“This is My City”: The Promise of Reparations and the Legacy of Urban Renewal

Priscilla Robinson says the Southside neighborhood of Asheville, North Carolina was once a thriving, tight-knit community. She describes fruit trees and multigenerational homeowners, booming small businesses and neighbors who looked out for one another. But that all changed in 1968, when the city approved plans for “urban renewal” and displaced more than fifty percent of Asheville’s Black residents, including Priscilla and her family. Decades later, in 2020, Asheville became just the second city in the US and the first in the south to approve reparations for its Black population, and Priscilla is making sure that the harms of urban renewal aren’t forgotten as a community Reparations Commission shapes its plan. To see photos of the Southside prior to Urban Renewal, and to explore Priscilla’s research, click here. You can also learn more about the Racial Justice Coalition of Asheville here, and join us in calling for President Biden to establish a federal Reparations Commission here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can listen to “This is My City”: The Promise of Reparations and the Legacy of Urban Renewal online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

“This is My City”: The Promise of Reparations and the Legacy of Urban Renewal is an episode from Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America by Ben & Jerry's and Vox Creative.

This episode is 43:17 long.

This episode was published on Dec 27, 2023.

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