Letter: Old neighborhood didn’t have choice
“This event brings to mind a smaller but similar happening. In the early 1960s the Yale Avenue Urban Renewal Project came into being. A long-standing neighborhood was in the way of needed expansion space for the University of Tennessee. Basically, the residents were informed of their looming ouster, offered an appraised amount for their properties and given little recourse for dissent. I feel sure that had the option of refusal been available, those folks would have declined. One disturbing quote in justifying this project was that it “was a neighborhood with potential of becoming a slum area,” or words to that effect, an erroneous and demeaning slap at this area and its residents.
Currently, that area, once my home neighborhood, has been completely eradicated and replaced with numerous and varied university structures.”
Pryor, Bill (W.S.). Knox News.com 8 April 2013.