The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s series
on our city’s vacant property problem has me in a Déjà vu state.
Apparently, Mayor Lyda Krewson and other city leaders are searching for effective ways to rid the city of its 25,000, according to the PD, abandoned properties and vacant lots. For me, I see a huge opportunity to transform some of our long-ignored
North St. Louis neighborhoods. Yet, the problem reminds me of another time when
lack of vision and leadership led to a blown opportunity to advance a large-scale
agenda for economic and social empowerment. The following (condensed and
edited) excerpt from my soon-to-be published book, “When We Listen,” speaks to my fears and outlines the possibilities
I anticipate.
*************************************
Chapter Nine: When they are Empowered
The year was
2009. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and
I had parted ways and I was working as a consultant and researcher with
SmileyBooks, owned by TV commentator, Tavis Smiley. Barack Obama was into his first
term as president. At the time, I was in the company of or in close observation
of some of the top black thinkers in America. I was working with Smiley when he
and the Rev. Al Sharpton embarked on a bitter fued revolving around the issue
of Obama creating and publicly promoting a “black agenda” …or not.
The topic took
on a more public focus the following year during a 2010 Chicago summit organized
by Smiley. Guest panelists included, Dr. Cornel West, Minister Louis Farrakhan,
economist Julianne
Malveaux, Rev. Jessie
Jackson Sr., Angela Glover
Blackwell, director of PolicyLink, scholars and writers Ron Walters,
Michael Eric Dyson and Tom Burrell, whom I had helped on his new book, “Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black
Inferiority.”
I wrote
about this at the
time on my blog. More time was spent by this intellectual group calling for an
Obama-led black agenda than was dedicated to them defining and implementing one
of their own. This was unfortunate considering the influence and following these
individuals possess. Some, like Smiley, had talked about a “black agenda” for years.
I couldn’t understand why they felt the need to bash Obama for not uttering the
words instead of creating and delivering it to the Obama Administration, then
promoting it among their legions of followers.
The impotence of
the black leaders back then impacted me greatly. It was part of the reason, two
years later, that I started the Sweet Potato Project. I felt a need to do
something that was in line with Obama’s federal programs, such as the Healthy
Food Financing
initiative. Also, I was searching for something that would lead to
self-sufficient black neighborhoods.
De-industrialization has had a devastating impact on urban cities, including St. Louis. The aftereffect of
labor-intensive, manufacturing jobs sent overseas and technological inventions
that require less manual labor has left many metropolitan areas, especially
black areas, broken with our kids devoid of real-life opportunities
for do-for-self success.
Industry may have fled
many urban areas but there’s one reliable, vibrant, needed, yet unexplored,
area for serious community-wide wealth-building: Land ownership and collective
food growing and production. After all, everybody eats. Why not build food
systems geared toward creating jobs and small businesses and community
revitalization in North St. Louis?
After some seven
years of operating SPP, I’m convinced we’re on to something powerful. However,
I also realize that what I imagine will never come to fruition until we, as a
people, adopt an agenda that involves, engages and challenges our young people
to step up, reclaim communities and become stewards of their own neighborhoods.
To make this a
reality, we must go back to move forward.
*****************************************************
“Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” - Malcolm X, 1963
When Malcolm X addressed
the necessity of land-ownership, he was simply echoing a call articulated by
other black leaders since the demise of slavery. In fact, as the Civil War was
coming to an end, a group of black ministers were instrumental in crafting and
implementing what became known as the “40 Acres and a Mule” doctrine.
What Dr. Henry Louis Gates described as the “first systematic attempt to
provide a form of reparations,” was the result of meetings initiated by Union
General William T. Sherman, Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton and 20 black religious leaders from Savannah, Ga.
When asked, the chosen leader of the group of mostly Baptist and
Methodist ministers, Rev. Garrison Frazier, answered Sherman and Stanton’s
question resolutely:
“The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it
and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have
something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it
and make it our own.”
Although the “mule” part of the proclamation wasn’t added until later, Sherman’s “Special Field Order No. 15,”
the land redistribution plan, was officially adopted by President Abraham
Lincoln on Jan. 16, 1865. By June of that year, some 40,000 freed blacks had
settled on 400,000 acres of land. Unfortunately, Lincoln’s successor. Andrew
Johnson, a staunch southern sympathizer, overturned Sherman’s order and the
land along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts was returned to the
original owners, aka white southerners.
Still, the mandate for land-ownership
remained a priority among prominent black leaders such as Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (U.N.I.A.), Scholar, WEB Dubois, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the
Nation of Islam (NOI) and many others. They all believed that land ownership coupled
with entrepreneurism were critical components to community development and the overall
self-reliance of their race.
