RACE RELATIONS AND THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS

By Scott Cummings

The following is from a book published by Westview Press in 1998.

It is reproduced here for educational purposes only.

CONTENTS

1. Race Relations and Urban Neighborhoods

2. The Ghettoization of Rosedale

3. Racial Transition and the Loss of Community

4. Racism and Residential Transition: Old Myths and New Realities

5 The Adolescent Menace: Beyond Racial Stereotypes

6 Sexual Violence in Rosedale

7 The Wilding Incidents of 1982

8 The Underclass of Rosedale:

9 The Struggle to Create New Institutions:The Crisis Deepens

10 Public Policy, Social Change, and the Fall of Rosedale

11. Race Relations, Social justice, and the Future of Urban Neighborhoods

This was the prettiest street in Rosedale, trees all up and down it. Everybody kept their yards clean. It's different now. The neighborhood was the most friendly little neighborhood that you've ever moved into.

-Woman, age 78

I've lived here since 1928. It was the best part of town then. I used to work as a clerk in the 40s and 50s. If they lived in the Rosedale area or had a Rosedale telephone, that check was good. It was known to have the best rating over any part of the whole city [with pride]. And if I'm not mistaken, back in the 30s when they were serving free lunches, Rosedale served more than any other part of the city. Rosedale was known as a working class of people. They weren't really rich people, but they weren't that poor either, a middle class of people that were self-sustaining.

-Man, age 82

ROSEDALE HEIGHTS, a community of about 10,000 people, is located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, one of the largest and most rapidly growing urban regions in the nation. In the early 1900s, Rosedale was considered "one of the more fashionable areas" in which to live. Characterized by single-family brick homes and wooden bungalows with large open porches and tall shade trees in the yards, Rosedale was a "nice, quiet place to live."

It was a cohesive and intimate community, a place where residents shared collective feelings of neighborhood and civic pride and expressed mutual bonds of solidarity. Rosedale's face has long since changed, as has its collective sense of community. The central business district, once housing independent merchants and shopkeepers, continues to decay and deteriorate. By the early 1980s, the neighborhood meeting halls and voluntary association centers had been closed. Some of the schools had been boarded up, along with the old firehouse and post office.

In 1980, Rosedale hovered on the edge of urban blight. The community was devastated by the forces of urban decline and disinvestment. Ghettoization had stripped its once proud features, gutted the core of its physical infrastructure and housing stock, and undermined the social fabric that once bound neighbor to neighbor, business to community, and old to young. The ghettoization of Rosedale occurred within a few decades.

Despite its current predicament, Rosedale has a vital and significant history, a fact proudly stated by its elderly residents. Prior to 1890, the geographic area that became the community of Rosedale was primarily farmland. Cotton, corn, and wheat were grown there commercially. In the early 1890s, residential growth in the area was stimulated by the development of a large cotton mill. The production of various types of cloth in tandem with the processing of raw cotton promoted the residential development of Rosedale and its gradual movement away from an exclusively agricultural economy.

The establishment of Rosedale College, founded by the Methodist Church in 1891, was a major impetus in the growth and development of the community. Today, the college is still considered one of the most important assets of the community. The community's first grocery store was established in 1892. When the area was initially developed, its only transportation link to the city of Fort Worth was one streetcar pulled by a donkey. By the late 1890s, Rosedale was considered a small suburban community that developed around the cotton industry and Rosedale College.

Many of the families that eventually settled there were drawn to the area because of Rosedale College. They built homes in the community so that their children could be educated at the college and receive the kind of moral and intellectual training they thought desirable. The college, its faculty, staff, and student body, provided the core around which to build a stable community.

By the turn of the century, a small business district emerged. It is estimated that in 1904, approximately 80 households could be found in Rosedale. By 1908, there were about 315 residences with fewer than 6 vacant structures. Historical records establish that the area had four grocery stores by 1908 and one "up-to-date" drugstore. Between 1904 and 1908, the number of real estate agents increased from one to twelve, and subscriptions to the city newspaper increased from eighteen to twenty-five. In 1904, only 20 to 30 students attended a one-room school. By 1908, over 400 students were housed in a two-story, concrete school heated by a furnace and illuminated by electricity.

In 1910, the citizens of Rosedale debated the merits of incorporating as a separate city. The debate centered around tax policies and the need to pro'de city services to the expanding population. One faction supported annexation by the city of Fort Worth; the other favored incorporation as a separate governmental entity. Those favoring annexation argued that the community's tax base was too small to adequately fund the volume of new services required. The financial arguments notwithstanding, the city of Rosedale was incorporated as a separate governmental entity in November 1910.

