CHOCOLATE CITY

Image 1: Wall of Respect, Chicago

CHOCOLATE CITY GOD BLESS

CC, funk music architect George Clinton affectionately called Washington D.C. in his 1975 Parliament song: there’s a lot of chocolate cities around / we got Newark, we got Gary / somebody told me we got LA / and we’re working on Atlanta / but you’re the capital, CC. Demographically, he was more than right to do so. The African American community in fact made up over 70% of D.C.’s total population by then. But if we understand Chocolate City as an architectural concept, the analogy is not as evident. Slave-built America had been designed by and for a white society after all. Whilst the smoke of the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movement echoes in CC’s groovy chord progression and edgy lyrics, a question arises: what legacy have these revolutions left in American black neighbourhoods?

It is 1916 when the largest-ever shift in US demographics took off. Up until then, 90% of the African American population lived in the rural South – formerly as slaves, now as free yet heavily exploited sharecroppers. Racism was backed by law here, and severe acts of violence happened on a daily basis. At the same time, cities up North were confronted with a significant labour shortage as many men had left to fight in World War I. These strongly contrasting conditions, complemented with pull factors like promising education and living conditions, convinced six million African Americans to leave their southern life. The so-called Great Migration went on until 1968 and resulted in a strongly urbanised black population.

Although segregation was illegal in the Northern states, racism still existed de facto as they found out upon arrival. Black people were given the most dangerous and lowest paying jobs, and were collectively pushed into the least desirable areas of the city. Examples of such ghettos are New York’s Harlem, Detroit’s Black Bottom and Chicago’s South Side. Moving up the ladder was hardly possible either. African Americans were denied mortgages in their own area, and property owners had agreed not to sell them houses in white neighbourhoods. Urban segregation was thus designed and maintained until present day.

Even though their position was far from flawless, at least the African American people now lived unrestrained in a like-minded, black community. The new circumstances provided them with the opportunity to develop in areas they had been denied to for centuries. This exploration for identity and cultural self-determination started in Harlem. Through visual arts, music, literature and theatre, “blackness” was expressed and proudly promoted, leaving the community uplifted. Well-known children of the Harlem Renaissance (1910s to 1930s) were jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, writers W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke and artists Jacob Lawrence and Lois Mailou Jones. Although no architects were involved in the artistic movement, a few artists did leave a physical mark on the city. The most prominent figure in this is Aaron Douglas (1899-1979). By means of a number of murals in public buildings across the United States, Douglas depicted significant stages of the turbulent history of the African American people. One of his most notable works is Aspects of a Negro Life (1934), a collection of murals in the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. Four vast paintings picture stories shared by all: the story of arrival, of slavery, of emancipation and of cultural rebirth. Besides thematic identification, the community also recognises itself in an aesthetic that draws on traditional African art in form and colour. Douglas’ murals educated and celebrated black identity, beautified and appropriated their buildings, but all of it happened in the city’s interior space.

Where the Harlem Renaissance sought identity from

within the African American society, the civil rights movement (1950s and 1960s) went out in the open. The community’s focus shifted towards political activism in order to obtain constitutional and legal rights, and instead of a means of cultural self-determination, the arts now functioned as a political instrument: contemporary works showed resistance, liberation and empowerment. Such a confrontational approach had its influence on the built environment. In 1967 the mural left its interior environment at last to become a form of public art. In Chicago’s South Side, the Wall of Respect was created by artists affiliated with OBAC, the Organisation of Black American Culture. It consists of 14 sections, each filled in by one artist, each with the black heroes of a certain field (like politics, religion, music and sports) on display. Amongst the portraited were Malcom X, Aretha Franklin and Muhammed Ali. Like Douglas had done, OBAC set up an aesthetic identity composed of vibrant, “coolade” colours and with an emphasis on the figures’ human side. The Wall of Respect was illegally created and therefore as much an act of activism as it was a piece of cultural expression, identification and neighbourhood beautification. Soon it became a political gathering place too. Many similar murals popped up across the country, and although a suspicious fire destroyed this particular mural in 1971, OBAC had provided the African American community with a tool to shape the neighbourhoods they had lived in for so long.

Throughout this time of political discussion, of which a great deal was held on the built environment, architects had remained invisible. The profession was white and most of all very protective, so a revolt from the inside was hardly imaginable. This only changed towards the end of the civil rights movement. In 1967, the American Institute of Architects chose as their new president Robert L. Dunham, who was a lot more civically active than any of his predecessors. In his position Dunham invited legendary activist Whitney Young Jr. (1921-1971) as keynote speaker at the 1968 AIA national convention in Portland, Oregon. Young’s speech was fierce. Part of his criticism was focused on the lack of diversity in the field, and thus the impossibility for minority groups to shape their future, but he mainly condemned the unfair division of wealth in the city: “the Negro has been largely the victim, not of active hate or active concern, but active indifference.” (Young, 1968) The living conditions of African Americans were indeed far worse than those of white people, a matter to which the architectural profession had not responded to “by social and civic contributions, [but] by thunderous silence and complete irrelevance” (Young, 1968). Even architects that did have social sensitivity ended up designing 40-story vertical slums. According to Young, the way black people live was carefully planned, and the architectural profession shares responsibility for that.

