 1958. Source: used with permission from the South Caroliniana Library, 1523e1527 Rice Street, Joseph E. Winter Photograph Collection, University of South Carolina. http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/jwp/id/1942.

profile of a black occupied, poor, and blighted neighborhood, and, like Ward One, the University saw an opportunity to acquire this land for urban renewal. According to Harold Brunton, the Vice President of Operations and mastermind behind the University’s expansion, the objectives for redeveloping Wheeler Hill were threefold: to ‘eliminate an extremely blighted, slum area’ of about 16 square blocks in the ‘heart of the City’, offer residents an opportunity to move into better housing, and provide land for University expansion. The aforementioned city sponsored urban renewal project only included the land west of Pickens Street in Ward One, as it was decided that the overall University expansion project would be best completed in several stages.45 In the 1965e1985 Long-range Campus Expansion Plan, the University announced that property acquired in Ward One through urban renewal was ‘already inadequate’ to accommodate the student population and increasing enrollment. According to this planning document, the University intended to use Wheeler Hill and immediate surroundings for student housing. However, by the late 1960s, as the University expanded westward into Ward One, it became apparent that the land east of Pickens Street was not needed immediately and ‘it may never be required’. However, the planning document advised that the University should still buy properties in that area as they become available to ‘protect itself’.46 Thus began the University’s piecemeal acquisition of properties in the Wheeler Hill neighborhood via CR&D. The issue of property acquisition displacing residents immediately came to the fore. The 1954 Housing Act, which authorized and funded urban renewal, mandated that urban renewal projects needed to have a ‘workable program’ to relocate displaced residents in order to receive federal funding.47 It is important here to note that in June of 1959, Irving G. McNayr, the Columbia City Planner, wrote to the CHA assuring them that Columbia indeed had adequate housing at comparable rates to relocate displaced people from the urban renewal area, and thus could do so without the

45 H. Brunton, A Plan for Campus Development, 1965, Records, Office of the Provost, William H. Patterson, 1969e1970, Box 1, South Caroliniana University Archives, 16. 46 University of South Carolina Long Range Physical Development Plan, 1969e1970, Records, Office of the Provost, William H. Patterson, 1969e1970, Box 1, South Caroliniana University Archives. 47 Talen, Housing Demolition during Urban Renewal, 236; Five Years of Slum Elimination through Citizen Action: Columbia, S.C., Department of Urban Rehabilitation, South Caroliniana Library.

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need for new public housing units.48 However, by 1962, University led renewal efforts stalled because there was ‘no housing in Columbia available to re-locate the people’.49 In 1968, the Subcommittee on Minority Group Housing for the CHA reported that the city had a ‘critical shortage of low-rent housing’ that was prohibiting the Urban Rehabilitation Commission from functioning properly regarding residential relocation.50 The city’s eagerness to initiate the urban renewal projects in Ward One overlooked the lack of available relocation services, displacing dozens of families without alternative housing options. Within Wheeler Hill, residents’ reaction to the University’s project was complex. At the outset of the urban renewal project, John A. Chase, the administrator of the Columbia Housing Authority, expressed he was ‘particularly pessimistic as to the reaction of Negro leaders to further relocation in that area’.51 University officials had long been concerned about the ‘friction’ between the African American community and University students, especially around Booker T. Washington High School. This heightened as the University began expanding south into Ward One during the 1960s.52 Once expansion plans into Wheeler Hill became public, many neighborhood residents began vocally opposing the University’s plans, straining relations between residents and the University-City urban renewal coalition. More broadly, the University’s urban renewal efforts occurred amidst the Civil Rights Movement, which engaged much of the black and white communities in Columbia during the 1950s and 1960s. While Columbia did not experience the mass protests and violence seen in other southern cities such as Birmingham, Little Rock, and Oxford, the fight for civil rights saw black Columbians stage nonviolent sit ins, marches, and protests to fight for public integration, black enfranchisement, and school desegregation.53 In 1962, the city of Columbia approved gradual public integration and public schools began desegregating, albeit at a slow pace. In January 1963, Harvey Gantt became the first African American to enroll at Clemson University, followed by the admission of the first black students since Reconstruction at the University of South Carolina that fall.54 While much of the local civil rights activism focused on hot button issues such as political enfranchisement, school desegregation, and economic opportunity, black activists in Columbia actively opposed the University’s acquisition of property in black neighborhoods and particularly the decision of the school board to close Booker T. Washington High School in 1974.55 A year before its