Those supporting annexation on financial grounds eventually proved correct in their prognoses. Historical accounts show that between 1910 and 1920, "a never ending line of citizens requested the city to grade their streets and clean their gutters." According to the city directory, by 1915 Rosedale had 540 occupied residences (only 1 occupied by a black person), 29 vacant houses, 37 businesses, 7 doctors, and 17 preachers. The population was estimated as being between 3,500 and 4,000.

By 1915, the city of Rosedale had drilled two artisan wells, created a community reservoir, built a city hall, purchased fire equipment, graded streets, and poured concrete sidewalks. In its city directory, Rosedale community officials boasted about the numerous modern conveniences available to Rosedale's citizens. It was stated in the directory that these modern conveniences were achieved through the low tax rate made possible by the city's superb public officials, who ran local government efficiently and professionally. Reflecting a high degree of civic pride in the community, the city directory of 1915 boldly proclaimed that Rosedale was "rapidly becoming the most beautiful and healthful residential locality about the city of Fort Worth."

By 1921, however, it was apparent that local boosterism had come faceto-face with the realities of financing local governmental services. In January 1922, a petition was presented to the city of Fort Worth asking that the community of Rosedale be merged with the larger governmental entity. In February 1922, Rosedale dissolved its corporate existence and merged with the city of Fort Worth. Its annexation by the larger city in 1922 was a harbinger of the social turmoil and cultural upheaval that emerged much later in its brief history as an autonomous community. Like a small town absorbed within the institutional network of urban society, Rosedale's incorporation into the larger metropolitan area ensured its inability to escape the racial and political conflicts that surfaced during the 1960s and 1970s.

Immediately following annexation, its city hall was converted into a municipal police and fire station; it also served as a branch of the municipal waterworks facility. Its trash and garbage were also collected by the centralized city system. Its voluntary associations became merged with the larger municipal chapters, as did its libraries, charities, and related community activities.

Despite incorporation as part of the larger metropolitan area, Rosedale continued to grow and prosper during the 1920s. It even remained fairly stable during the Great Depression. According to local historians, "Many beautiful homes were built during the 1920s and even during the 1930s. As Fort Worth continued to expand, Rosedale became an inner-city bedroom community." Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Rosedale remained one of the more prosperous and desirable urban communities in which to reside.

Rosedale developed as an exclusively white community. In the 1940s and 1950s, it was virtually isolated from residential contact with either the African American or Hispanic populations. Many residents of Rosedale employed African Americans and Mexican Americans as domestics or in related service jobs, but relationships among blacks, Hispanics, and whites were systematically regulated by southern racial etiquette. Blacks and whites resided in totally separate areas of the city.

Immediately to the southwest of Rosedale is a community I will call Freetown. Settled after the Civil War by freed, rural blacks, its primary economic focus was agriculture. The early population of this community served as a pool of domestic help and service workers for the residents of Rosedale and other more prosperous neighborhoods in the metroplex. Freetown grew steadily during the decades after the Civil War as former slaves left the farms of rural Texas and sought employment in larger urban settlements. By the 1940s, Freetown was a thoroughly segregated community. Numerous public-housing projects were constructed there during the late 1940s. These projects publicly sealed and confirmed the reputation of the area as "colored." Older white residents of Rosedale still refer to it as Niggertown.

Directly west of Rosedale is another African American community. This area is immediately south of Ft. Worth's central business district. One of the original residential neighborhoods of the city, Southside was settled more than a century ago. Around the turn of the century, however, sections of Southside became the heart of the city's African American community. The city's first black businesses and banks emerged there, as well as minority artisans and community theater. Prominent minority political leaders were drawn from this neighborhood. The more fashionable streets of Southside housed the community's prosperous minority families and members of the black bourgeoisie. Many of the city's established minority politicians and power brokers still reside there. Also, some of the more affluent African American merchants continue to conduct business in this area.

Over the years, Southside expanded eastward to the fringes of Rosedale. In the 1960s, Rosedale and Southside were divided by a major interstate highway, eventually renamed in the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was only a matter of time before this artificial boundary lost its effectiveness as a barrier between the two racially separate neighborhoods.

On the southeast side of Rosedale is Rolling Plains, known for its magnificent view of the city's skyline. After World War II, enterprising developers engineered one of the region's first suburban communities in this area. With the assistance of the private automobile and the rudimentary beginnings of public transportation in the city, Rolling Plains became a popular residential neighborhood for whites. In the 1960s, limited racial integration emerged there. Professional minority families bought homes in Rolling Plains, as did the more prosperous African American residents of Southside.

