While HOLC’s residential security maps get flagged in general opinion as the origin of redlining and its maps take on almost iconic status, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is often put forth as an example of good progressive federal policy. I use the iceberg method from Culture Hack (thanks, Diane!) here to draw out some questions from a typical description of the WPA before starting to look at its landing in West Philadelphia specifically.

I want to zoom in on the assumption that public infrastructure development complemented the idea of relief for the unemployed by looking at what that public infrastructure looked like in West Philadelphia specifically. Using the Living New Deal map, we see a post office with art, two nearly co-located schools, and a guard house. Overlaying with HOLC’s maps shows the schools in a “yellow” area (C15), the post office also in a yellow area (C14), and the guardhouse in a blue area (b19). The map below (it’s a working draft and I know the symbology is far from perfect!) shows the schools and post office both depicted by small green dots and the guardhouse marked by a larger red dot. Before we get into the two stars depicted on the map below, I want to consider some of the implications of this “public infrastructure development” enabled by the WPA. Specifically, were WPA workers receiving the benefits of their labor beyond wages? Was the infrastructure for them (i.e. were they part of the public)? The area description for C14 describes the presence of “relief families” as “moderately heavy” and in C15 as “moderate.” In B19, their presence is described as “nominal” (Nelson et. al.). This does suggest that residents of the areas in which these WPA-built infrastructure projects were sited were also, in part, WPA workers, though certainly to a lesser degree than in nearby D22 and D23, which were reported to have “very heavy” presences of relief families. Notably, C14, C15, and B19 all report no Black residential population, though potential Black residents are reported as “threatening” in C14, the site of the post office. Again, this is in contrast to D22 and D23, reported respectively as 35% Black and 80% Black. “D” areas in West Philadelphia seemingly saw zero development as a result of the WPA, though residents presumably labored for hourly wages through the program. (What uneven temporalities are at play when considering the hourly wages and built infrastructure of WPA and built-environment and generational-wealth impacts of HOLC’s program and logics?)

Thinking about the impact of this WPA-built construction on mobility and security, we might see a post office as supporting mobility of information and items, and schools also as improvers of mobility (though specific inquiry into this school’s relationship to segregation should follow). A guardhouse for the Fairmount Park Police on the other hand, would pose a threat to the mobility of Black, non-white, immigrant, poor, and working class people while possibly offering a sense of security to white property owners and thus working within the logics of a segregationist approach to housing and lending per redlining and HOLC’s legacy. This “B” area is small and on the edge of the city boundaries, with C and D areas butting up against it. Within the tract, there was already an “Infiltration of” “Foreign-Jewish” residents, according to the area’s assessment. We might read the siting of a guard house here as guarding not only a sense of the “white collar class” residents’ security, but also guarding the residential securities–as in a collateralized fungible, negotiable financial instrument–mapped by HOLC in the interest of lenders.

What I didn’t know when I first learned about the guard house, was that I’ve spent the majority of my mornings these past six months on its grounds. It marks the beginning of creek-side trails I run frequently and anchors a park area with a wildflower field where my partner and I spent some of our best hours this past summer. Today, the building houses the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center, established in 2002 following advocacy, planning, and fundraising efforts led by a science educator and then-Cobbs Creek resident, Carole Williams-Green.

The most prominent media referencing the site is about the killing of a police officer there in the summer of 1970 (the area is described as “a black neighborhood”) shortly before the 1972 consolidation of the Fairmount Police and Philadelphia Police Department under Frank Rizzo left the guard house and its police horse stables “abandoned” (Janson, 1970; Kyriakodis, 2014). Information is scattered and sometimes contradictory, but I’m continuing to research the use of the building between 1972 and 2002. What I can gather is that a group called the “Greater Phila. Karate Institute & Cobb Creek Riding Academy” was founded in 1973 with its address registered as “63rd & Catherine Sts, Cobbs Creek Stable,” and a man named Uthman Abdus-Salaam and known as “Brother Sensei” taught free horseback riding classes to Philadelphia public school children, specifically children with disabilities. Mr. Abdus-Salaam was also the founder of the Black Cowboys of Fairmount Park respected member of the martial arts group, Universal Song Do Kwan Alliance.

What iterations of security, sovereignty, territory and mobility span the history of the building as a WPA-built police station in a white area; a police station closing in a Black neighborhood; the maintenance of stables and creation of riding classes and karate classes by Black cowboys and Black martial art instructors in a Black neighborhood in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s; and the creation of an environmental education center in a Black neighborhood in the 2000s to present day? Also, amongst widening calls to defund the police, what models do we already have for decommissioning of police infrastructure and appropriation and reuse by local communities? A 1987 New York Times article on Abdus-Salaam points to the stables’ financial struggle as he offers free classes and cares for the horses and aging stables. What might the resources, beyond the building itself, once allocated to the Fairmount Police have made possible for the building’s subsequent occupants?