48 Letter to the Columbia Housing Authority from Irving G. McNayr, 30 June 1959, Office of the President, Robert Sumwalt, 1959e60, Box 2, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 49 University of South Carolina Buildings and Grounds Committee, 17 August 1962, Records, Office of the Provost, William H. Patterson, 1962e1963, Box 1, South Caroliniana University Archives. 50 Report of the Subcommittee on Minority Group Housing to The Citizens Advisory Committee, 23 October 1968, Manuscripts of John Alexander Chase, folder 8, South Caroliniana Library. 51 Memorandum for Record, 21 January 1966, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 28, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 52 Letter to Harold Brunton: Rationale for Purchase of Booker T. Washington High School, 13 May 1964, Records, Office of the Provost, William H. Patterson, 1963e1964, Box 1, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 53 Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 413e430. 54 Lesesne, A History of the University of South Carolina, 143; Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 423. 55 M. M. Simkins, A Protest Against the 1969 Award Being Given to Columbia, 1 November 1969, Manuscripts of the Richland County Citizen’s Committee, folder 4, South Caroliniana Library; W.C. Goodwin, BTW Rezoning Hearing Is Rousing, The State, 22 March 1974, 29; Oral History Interview with Modjeska Simkins, 28 July 1976, Interview G-0056-2, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0056-2/G-0056-2.html last accessed 27 September 2019.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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closing, the school board had announced that the city would ‘dispose of the [school] property, probably to the University of South Carolina’.56 The Board cited a declining student population that made it economically necessary to close some district schools, and Booker T. Washington was chosen because of the large cost needed to renovate the building. Many community members argued that the district was not willing to invest in the historically black school and fought against the decision at city hearings.57 The fight to save the high school and Wheeler Hill were linked. Significant opposition to both came from Modjeska Monteith Simkins, a former teacher at Booker T. Washington and leading civil rights activist in South Carolina. Simkins wrote to Look magazine protesting Columbia’s consideration for the 1969 All-America City Award for excellence in city development, and described the University’s activities in Wheeler Hill as a ‘nefarious scheme’. Simkins further identified questionable patterns of land prices paid by CR&D and the CHA, and provided evidence that the University and city were seeking to manipulate ‘unsuspecting Negroes’. Blacks, she noted, were being paid as little as forty cents per square foot for land in Wheeler Hill while whites received one dollar and fifty cents per square foot.58 Since most Wheeler Hill residents were tenants and not homeowners, most had no choice but to leave when their mostly white landlords sold their property to the city or CR&D. Some homeowners in Wheeler Hill refused to sell, such as Mozelle William Powell and Bernice Martin, who in oral histories stated that they encouraged their neighbors to ignore the city’s threats to condemn their houses and force them to move.59 Some residents doubted the legality and methods of the University’s acquisition but felt they had little political or economic power to oppose it. For example, Reverend J.P. Neal of Antioch Baptist Church, who rejected CR&D’s offers for years until finally selling the church in 1976 and relocating to northeast Columbia, says church members were upset over the University’s plan but ‘knew we couldn’t do too much about it. We were only tenants’.60 Many residents felt in the dark about USC and the city’s plans for Wheeler Hill. As in many universities across the United States at the time, the University attempted to ease some frustration among residents. While the rapid pace of university expansion continued nationwide, many also ‘softened their hard edges with new social outreach programs’.61 In Columbia, the University organized an ad hoc committee comprised of faculty to evaluate expansion plans. The committee warned Vice President of Operations Harold Brunton that with the project’s current plan, ‘tension and antagonisms already present towards the University would be seriously exacerbated leading perhaps to a very unpleasant and dangerous situation’ in Wheeler Hill. They suggested that the project have a two way communication line between the University and residents, and they began contacting residents to discuss the project with Brunton.62 The University also attempted to abate tensions with the Booker T. Washington High School community by allowing the high school

