{"id":105,"date":"2019-07-01T09:12:12","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T09:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/?p=105"},"modified":"2019-12-04T17:01:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T17:01:24","slug":"fleeing-downtown-white-western-suburbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/2019\/07\/01\/fleeing-downtown-white-western-suburbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleeing Downtown: White Western Suburbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Acadia Roher<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My walk over to the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture from the free parking area downtown always takes me under the thundering overpasses and exit ramps of I-30. Long before the debate over the 30 Crossing project, this twisting network of steel and concrete was at the center of intense public discussion. The proliferation of superhighways cutting through Little Rock facilitated rapid suburban development and white flight to the west.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As urban renewal, the GI Bill, school\nintegration, and the post-war boom years sped the construction of white suburbs\nin west Little Rock, interstate highways came into vogue. Eisenhower began his\nmassive interstate system construction in 1956 after the passage of the Federal\nAid Highway Act. By 1960, over 75% of American households owned cars. Some\nLittle Rock business leaders argued that city growth depended upon the ease of\nwhite collar workers commuting between their suburban homes and downtown\noffices. Others were focused on building up downtown and remained critical of\nthe westward sprawl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Redevelopment map from 1969 showing plan for highway interchanges, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The developers William Rector and Elbert Fausett led the charge for westward expansion. Their Park Plaza and Town and Country shopping centers motivated the subdivisions and strip malls that spread quickly down West Markham, Rodney Parham, and University Avenue. Thousands of white residents jumped at the chance to relocate to new, bigger homes in segregated areas with predominantly white schools. They were egged on by real estate agents using blockbusting tactics to speed the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Park Plaza Shopping Center in 1965, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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New home in Plaza Heights, adjacent to Park Plaza Shopping Center in 1958, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many of us have personal and family stories that intersect with the development of Little Rock.  Understanding the context of what was happening at those points in history can help explain the trajectory of our ancestors\u2019 lives and our own. It may be that you live in a home that was built during this time. Maybe your family was forced to move in one of the waves of demolition from urban renewal or highway construction. Anyone living or working in Little Rock in the 1950s and 60s would have been impacted by the major changes occurring in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My connection to Little Rock begins in 1961, the year my Pappaw got a job with ArkLa Gas, the utility you might now recognize as Centerpoint Energy on your gas bill each month. He moved his young family from Louisiana to Little Rock for the opportunity. While looking for housing, Mammaw recalled that realtors would only show them certain neighborhoods in white areas of town. This illegal tactic known as racial steering was standard practice then, yet another tool to ensure that residential segregation took hold. The white western suburbs were in a stage of rapid development at this moment in time, and my grandparents decided to build a home on Flag Road in the new Briarwood subdivision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Briarwood home for sale in 1958 with ArkLa Gas advertisement, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Little did they know a massive interstate\nproject would shortly come barreling through the neighborhood, pushing them and\nmany neighbors to homes further west. Historian Ben Johnson wrote,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Although both the state highway department and the federal transportation agency concluded the project\u2019s expense outweighed its merit, Wilbur Mills in 1970 browbeat the bureaucrats to insert the expressway into the interstate highway system. Mills assured constituents that the freeway that eventually bore his name would lift downtown from the doldrums.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I-630 construction began, plowing a dusty wound through the city. Many agree with Johnson, who wrote that \u201cthe planning and construction of the east-west freeway undermined the African-American commercial center along Ninth Street with the same effectiveness of the formal urban renewal projects.\u201d To this day, the interstate cements the dividing line between rich and poor, Black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Home at 10th and S. Arch that was demolished to make way for I-630, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Planned route of I-630 through West Ninth Street from a preliminary engineering report,
credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Metroplan records<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The interstate project did meet with\nresistance, but as Darcy Pumphrey wrote in her 2013 thesis on the movement, it\nwas \u201ctoo little too late.\u201d Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now\n(ACORN) led the charge with grassroots organizing and litigation. Their efforts\nsucceeded in causing significant delays and forcing more careful consideration\nof aspects of the project, but ultimately failed to stop the expressway\ncompletely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Newly constructed I-630 highway overpass at Fair Park in 1969, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Earl Saunders, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The massive expansion of the city that began during the urban renewal era stressed city services and exacerbated divisions in the social fabric. According to Johnson, \u201cover the final forty years of the century, the city\u2019s population density dropped from 4500 persons per square mile to fifteen hundred. In 1998 the Sierra Club concluded that Little Rock suffered from one of the worst cases of urban sprawl among small cities in the nation.\u201d With Black residents pushed east, white residents filling the western suburbs, a hollowed-out city center, and intimidating highways dividing neighborhoods, residential segregation was fully in place by 1975. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Approximate city boundaries from 1880 to 1970, credit: UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Metroplan records. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For more information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCommuting in America 2013: The National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends,\u201d American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. https:\/\/traveltrends-dev.transportation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/62\/2019\/07\/ES_Executive-Summary_CAES-4_web.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHistory of the Interstate Highway System,\u201d\nU.S. Department of Transportation. https:\/\/www.fhwa.dot.gov\/interstate\/history.cfm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson, Ben F., III. Arkansas in Modern\nAmerica, 1930\u20131999. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koon, David. \u201cWilbur Mills’ wall: I-630, Little Rock and 25 years in a divided city.\u201d Arkansas Times<\/em>, January 26, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lackey, Joseph. “Blockbusting,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas.<\/em>
http:\/\/www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net\/encyclopedia\/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=11959<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pumphrey, Darcy. An Interstate Runs Through It: The Construction of Little Rock’s Interstate 630 and the Fight to Stop It. https:\/\/works.bepress.com\/darcy_pumphrey\/1\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomason and Associates Preservation Planners. \u201cPost-World War II Residential Development of Little Rock, Arkansas, 1945-1970.\u201d https:\/\/www.littlerock.gov\/media\/3715\/post-ww2-residental-context-sections-i-ii.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By Acadia Roher My walk over to the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture from the free parking area downtown always takes me under the thundering overpasses and exit ramps of I-30. Long before the debate over…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n\t\tContinue reading “Fleeing Downtown: White Western Suburbs”<\/span>…\t<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\t\n\t\tContinue reading “Fleeing Downtown: White Western Suburbs”<\/span>…\t<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ualrexhibits.org\/mappingblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}