EYE-OPENER: The list of black-owned businesses wiped out during CoMo’s “urban renewal” push
“The City of Columbia wiped out over eighty black-owned businesses during the Federal government’s “Urban Renewal” push of the 1950’s and 1960’s, explains former city recreation specialist Bill Thompson, in a presentation getting more attention now than when it was published on Youtube two years ago.
Part of the 20/20 Columbia channel, the 7-minute video contains a gem early viewers may have missed: a lengthy, eye-opening list of ruined businesses started and operated — many for decades — by Columbia’s African-American population.
Ostensibly designed to “clear” slums and improve living conditions, Urban Renewal and its dark heart, the city’s powerful Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, used blight declarations and eminent domain in the most massive transfer of wealth in Columbia history.
Hundreds of families were displaced, and where black-owned homes and businesses once stood, white-owned HUD “projects” rose to house the displaced, while white-owned businesses and government agencies — notably, City Hall and Columbia Public Schools — divided up the remaining spoils. “
Columbia Heart Beat 10 November 2014.