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Goodwin, BTW Rezoning Hearing Is Rousing, 29. Goodwin, BTW Rezoning Hearing Is Rousing, 29. 58 Simkins, A Protest Against the 1969 Award Being Given to Columbia, SCL. 59 In Depth-Interview: With Mrs. Mozelle William Powell, July 2002, Lessie Jo Frazier collection, 2002e2003, transcripts of interviews, South Caroliniana Library, 11. 60 R. Templeton, Confusion Exists in Wheeler Hill Project, The Carolina Reporter, 15 April 1980, 6. 61 O’Mara, Beyond town and gown, 245. 62 Letter to Thomas F. Jones from Donald E. Weatherbee, 31 March 1969, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e2. 57

students to use the University’s new athletic fields located across from the high school (a product of the earlier Ward One urban renewal project), and by opening a playground in Wheeler Hill for children.63 A fleeting, if ill executed, paternalistic University led endeavor known as Project Unity (standing for UNiversity and communITY) was created to ‘bring about “Human Renewal” and strengthen the human resources of the Wheeler Hill community’. The program, through adult education programs, sought to ‘help individuals recognize and identify personal and community problems and successfully cope with these situations through the development of realistic alternatives’.64 However, Project Unity’s bingo nights did little to help a community that was being slowly suffocated by an outside institution. While the University often attempted to portray themselves as a good neighbor to Wheeler Hill, their slow acquisition of property remained the primary destabilizing force in the neighborhood. Indeed, despite their overtures and the slowness with which property acquisition proceeded in the late 1960s, the University’s plans for the neighborhood were laid bare in 1968 when the University’s Board of Trustees passed a resolution expressing the urgency of undertaking the project, and in a letter to the city University president Thomas F. Jones reiterated that ‘For many years it has been the goal of the University and the City of Columbia to attempt to wipe out the entire slum area of approximately twelve blocks known as Wheeler Hill’.65 Renewal in Wheeler Hill gains momentum As the University continued to gradually acquire properties for redevelopment, some steadfast residents d primarily homeowners who had refused to sell to the University d created the Wheeler Hill Community Association. Chaired by Bernice Martin and Fannie Phelps Adams, the Association sought to work with the city and the University to make residential needs known. The organization aimed to keep the neighborhood residential, improve housing and living conditions, improve city services such as street lights and garbage removal, and bring the neighborhood up to safe and aesthetically adequate standards.66 The residents began meeting with officials from the University, CR&D, and the city. Years of uncertainty about the University’s plans made residents still living in Wheeler Hill reluctant to improve their homes, which they feared could be condemned or acquired. Thus, the Wheeler Hill Community Association requested that the University provide a clear statement of their objectives for the neighborhood. The University vision for Wheeler Hill had begun shifting in the early 1970s. After realizing that they would likely not use much of the land for student housing, the University explored other uses, such as selling the land for fraternity and sorority houses, but concrete plans were never made.67 Starting in the early 1970s, the