Presently, Rolling Plains is one of the few residential areas in the metropolitan region that passed through the racial integration era of the 1960s and 1970s in a reasonably stable manner. As Southside continued to lose its more prosperous residents to the lure of black suburbanization, however, it began to deteriorate. The age composition of residents shifted upward, as did the proportion of tenant-occupied houses. As Rolling Plains "opened up" to the black middle class, the prosperity of Southside "went down," according to residents who have lived there over the past thirty years.

To the northeast of Rosedale is the semirural and suburban community of Hammond. Historically the home of rural whites, Hammond is-referred to with pride as "redneck" by local residents. It is known as a place where 69niggers" are not welcome. In the late 1970s, an attempt to locate a scattered-site public-housing project in the community initiated widespread public opposition and Ku Klux Klan activities. By the early 1980s, the farmland in Hammond had increasingly fallen to suburban development. By and large, development accommodated white families. Because the new construction was designed to attract middle- and upper-income residents and because of its history, the area remained residentially segregated throughout the 1980s.

Because of its unique geographic location, Rosedale was destined to be pulled into the turbulent waters of racial transition and change. Population growth in Southside and in Freetown and the migration of rural blacks to the metropolitan area increased pressure on the existing housing stock available to African Americans in the city. As more prosperous African American families set their sights on the attractive dwellings and suburban lifestyle offered by Rolling Plains, many looked first toward Rosedale. Rosedale, however, proved to be a temporary stepping-stone for prosperous minority families. Racial steering among real estate brokers, informal agreements among homeowners, and overt discrimination initially kept many African American families out of Rosedale. Busing, court-ordered school integration, federal housing policies, and public transportation helped to erode some of the early resistance. Eventually, a residential trickle broke through the walls of racial exclusion. By the late 1960s, major weaknesses in the walls of racial exclusion were evident. By the late 1970s, white resistance had collapsed, white flight had accelerated, and Rosedale was well on its way to becoming a predominantly black neighborhood.

The first wave of African American migration to Rosedale was primarily middle and upper income. The later residents consisted mainly of working and lower-class black families. The current residents are the urban poor. White flight and the movement of the black bourgeoisie to the more prosperous suburbs sealed the fate of Rosedale as an unstable, decaying neighborhood. In 1950, the three census tracts that composed the geographic center of Rosedale were close to 100 percent white in racial composition. Even in 1960, racial patterns of residential settlement showed remarkable stability in the three tracts. The 1960 census showed that about 98 percent of the households in the community were occupied by white families.

In 1970, however, the magnitude of the racial transition was beginning to surface in official statistics, which revealed that in the two tracts composing the residential and commercial core of Rosedale, 30 and 40 percent of the residents, respectively, were African American. By 1980, these two areas had shifted to 63 and 82 percent African American. The one remaining tract, an area that stretches north into Hammond, shifted from less than 1 percent African American in 1970 to over 31 percent in 1980. By the mid-1990s, the community had become resegregated with whites composing approximately 12 percent of Rosedale's population.

Census tracts often do not correspond to the actual boundaries of urban neighborhoods. Within the natural geographic boundaries that have historically defined the community of Rosedale, there is an even greater concentration of black families. And when driving or walking through the streets and blocks of Rosedale, one now encounters clusters of Chicano families; their houses tend to group along specific streets in selected blocks. One also encounters young, white, working- and lower-class families and a small but growing Asian community. They moved to Rosedale in response to the drop in housing prices or rental fees that accompanied white flight. The bulk of those currently living in Rosedale are poor African American and Hispanic families, poor whites, and recent Asian immigrants: The urban underclass now dominates the community.

Sprinkled throughout the area, one finds a few white elderly. Their homes are easy to identify. They are marked by steel or iron bars covering windows and by doors displaying one or more dead-bolt locks. The homes of the elderly are surrounded by other security measures such as chain-link fences and floodlights. Many have small gardens in the backyard or flowers planted along the sides of the house or by the front porch. The dwellings of the white elderly look neater, more secure, and tend to be in better repair than those of their poor minority neighbors.

For the poor group, the bid rent curve is characteristically steep since the poor have very little money to spend on transportation; and therefore their ability to bid for the use of the land declines rapidly with distance from the place of employment. The rich group, on the other hand, characteristically has a slallow bid rent curve since its ability to bid is not greatly affected by the amount of money spent on transportation. When put in competition with each other, we find the poor group forced to live in the center of the city, and the rich group living outside.'

