Security Guards in Eight-Mile Wyoming
The Eight Mile-Wyoming area (alternatively known as Eight Mile) is located on the northern boundary of Detroit and resembles inner-city neighborhoods.
Originally settled in the 1920s by thousands of optimistic migrant farmers, the area became a settlement opportunity for Blacks to construct and own their own homes. The area was fought over for development and housing projects for decades and represented an isolated concentration of Blacks in a vast population of whites.
The Eight Mile-Wyoming area historically represented an empowering area for Black home development and ownership in the 1920s and 1930s.
Horace White, a leading Detroit minister and the first black member of the Detroit Housing Commission (DHC), states it represented an important place of black settlement "because it was their one opportunity, as they saw it, to own their own homes and rear their families".
The dedicated and driven residents constructed homes by scraping together meager resources gathered from junkyards, demolition sites, and occasional purchases for windows and doors. The houses grew as families expanded but the residents were unable to obtain loans and mortgages because of racist legislation and oppressive policies of redlining and blockbusting.
However, the residents took pride in their houses and utilized abundant land for gardens of corn and vegetables which subsidized meals for impoverished families. According to a report by the Works Progress Administration and DHC in 1938; Eight Mile residents were among the poorest in the city living in dire conditions. 91.7% lived in single-family detached homes and 2⁄3 of the homes were owner occupied in contrast to the city's percentage of 37.8%.
The Eight Mile community suffered from extremely poor living conditions even though most residents owned homes through land contracts or mortgages. In fact, 2⁄3 of buildings had substandard conditions, and 45.5% had the minimum of one toilet or bath.
Impoverished and oppressed residents of the Eight Mile community desperately lobbied the Franklin Roosevelt administration for housing benefits and utilized their voting power in the New Deal to do so.
In the 1930s and 1940s they persistently, but unsuccessfully pleaded with the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, a government sponsored corporation created by the New Deal, and the FHA for assistance in improving their homes. The failure of individual actions inspired collective efforts, and in the 1930s two community groups were founded: the Carver Progressive Association and Eight Mile Road Civic Association. Burneice Avery, a 35-year-old schoolteacher, was among the first black settlers in the community and became an outspoken representative for the Eight Mile Road Civic Association. The community groups worked for FHA funding for single-family detached homes and protested private white redevelopment of their neighborhood.
The federal housing policies egregiously represented blatant discrimination against Eight Mile residents because in factories they were "working side by side with homeowners who are paying off their mortgages through FHA." Avery drew strong parallels between the government's plan to relocate landowners of Eight Mile and replace them with public housing and the evictions of sharecroppers in the South.
However, the dedicated efforts of the Eight Mile Civic Association drew Raymond Foley's attention. Foley, the Michigan director of the FHA, New Deal Democrat and later national director of the FHA under Truman, found the dedicated commitment of black residents to housing improvement compelling. Although Foley believed that federal housing should create residential stability through homeownership, he embodied a separate but equal philosophy.
The FHA already mandated racial homogeneity within housing construction and Foley continued this racist and oppressive practice. Foley visited Eight Mile after a Detroit Common Council sponsored hearing in August 1943 on the development of the community. Community organizers led a phenomenal clean-up drive on the eve of Foley's visit resulting in him praising them at a city Plan Commission hearing.
Like many other organizations the Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC) developed plans for the Eight Mile-Wyoming area. In 1938 they started efforts by targeting the residential area with a detailed study of housing conditions to facilitate their major redevelopment proposal.
In 1939, Marvel Daines, a white graduate student of sociology at the University of Michigan, began surveying the bleakest residences of the community. Daines produced a pamphlet published by the CHPC which was distributed to government officials, planners, and corporate leaders. The pamphlet showed his interviews of Eight Mile residents about housing, employment opportunities, and living conditions.
The report illustrated Daines' astonishment at the forced impoverishment of the residents and their dire conditions while showcasing admiration for their efforts. However, he also highlighted his concern for the development of white communities because of their closeness to the slums. Therefore, Daines considered a myriad of proposals to alleviate these issues. He saw the construction of public housing unlikely because of the government's strong desire to clear Eight Mile as slums. He believed that a private-public project would effectively exacerbate rents and evict poor residents. Daines settled, in the CHPC report, on a proposal he saw as "seemed feasible from both the point of view of the Negro and his more fortunate white neighbor in the adjacent areas."
The proposal asserted that the land of existing black neighborhoods should be sold to white buyers who would develop and maintain the land at levels suitable for middle-class white homeowners. The CHPC proposed a new community "in a comparable area ... close to an industrial center of employment ... where Negros have already settled, and garden space is available" would then be built. This effectively represented a government-subsidized expansion of black ghettos while designating Eight Mile for white settlement.
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