Those words made a deep impact, and the institute was quick to act: new resolutions, revised ethical codes and a scholarship program were intended to support the position of minority groups within the field. Another resolution called on architects to become actively involved in contemporary societal issues. AIA’s response illustrates its increased understanding of the importance of inclusiveness. In fact, it started a nation-wide movement focused on community participation within the design course, a topic that never lost its relevance. Since then, AIA has established over 200 Community Design Centres across the United States. These CDC’s have provided neighbourhoods with the opportunity to get involved in planning processes on their own environment, all pro bono. It is the immaterial heritage that the civil rights movement left in architecture.

Some groups, however, were not prepared to wait for change from above. A nation-wide urban renewal program was running parallel with the civil rights movement, and it mainly targeted disadvantaged neighbourhoods and its minority population. But the big apartment blocks that replaced their houses were often inaccessible to the original occupants as they were denied mortgages. “Urban renewal means negro removal,” (Clark, 1963) stated James Baldwin, African American author, expressing his anger with the way the community was treated. In Harlem, the feeling that the discussion was held about them, but not with them, resulted in the foundation of the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem, in 1964. ARCH can be considered the prototype of a CDC. This collaboration of architects and urban planners, most of them African American but also including socially conscious white professionals, became the voice of Harlem residents in their attempt to both challenge top-down renewal proposals, as well as to convey their own, community-driven ideas. A representative example is the 1964 city’s plan to renew West-Harlem by clearing out nearly 80% of the area, to which the Committee responded with an alternate plan of renovating existing houses. Such an idea may not sound so revolutionary now, but back then it radically opposed the prevailing, modernist planning attitude.

Yet some wanted ARCH to go further. In 1967, a new director was found in Max Bond Jr. (1935-2009), whose experience as an architect in post-colonial Ghana proved to be empowering Harlem’s own search for autonomy. Under his leadership the Committee shifted towards a more activist movement, seeking to spatialise black power by transforming the built environment through words and drawings into a new kind of city. At last the cultural self-determination of the beginning of the 20th century had reached out to the field of architecture. However, ARCH’s revolutionary ambitions had an interestingly conservative approach. Existing blocks, streets, building types and if possible, even buildings themselves had to be preserved, for the reason that the African American community strongly identified with the authentic fabric. This attitude is not surprising when put in perspective: the community had already during the Harlem Renaissance been the most important source of inspiration for black artists. And Harlem was indeed physically terrific as a stage for black civic life (Goldstein, 2016). People enjoyed the informal yet real streets, where they could go out for walks or to meet friends. Such a public, collectivist vitality was in itself the result of poor housing conditions, which forced many activities to take place in the streets. It beautifully shows how the African American community had adapted to the perks and flaws of the environment they were pushed in to.

ARCH’s ideas took shape in the 1968 proposal for the renewal of the East Harlem Triangle, an area of about 18 New York city blocks. Instead of “unslumming” the neighbourhood, the Committee chose to look for potential in the fabric, and to make the community succeed through preservation and elaboration of the distinct street dynamism. They envisioned a mixeduse area, consisting of an eclectic variety of smallscale buildings within the existing grid. The pedestrian infrastructure was to be extended and complemented with plazas and public buildings such as an open-air theatre, a “soul food garden” and a production/exhibition centre for black culture and crafts. They even developed a new housing typology, unique for its communal spaces floating between apartments. Even though not all plans were carried out, the new approach that took the black community as solution rather than the problem proved to be key in Harlem’s revitalisation.

What remains is to answer the question what legacy the described events left in the built environment of today. After OBAC’s Wall of Respect, murals appeared in black neighbourhoods all over the country. They were truly adopted into African American culture as a means of celebrating black pride. Just how far their significance reached is showed by the 2012 extension of Harlem hospital, whose front facade features a monumental glass reproduction of historic murals. In a similar manner, the 2016 National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. reflects the collective civic life of black communities. Its porchlike main entrance makes an appealing gathering space, which is continued on the inside. An African American architecture takes shape, but is still only represented by a handful of buildings.

Image 3: Harlem Hospital

However, the immaterial legacy of the civil rights movement may be at least as important. Inclusiveness and diversity became actively supported within the architectural profession, and architects themselves started speaking out on societal matters. Besides that, though it might not have been the only incentive, ARCH’s highly progressive ideas contributed to a change of heart in the common understanding of city planning. The modernist and large scale urban renewal that had been destroying civic life for several decades was replaced with bottom-up and community-centred projects. Parliament’s perception of Chocolate City was accurate: it is in fact all about the people.//

SOURCES

- Goldstein, B. D. (2016). “The Search for New Forms”: Black Power and the Making of the Postmodern City. The Journal of American History, 103(2), 375-399 - Tucker, P. (1969). Poor Peoples’ Plan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 27(5) - Young, W. M. (1968). Speech presented at AIA Annual Convention in Oregon, Portland. Retrieved from https://www.aia.org/ resources/189666-commemorating-50-years - James Baldwin [Interview by K. Clark]. (1963). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Abhj17kYU - Abbott Sengstacke, R. (1967). Wall of Respect [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=67aaf055-04a4-4271-a24c-46fbe30bf6fb - ARCH/CAEHT. (1968). East Harlem Triangle Redevelopment Plan [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://footprintsinnewyork.blogspot. com/2018/01/postcard-thursday-skyrise-for-harlem.html - Warchol, P. (n.d.). Harlem Hospital [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.dip-tech.com/printed-glass-projects/united-statesnew-york-ny-harlem-hospital