Rosedale's rapid ghettoization can be partially understood by viewing it in relationship to the real estate development taking place in the larger metropolitan area of which it is a part. Over the past three decades, the entire Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area has experienced rapid development. Urban development in this part of Texas is not only regional in nature but reflects the emergence of the Sun Belt as a major growth area in the American economy. Dallas-Fort Worth has become a centerpiece of banking and finance in the Southwest. Urban growth and development in this region has been shaped by multimillion-dollar investments on the part of national and international financial conglomerates and corporations. The growth of suburbs in this region rapidly accelerated during the 1970s and 1980s.

By most objective standards, Dallas-Fort Worth is a prosperous metropolitan region. Despite fluctuations in the housing market in the 1980s, its unemployment rate has remained fairly low by national standards, and the potential quality of life there is considered to be among the best in the nation. Reflecting Dallas's emergence as a center of developmental prosperity, its population grew from 434,462 in 1950 to 679,684 in 1960. By 1970, the U.S. census established the population of Dallas at 844,401. It grew to over 900,000 in 1980, and presently there are over I million residents living in the city. Fort Worth grew less rapidly over the past four decades. Between 1950 and 1960, the population increased from 278,778 to 356,268. By 1970, there were 393,467 residents living in the city. In 1980, the population of Fort Worth declined slightly to 385,164. But by 1990, it registered an increase to more than 448,000 residents. Most significant, the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region as a whole grew from 3 million to more than 4 million residents between 1980 and 1990.

Despite all the outward indications of growth and development, the emergence of Dallas-Fort Worth as a regional center of southwestern business prosperity was largely a suburban and not an urban event. The rural area between Dallas and Fort Worth rapidly developed between 1970 and 1990. Associated with suburban growth and development was a concomitant shift in the racial and class composition within the city limits of Dallas and its sister city thirty miles away, Fort Worth.

In 19SO, African Americans composed about 13 percent of Dallas's population. By 1960, the proportion had grown to 19 percent, and by 1970 the figure exceeded 25 percent. In 1980, the proportion of African Americans residing in Dallas approached 30 percent. By 1990, 29.S percent of Dallas's residents were of African American descent and nearly 21 percent were of Hispanic origin. In 19SO, only 13.2 percent of the population of Fort Worth was reported in the census as African American. By 1960, this figure had risen to 15.8 percent, and in 1970 the African American population of the city was reported at 19.9 percent. In 1980, almost 23 percent of the city was populated by African Americans. By 1990, 22 percent of the city was of African American descent, and about 20 percent was of Hispanic origin.

The degree of racial polarization and residential segregation in both cities is extremely high. In 1980, African American and Hispanic segregation in Dallas and Fort Worth was higher than national averages for all southern cities.2 By 1990, rates of segregation had registered no significant declines. Further, the ghettos and barrios of Fort Worth and Dallas reveal all the symptoms of neglect and decay that are found in central cities all over the nation. In this sense, the ghettolzation of Rosedale is a direct reflection of the growing impoverishment of the inner-city population of Forth Worth itself and the suburban development that contributed to this outcome.

While these population transformations were taking place within the two cities, the suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth were experiencing equally rapid growth and change. Suburban growth, however, was qualitatively different. The major suburbs between and surrounding the two cities-Arlington, Irving, Richardson, Mesquite, Plano, Grapevine, Hurst, Euless, Bedford, Garland, and Lancaster-are predominately white in racial composition, professional and managerial in occupational characteristics, and high in income. The homogenous class and racial composition of the suburbs has been reinforced by public policies promoting racial equality and civil rights. Court-ordered busing in Dallas and Fort Worth could be avoided by simply moving to the suburbs, an option reinforced by the refusal on the part of most suburban jurisdictions to participate in HUD sponsored housing or community development programs. Suburban political autonomy, white flight, and the suburbanization of industry, although contributing to the prosperity of the metropolitan region as a whole, eroded the business and commercial vitality of the central cities. The price of real estate is much higher in the suburbs, as are the profits to be realized from real estate speculation in housing development and shopping malls.

The ghettoization of Rosedale and the declining value of its housing stock simply mirrored the changing land use and development patterns in the metropolitan region of which it is a part. Rosedale was initially conceived as a white suburban community; its racial composition was eventually changed by the tremendous expansion in the size of the city's minority community, a trend reinforced by larger patterns of real estate development and growth. As the farmland between Dallas and Fort Worth became developed and suburbanized, it eventually housed residents being displaced from older communities like Rosedale. Land use and development patterns in the metropolitan region were shaped by the investment activities of suburban builders, bankers, real estate speculators, and industrialists.