63 Letter to Edward E. Taylor from Harold Brunton, 24 September 1969, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 64 Project Unity U.S.C. Wheeler Hill News, October 1970, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e4. 65 Letter to Members of the Columbia City Council and Columbia Housing Authority from Thomas F. Jones, 22 February 1968, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e2. 66 Letter to the Carolina Research and Development Board from Bernice B. Martin, 5 July 1976, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e2. 67 J. Vaughan, Greeks Couldn’t Afford Land, The Gamecock, 24 April 1981, 1; The University would ultimately provide a long-term lease for Greek organizations to construct new houses on land acquired in Ward One during urban renewal.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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University and the city were drawn to the idea of using the land for private homes, and finally agreed that the land should be used for a new residential development. The property owned by CR&D d which was about sixty one percent of Wheeler Hill in 1977 d would be demolished and redeveloped into a high density, low rise residential neighborhood.68 In 1975, the University publicly announced its plan to redevelop Wheeler Hill from a ‘slum’ area to a new residential neighborhood, although the precise composition of that new residential neighborhood was an open question. From the beginning of the redevelopment project, the University and the residents had a differing vision for the future of Wheeler Hill. Bernice Martin informed CR&D that ‘residents would like to see area redeveloped as a multi-ethnic neighborhood’ and that ‘home owners who have maintained their property wish to remain here on their site’. She also explained that several former residents would like to acquire lots so that they can return to Wheeler Hill after redevelopment.69 Well aware of how a redeveloped d and whiter d neighborhood would be valued, residents made clear that the new homes should reflect a reasonable cost to avoid ‘the pricing of units in such a way to attract only older, affluent citizens’. Residents advocated that the present owner-occupants could choose to remain in their homes or have the ability to purchase new property in the area, and that low income public housing could be incorporated into the development. Many residents were optimistic for the redevelopment, hoping to upgrade the struggling neighborhood while retaining racial, economic, and social diversity, as well as the character of ‘the Hill’.70 The University and city agreed with Wheeler Hill residents on several aspects of the redevelopment plan: they also wanted to promote a single family and owner occupied neighborhood, keep the area residential and not commercial, and promote a healthy, attractive landscape. However, for the University, the goal was the creation of a neighborhood of high density, low rise private housing and to ‘either recover the investment it has made in the property or possibly even make some profit’.71 More discrete, but no less important, was the University’s desire to purge Wheeler Hill of its African American identity and replace it with a ‘compatible’ neighborhood for the University. For the city of Columbia, the goal was to create good housing with a strong tax base that would support nearby downtown shopping districts and provide a strong community for inner city schools (the latter, a bitter point amongst the African American community after Booker T. Washington High School had been closed and largely dismantled). Given these distinct visions, the University and city began to clash with residents, as the limited financial capacity of residents was in direct conflict with the city’s desire to fill its coffers and the University’s urge to recover its investment. The Wheeler Hill redevelopment plan attracted attention throughout the city, including the nearby middle to upper income white neighborhoods that were keenly interested in redeveloping Wheeler Hill into an attractive downtown neighborhood much like their own. In 1976, the Central Midlands

68 Letter to George Curry from Harold Brunton, 23 November 1977, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e2. 69 Letter to the Carolina Research and Development Board from Bernice B. Martin, 5 July 176, SCUA, 1e2. 70 Letter to Robert Gossler from Bernice Martin and Philip G. Grose, Jr., 17 December 1976, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e5. 71 Letter to Sidney F. Thomas, Jr. from Harold Brunton, 11 December 1975, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1.

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Regional Planning Council hired Kyu Sung Woo, an architect and urban planner from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to conduct a study and produce a redevelopment plan for Wheeler Hill that would appease all parties.72 Initially, some Wheeler Hill residents remained hopeful that the redevelopment would bring improved infrastructure and a better quality of life. Still, many residents, with past actions by the University fresh in their mind, were doubtful that the community would be preserved. Some residents were told that their homes would be unaffected by the redevelopment but eventually sold their homes when pressure mounted from increasing property values and taxes. Since the beginning of redevelopment planning, a priority for the Wheeler Hill community was that former residents would be able to move back once the project was completed. During the course of negotiations with the University and city, residents watched as the number of proposed rent assisted housing units decrease from fifty to sixteen.73 The Columbia City Council approved the Wheeler Hill proposal in November 1977. The project had an estimated cost of $981,000, and the city invested $500,000 in revenue sharing funds with the wish to regain it after the sale of property. Once announced, the Wheeler Hill redevelopment project was enthusiastically received throughout much of the Columbia community. The project was promoted as the creation of ‘an ideal, planned community combining public housing with upperincome homes’.74 The city publicized what they described as a visionary neighborhood combining different races, classes, and ages with innovative urban design. The Columbia Housing Authority described the project as a ‘Renaissance in public housing’ and urban planners hailed the project for incorporating mixed use design, creating narrow, pedestrian friendly streets to decrease through traffic, and taking advantage of the location’s distinctive topography. Columbia Mayor Kirkman Finlay Jr., a fervent supporter of the project, praised the plan for demonstrating the appeal of inner city neighborhoods during a time when American municipal governments were longing for people to move back into cities from the suburbs. The successful ‘renewal’ of Wheeler Hill, it was thought, would be a model for neighborhood revitalization in Columbia and cities across the United States. University officials trumpeted how the project was an example of the University, city, and residents across neighborhoods successfully working together.75 The project would be implemented in two stages. The city would oversee site improvements like demolishing homes, rerouting and paving streets and sidewalks, and providing sewage systems, and individual lots would go on sale to private individuals through CR&D.76 The Columbia Housing Authority announced that it would build sixteen units of public housing on Pickens Street, a compromise with residents who advocated for low income housing