To return to those stars on the map, they show two other West Philadelphia sites of mobility and resistance: MOVE’s Osage Ave. location and Sankofa Community Garden. In addition to the Cobbs Creek stables, I’m interested in further researching articulations of security, sovereignty, territory and mobility as pertains to both groups; MOVE’s centering of a philosophy that all living things move and the greeting “On the Move,” and Sankofa’s drawing on the Akan phrase “se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenkyi,” or “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what is at risk of being left behind” and insistence on food sovereignty for African diaspora communities in West Philadelphia.

Progressive social movements do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors and, more importantly, enable us to imagine a new society[…] In the poetics of struggle and lived experience, in the utterances of ordinary folk, in the cultural products of social movements, in the reflections of activists, we discover many different cognitive maps of the future, of the world not yet born

Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, pp. 9-10

“Poetry from the future” is an oft-cited phrase used by Marx in the Eighteenth Brumaire: “the social revolution of the nineteenth century can only draw its poetry from the future, not from the past.” Kara Keeling writes about Marx’s formulation of “poetry from the future” as “a formal (‘poetry,’ with its associated lyricism, fragmentation, and logics) and temporal (‘from the future’) disruption, which functions primarily on the level of affect to resist narration and qualitative description. It is a felt presence of the unknowable, the content of which exceeds its expression and therefore points toward a different epistemological, if not ontological and empirical, regime” (p. 83). I’m drawn to the idea of poetry from the future as a means to resist making sense through narration or defining some concrete alternative from within the logic of the violence. I want to disrupt it, not to name its claims as false but to start to uncover new truths. Our group project is rooted in iterative definition, and that’s because we understand a relationship between the ontological and epistemological. How do I engage with the still-living archives of racial capitalism to not only shake off their ways of knowing the world, but also their claims on what is? How do I disrupt this artifact from the future?

I think of M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, gathered from the text of Gregson v. Gilbert, the only public document related to the 1781 massacre of approximately 150 African people by a slave-ship captain intending to collect insurance on them as lost property instead of selling them into slavery. Philip cuts up the decision and and assembles its words into fragments that shout, whisper, moan, sing, chant in an anti-narrative poetic form, breathing life and pain and death back into an otherwise horrifyingly reductive narrative.

Gregson v. Gilbert and HOLC’s residential security maps both demonstrate evidence and reification of a speculative economy. “The Zong massacre reveals that the economy of the transatlantic slave trade was a speculative one, predicated on the belief that the future would confirm the present values of slaves and other commodities of trade” (Keeling, 28). The transatlantic slave trade ran on credit, European boats boarded and sailed, people kidnapped and transported on the promise of profitable exchange to come. Lively futures disposed of for profitable futures. The language of HOLC area descriptions is rife with speculative predictions and life-altering decisions made on those speculated futures in attempts to maximize profit: “Future development will be heavier foreign,” and “In future desirability will undoubtedly decline due to gradual enlargement of blighted territory on the south and west borders,” both claims followed by the same directive, “Property, if acquired, should be sold rather than held.” The phrase “no future” repeats itself. The entire intent of the residential securities maps and accompanying area descriptions was to secure profit. This is not about individual and community human security in the places we reside; this is about identifying “a fungible, negotiable financial instrument” in the form of real estate. It is about securing a future for capital.

Poetry from the future, for me, offers an opportunity to speak back from the “no future” (more precisely, I write from a place described as “threatened with negro encroachment” so perhaps I write from the position of future encroacher). From this position, I can take these archival documents and scrap their claims, cut them up, make them say something different. I move between then and now and throw off the historical inevitability. These same words, these same documents, these same artifacts– they can say something different, they can do something different. It’s a yes to worldbuilding and also a yes to continuity, engaging in the practice of continuity. I can get to know these documents intimately without being seduced by them; I can learn them with care and, through poetry, transform them with care. The hope is that their underlying logics fracture and split, giving way to a different epistemology and, possibly, different ontologies.  

A draft of a poem, its words gathered from area descriptions:

No loans
No odors
No green vegetation to be seen
No prospects
No Negro families
And probably never will
Japs are being pushed out
Nothing at all moving here
Obsolete area
No future
 
Little future
Laid out
Dead-end
The future hopeless
Cinder Brick Stone and Frame
Will remain weak
 
Due to concentrated effort
To keep up the barrier
A natural barrier
A natural protective barrier
Protected by fence
Picturesque fences
And walls
A high wall separates
A high wall prevents
Protected by mountains
Protected by railroad
Protected by deed restrictions
Keeping out infiltration
Preventing their spread
Keep out anyone who might be considered undesirable for various and sundry reasons
 
Low grade population
High grade negro
The poor and trashy type
The Onondaga
Half breeds
Undesirable white population
Inferior white D grade property
Communistic reputation
And Italians
And Russians
And Jews
And Slavs
And Greeks
And Syrians
And Puerto Ricans
Confined to only members of their own race
Undesirable to others
Values would be confined
If acquired, should be sold
 