Even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew the
importance of land as a valuable tool for self-sufficiency. While promoting his
“Poor People's” campaign in the deep South in 1968, King charged the United
States with parceling out “free” land to whites while ignoring blacks:
“At the very same time that
America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our
government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the
Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its White peasants from
Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built
land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only
that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not
only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize
their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions
of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people
telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
Two years before King
launched the Poor People’s Campaign in 1967, he promoted legislation that would
put the onus of control in the hands of African Americans. In an interview with
Playboy Magazine in 1965, King
outlined a preferential, $50 billion-dollar federal program that would
specifically benefit “the Negro” and “disadvantaged of all races.”
King’s proposal included
a massive public works project, investment in disadvantaged areas, job training
efforts and subsidies to spur reasonable home and small business lending.
Likening the plan to the G.I. Bill of Rights, King argued that the policy-based
initiative, over 10 years, would lead to “a spectacular decline in school
dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls,
rioting and other social evils.”
*****************************************************
More than 50
years ago, Dr. King predicted that empowering poor people would be the remedy for
many of the ills our children face today such as poverty, hunger, homelessness,
crime and “other social evils.” That directive still has merit today.
The
government’s land-reallocation plan may have failed some 150 years ago, but it
has potential in our modern times. Educational
and civic institutions, religious and political leaders and wealthy benefactors
should un-apologetically revisit the mandates of Garvey, Muhammad, King. Malcolm
X and others. Adopting a self-sufficiency agenda doesn’t necessarily have to
happen on a federal level. In outlining her “Plan
to Reduce Vacant Lots and Buildings,” Mayor Lyda Krewson noted that the
City of St. Louis sits on 13,200 privately-owned vacant properties, nearly
11,500 city-owned parcels with 3,400 vacant buildings, and 8,100 vacant lots. The
data-heavy site provides valuable government resources, current programs and partners
related to property and land reutilization.
As of this writing, Ald. John C. Muhammad’s “$1 Housing Program” had passed the Board of Aldermen's
Public Safety Committee. Another bill he sponsored in 2017 would have designated urban areas as “agricultural zones," which would have qualified them for local, state and federal funds. The bill didn't pass but needs revisiting. Full passage and implementation
of these bills would not only benefit poor neighborhoods they perfectly complement Mayor Krewson’s plan to reduce vacant
properties in the city.
-End of Book Excerpt-
***************************************************
Educational and civic institutions, religious and political leaders and wealthy benefactors should unapologetically revisit the mandates of Garvey, Muhammad, King. Malcolm X and others.
Without a serious agenda that involves
and engages low-income people and provide funding to rehab properties or
revitalize land for food growth, Muhammad’s bill could wind up being just another
boon for wealthy developers itching to capitalize off cheap, North St. Louis
land. A revolutionary,
people-oriented agenda aimed at using land to empower millennials and
low-income residents is a priority...right now!
North St. Louis didn’t become
overpopulated with crumbling buildings and vacant properties by accident.
The city’s "crisis" was man-made. More than 40 years ago, city leaders,
backed by willing politicians, held a moratorium on investing, building or
cleaning up North St. Louis. Mayor Francis Slay cherry-picked Paul McKee’s outlandish
redevelopment plan. His administration turned a blind eye as the developer secretly bought slum
properties and let them further deteriorate the neighborhood. The Slay
administration gifted McKee with city money that paved the way for additional
state and federal funds.
All this was done because McKee’s project held the potential
of attracting middle-to-upper-class homeowners to the downtown area. With the
new government mapping agency being built near the old Pruitt-Igoe site, it’s
really no surprise the city is pushing the idea of re-utilizing vacant city land.
There’s “a plan” afoot alright but I’m concerned it’s not one aimed at helping the people who’ve
been surrounded by vacant properties for decades. Either way, black
leaders should view the city’s crisis as an opportunity to flip the region’s stale
and elitist script. Instead of gifting land, tax dollars and special perks exclusively
to wealthy developers, create a new agenda. Hell, how about politicians draft a new "Homestead Bill," designed to instigate a vested population in North St. Louis. In brief, surely, there are enough creative
minds to initiate a replicable template for community empowerment through land
and home-ownership in designated areas of North St. Louis.
Back in my days with Smiley, I
realized that the black leaders I admired weren’t prepared (or interested) in leading a “do-for-self, with government help” agenda.
That would have meant publicly articulating the plan and its possible benefits. All the powerful players would have to have been corralled to speak from one
playbook. It would have meant creating powerful, repetitive narrative as
persuasive as “We shall Overcome!”
It would have meant UNITY, the collective Achilles Heel that doomed the agendas of Garvey, DuBois, Malcolm,
Martin and so many other black visionaries.
Perhaps I’m just an old, naive dreamer. But the young students
of the Sweet Potato Project have convinced me that they are up for a bold
community challenge. Surely, they are but a mere reflection of thousands of
young people in our region.
What if we answered their call and need for equity with a do-for-self
agenda and the necessary resources to implement their own version of
self-reliance in their own neighborhood?
Here’s hoping my Déjà vu
moment results in a different outcome. Maybe we can do locally what black
leaders failed to do nationally during Obama’s presidency. Maybe, just maybe,
Black St. Louis can pave a powerful path toward real empowerment.
************************
Comments