Chicago Urban Renewal Demolishes Black Belt, Displaces 250,000 Residents

Through the 1950s, Chicago uses federal urban renewal funds under the Housing Act of 1949 to demolish the dense Black Belt neighborhoods on the South Side. The program, called 'Negro removal' by James Baldwin and others, displaces an estimated 250,000 Black residents. Replacement housing is inadequate; many displaced families are pushed into high-rise public housing projects like the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green. Mayor Richard J. Daley concentrates public housing projects in already Black areas, intensifying racial segregation rather than dispersing it.