72 Contract for Professional Services, 22 October 1976, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 73 W. Lester, Few Return to Wheeler Hill, The State, 20 April 1981, 12. 74 HUD Official Leans Toward Housing Site, The Columbia Record, 26 January 1979, 7-B. 75 S.A. Johnson Jr., Wheeler Hill Community Only a Memory, The Carolina Reporter, 6; Wheeler Hill Project May Become A Model, The State, 28 June 1980, 14. 76 Letter to James B. Holderman from Graydon V. Olive, Jr., 22 November 1977, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1e2; L.C. Owens, Unanimous Approval Given Wheeler Hill Development, The State, 10 November 1977, 16; K. Burchstead, Wheeler Hill Project: USC, City ‘In Complete Accord,’ The Columbia Record, 25 January 1978, 10; Memorandum for Record: Wheeler Hill Project, 1 March 1978, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives 1e2.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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with the hope that many former residents could return to the neighborhood.77 While the University and the city agreed to the public housing in order to gain residents’ approval of the project, it became evident that the University was well aware that the price of individual lots would prevent anyone without ‘moderate to better incomes’ from affording them. As early as 1977, Columbians began expressing interest in buying property to construct a home once the redevelopment was complete, and the University boasted of the plan’s popularity.78 Even though the University had long stated that they sought to make a profit on their investment in private, publicly the University was coy about its financial goals. They soon came under fire from Wheeler Hill residents and some city officials for CR&D’s proposed sale prices, which were based on a per lot cost of $21,000. While CR&D argued this was market cost, Columbia City Councilman Paul Bennett declared the cost ‘unaffordable to the majority of Columbia citizens’.79 In 1980, Wheeler Hill residents criticized the method of the public property sales, arguing that CR&D’s proposal to sell only ten out of the fifty five lots at a time would discourage a diversity of buyers and ultimately result in an upper income white neighborhood.80 Ultimately, when the first phase of lots went on sale in 1981, empty lots were priced at $20,000 to $30,000 apiece. The cost of buying a lot and building a home was at least $65,000 to $80,000, which dismayed current residents and effectively priced out anyone hoping to return.81 As one disillusioned former resident said, the project was ‘feasible for millionaires but not for us poor people’.82 After a somewhat slow start to the sale of land d in part due to the high interest rates and slow housing market that characterized the early 1980s d lots in the new Wheeler Hill development steadily sold. Construction of multistory Charleston style homes and townhouses quickly followed, and a new generation of upper income professionals, politicians, and families moved into the exclusive downtown neighborhood. What used to be unpaved streets and shotgun houses became driveways for high end cars and perfectly manicured lawns. The community was praised by Mayor Finlay and city officials as a rare, desirable, single family residential neighborhood in the heart of the city, ‘designed to show residents that they can have their urban cake and eat it too’.83

Conclusion Wheeler Hill is today unrecognizable from what it was in the 1950s. Large houses line the narrow streets with small, landscaped yards, and a set of townhouses guarded by a vine covered wall gives the neighborhood an exclusive aura. The neighborhood has a new streetscape, and is smaller than it once was, and unlike the residents of Wheeler Hill before urban renewal, residents can freely walk to the University campus without fear of conflict. Within the

