Where did they go? The spaces and places of displacement

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 9) Migration, Citizenship, and Displacement

Abstract

This is one chapter from my book manuscript on gentrification and displacement on one block in Washington, DC. The block extends from 6th and 7th Streets, SE, and from G to I Streets, SE, so it is technically a square. This book explores the block over a hundred and thirty years. This block has had both renovated rowhouses and a public housing project, sitting side by side. I explore the social and political worlds on the block and four different displacements. This block has a racial line moving up and down it, and as a result is well documented. A relatively horizontal racial line moves up and down this block, by which I mean that white people understood that they lived North of this imaginary line and African Americans lived South of it, and the white people wanted to move this line South. Of course, who was considered white or black changed over time. This book explores this relational understanding of oppression and privilege.

This is the central chapter in the book, in which I examine where the majority African American residents and their immigrant neighbors, as well as white homeowners and renters, move after their houses have been destroyed in 1939 to build a white, segregated public housing project. By studying one block, I can concretely follow the residents through Census and other records. However, at the same time, the state and sociologists following people around is always a problem. In fact, it is noteworthy that there is any evidence at all of their displacement and futures. This chapter and my entire book interrogate race, gender, and class in conjunction with space and place, centered on one block in Washington, DC.

Author

• Johanna Bockman, George Mason University