Arlington, the major suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth and immediately east of Rosedale, established itself as one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation during the 1980s. Arlington grew from 90,000 in 1970 to 262,000 in 1990. Between 1980 and 1990, it reported a 63.5 percent increase in population. In 1990, it reported that 8.2 percent of its population was of African American origin and 8.9 percent was of Hispanic descent. The population of Plano experienced a 78 percent increase between 1980 and 1990. Only about 4 percent of its population was of African American decent in 1990, and around 6 percent was of Hispanic background. Very similar population trends are found in the other suburbs between and around the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.

During the period 1970 to 1990, the population of the metropolitan region became more racially separated and socioeconomically differentiated. These demographic trends were reinforced by the development of major transportation systems and arteries, making it possible for the region's more affluent citizens to commute to places of employment downtown. Additionally, a major new airport facility was strategically located directly between the two metropolitan areas in the small rural community of Grapevine. The Dallas-Fort Worth airport project stimulated rapid growth in the suburban communities of Hurst, Euless, and Bedford and promoted construction of additional roadways linking these suburbs with the two downtowns.

The rapid development of Arlington was facilitated by massive investments in a major amusement park and by the related construction and expansion of the stadium housing the Texas Rangers baseball franchise. Even the Dallas Cowboys left the city of Dallas for Texas Stadium, located in the suburban facilities of Irvine. The Cotton Bowl, former home of the Cowboys, is located in South Dallas, one of the worst black ghettos of the city.

The racial composition of Rosedale began to shift in response to the larger demographic and developmental transformations taking place in the metropolitan region as a whole. By 1970, white flight in Rosedale closely followed patterns of demographic change in the region generally. Between 1980 and 1990, the accelerated transformation of Rosedale dramatically revealed itself in official census statistics. The proportion of whites living there dropped steadily after the 1970s. Between 1980 and 1990, the proportion of African Americans living in Rosedale remained fairly stable, and the proportion of Hispanics living in the community increased sharply.

By 1990, Rosedale was approaching a triethnic urban neighborhood, populated exclusively by poor African Americans and Hispanics and low income whites. By 1990, the white middle class had long since left the community. The white population still residing there consisted of the elderly original residents of Rosedale, and younger poor whites who had moved there from rural communities or relocated from other impoverished neighborhoods in the city.

Contrary to its once proud history, recent information shows that Rosedale's current occupants are much poorer than residents of the metropolitan area. Whereas Rosedale's earlier residents could boast that their community and its residents were well above the average, those now living there are among the poorest in the metropolitan region. The median household, median family, and per capita income figures are well below countywide averages. Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics living in Rosedale's three census tracts report consistently lower income figures than their counterparts living in other areas of the city.

Table 2.1 shows that in the county as a whole, 11 percent live below the official poverty level. The Rosedale figures are well above that amount. On virtually every measure of poverty, Rosedale reports figures well above countywide averages. In certain sections of Rosedale, over 50 percent of families with children live in poverty, and over one-half of female-headed households reside in poverty.

Census data can accurately describe demographic transitions and identify the number of people living in poverty in a particular community. Census information, however, does not illuminate the psychological and cultural dimensions of neighborhood decline and change. How did rac'al change affect the nature of neighborhood life and culture in Rosedale? What happened to established neighborhood institutions in the face of racial change? How did residents deal with the process of change?

TABLE 2.1 The Socioeconomic Characteristics of Rosedale's Current Residents,1990 Census

First numbers in each row are Countrywide averages. The last three numbers in each row are from three Census Tracts in Rosedale.

Income
Median household $32,335           $13,946 $14,063 $15,938

Median family $38,279                       $17,515 $15,645 $16,511

Per capita Income
White $16,935                                  $ 7,446 $5,833 $5,402

Black $8,775                                    $5,455 $4,718 $5,763

Hispanic $8,147                              $4,271 $4,626 $5,286

Poverty
% persons below 11.0                  41.3   38.8   27.4

% persons 65 or older 11.7          29.1   47.3   34.9

% all families 8.2                           36.8   32.5   22.5

% families with children under 18 11.6           45.9   36.3   26.7

% female head 24.8                       45.9    55.2         25.7

% female head with children under 18 31.2        52.0      54.3      4.8