In the 1960s, Russell City, California, was a self-governing community of Black people that owed its existence to the discriminatory redlining housing practices in nearby communities. Russell City was home to businesses, churches, and an elementary school. Folks planted community gardens and raised their children there. Until Alameda County swooped in.
Alameda County ignored the needs of the unincorporated community, which had no paved roads or sewer system. So when it rained, Russell City flooded. The neighboring municipality of Hayward deemed Russell City a blight and blamed it for lacking the infrastructure that Alameda County and Hayward had refused to allow. In 1963, the county, which wanted to use the land for industrial development, used eminent domain to seize hundreds of properties, evict the residents, and bulldoze the community.
Over 1,000 people lost everything. Now, six decades later, Alameda County has formally apologized and approved $1.3 million in reparations for former residents and their descendants.
Russell City isn’t the only Black town destroyed under the pretext of urban renewal. Hundreds more have been bulldozed, drowned, and bisected by highways. This targeting of Black neighborhoods has been devastating, with the extraction of wealth, capital, and land from our communities to enrich the corporations and developers behind that devastation.
U.S. history shows us that nothing is coincidental; anti-Blackness is about white wealth and power. No matter how much time has passed, our lives, our homes, our truths are worth fighting for.