77 Housing Authority Planning Projects for 48 New Units, The State, 12 August 1978, 21. 78 Letter to Harold Brunton from William S. Garner, Jr., 7 July 1977, Records, Vice President of Operations, 1954e1989, Harold Brunton, Box 30, South Caroliniana University Archives, 1. 79 K. King, Council Chastises USC’s Development Foundation, The State, 24 April 1980, 31. 80 K. Burchstead, City Council Awards Park-Planning Contract, The Columbia Record, 23 April 1980, 33. 81 W. Lester, Lots In Wheeler Hill Development To Go On Sale Sunday, The State, 11 April 1981, 13; Verdict Not In Yet For Wheeler Hill, The State, 24 April 1981, 22. 82 R. Templeton, Confusion Exists in Wheeler Hill Project, 15 April 1980, 6. 83 B. Bryant, Downtown Proves a Nice Place to Live, The State, 5 May 1985, 75.

neighborhood, however, several of the old homes and the St. James AME Church still stand. There even remains several undeveloped plots of land, a reminder of the homes that once stood and the attempt to erase the old Wheeler Hill from the landscape. In 2017, and in response to several protests on the University of South Carolina campus, the University held a ceremony to unveil a plaque that commemorates the role of slaves in the construction, and later maintenance and operation, of the University campus. In 2018, the University unveiled a prominent statue of Richard Greener, the first African American professor at the University that was hired, and just years later fired, during Reconstruction.84 While we applaud these actions by the University, the foregoing demonstrates that recent commemorations should only be the starting point for considering the full extent of how universities have had disproportionately negative impacts on communities of color, particularly through urban renewal. As O’Mara describes it, while universities have prided ‘themselves on their racial liberalism … university administrators and their allies in government envisioned these renewed communities as spaces as highly educated and middle-class as the campuses themselves’.85 In this article, we have analyzed the urban renewal of Wheeler Hill in order the illustrate the ‘historical force of white privilege in shaping the use and identity of space and place’.86 In redeveloping Wheeler Hill, the University sought to make the surrounding areas whiter, and therefore more in line with the norms of institutions of higher education in the U.S. As South Carolina civil rights activist Modjeska Simkins stated in an oral history, the closing of Booker T. Washington High School and the redevelopment of Ward One and Wheeler Hill were all part of the same plan: ‘They wanted to take over [Booker T. Washington] for the University of South Carolina. They’ve got all the Negroes, big Negro section over on the area where the University was moving. Some of those people were living in property that had been left them by their parents since back in slavery. Just cleaned it out. They set up an independent land purchasing thing … that went in and bamboozled and hoodwinked a number of the Negroes to give them different prices for their land. And then they moved down to everything but the school … Then they decided to gobble that in, and we couldn’t do anything about it’.87 Ultimately, the case of Wheeler Hill is not limited to historical analysis. Despite supposedly benevolent intentions and claims that they are furthering the public good, urban universities continue collaborate with cities to expand, acquire, and reshape their surrounding landscapes. Universities are part of initiatives for economic renewal, historic preservation, and modern development in urban areas, things that can bring positive change to local communities and their inhabitants.88 However, as this article makes clear, university led urban development has also been a tool of racial oppression and exclusion. How universities should best account for the sum of their past

84 J. Lovegrove, University of South Carolina unveils plaques recognizing slave contributions to campus, Charleston Post and Courier, 5 December 2017, 005; B. Marchant, USC’s first African-American professor now honored by statue on campus, The State, 21 February 2018. 85 O’Mara, Beyond town and gown, 244. 86 D.H. Alderman and A.E. Modlin Jr., The Historical Geography of Racialized Landscapes, in: C.E. Colten and G.L. Buckley (Eds), North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the Twenty-First Century, Lanham, 2014, 276. 87 Oral History Interview with Modjeska Simkins, 28 July 1976, Interview G-00562, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). 88 Perry and Wiewel, The University as Urban Developer, 3e25.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008

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actions is an important but still open question. Yet as universities across the United States continue to remake urban landscapes to suit their purposes, it is crucial that recognition of the ways in which past initiatives to reshape cities have negatively impacted communities of color remains at the center of the conversation. This article demonstrates that a university’s own archives can help

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to shed light on that history. Acknowledgements This work was supported by University of South Carolina Honors College Exploration Grant.

Please cite this article as: S. Kahler, C. Harrison, ‘Wipe out the entire slum area’: university-led urban renewal in Columbia, South Carolina, 1950e1985, Journal of Historical Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2019.10.008