Development takes place
Construction takes place
Promotion takes place
A distinct threat of infiltration
Bank failures caused untold hardship
 
Speculative buying
Speculative builders
Speculative development
Caused untold hardship
Future growth
Future outlook
Future desirability
Future development
Wrong side of the railroad
Wrong side of the tracks
Wrong side of the river
Located on the wrong side of town
The future of the area as a whole will be down
The few negroes are confined
Threatened
Expired
Restricted
Neglected
Abandoned
 
No future
If acquired
Should be sold
Should be sold
Should be sold promptly
Should be sold
No future
Should be
Sacrificed
No future
Should be sold rather than held
Little future
Should be held
Should be held
Should be held rather than sold
Should be held
Should be held
I am told
I am informed
A better feeling exists
 
We have felt a better feeling
We have felt a better future
It is here
It is in Our homes
It is in Our families
It is in Our strikes
We are a distinct threat to the banks
Undoubtedly, a growth
Odors, railroads, colored people, etc.
Smoke and dirt
Everywhere evident
Everywhere mobile
Everywhere encroaching
We are the limits
We are the center
Anyone who might be considered undesirable for various and sundry reasons
We are likely to develop through demolishment
Demolition of capitalists
Demolition of business men
Demolition of politicians
Demolition of banks
No more mortgages
There is a shifting foundation
Home for the aged
Home for children
Home for the blind
Home for poor
But policemen were killed here
Get out
Give up
We are scattered throughout
We have lost interest
We have lost homes
We have lost property
We have not lost each other
The land has not lost US
We will not live anywhere else
Little future should be held not sold
Little future will continue to hold

During the course of our project, I plan on continuing to do close, slow readings of area descriptions and explore alt. presentations of the maps and descriptions. I will also develop an outline for a research design responding to some of the relationships arising out of the process. More to come, but wanted to share some visual experimentation from the past week.

Collage I compiled in Photoshop; it feels heavy-handed to me (I also just really hate American flag art) and is definitely not a standalone, but I wanted to experiment with pulling text forward from the redlining imagery and really explicitly connecting the local scale with the national. The stars contain different responses to the line “Negro: _____” in A, B, and C-graded neighborhoods; blue and red are both cut outs of different sections of maps from different cities; and the white stripes contain text from area descriptions.

I’ve really struggled with writing lately, but here’s a go at some of what I’m thinking about:

In the context of the “residential security maps,” more commonly called “redlining maps,” security is used in the financial sense, defined by Investopedia as “a fungible, negotiable financial instrument that holds some type of monetary value.” Specifically, it refers to mortgage security, intending to estimate the risk of mortgage loans by area. 

Red indicates a high risk for investment.

How can we use the assessments to document what happens in the “high risk” areas? How people survive, how people resist, how people find other means of security? We see how investments are protected: “high walls” (Camden, NJ, A1), “special police day and night” (Brooklyn, NY, C23), “the Michigan central R.R. tracks” (Kalamazoo, MI, B4), “a private fence” (Staten Island, NY, B15), “lots of sufficient size” (Rochester, NY, B15), “a gate and guard” (Stamford, CT, A6), “deed restrictions protecting against subversive racial elements” (Los Angeles, CA, C29), to name a few. But how are investments threatened? We see “mixture of the races,” “communistic people,” and “rent strikes” in Brownsville (Brooklyn, NY, D10); “a decline in values following the strike at Montgomery Ward’s and other labor troubles of 1937” in Kansas City (MO, D27, D28, and D30), Melrose Park has “a bad reputation for crime and vandalism” (Chicago, IL, D18). 

There is more than the securing, the fixing, the damning in HOLC’s documentation; there is tension. The repeating phrase the area/town/land has no future points to organized abandonment, naturalized to the extent that even terrain descriptions for D-graded neighborhoods read “Negro servants” or “high-grade Negro” while terrain descriptions for A, B, and C-graded neighborhoods read simply “level” or “rolling.” This abandonment naturalized even as the State makes massive interventions into the economy and structure of the housing market. 

These grades produced holes in access to capital, but people still need places to be. Contract sellers and other predatory lenders stepped in: organized violence. 

My goal in this visualization is to surface tensions, abandonments, violences, and survivals that produce the State. The bottom quote, the only in red, quotes from tract D83 in South Chicago: “Something drastic ultimately must be done.”

Further investigations:

Can these documents serve as an archive of resistance, as evidence of financial punishment for care and resistance? 

I came across instructions to sell property in one area “as quickly as possible;” what else are investors and owners encouraged to do? How do these encouragements track in “white flight” and the organized violence enacted by contract sellers?

More about the history of the Contract Buyers’ League in Chicago and similar efforts elsewhere and these groups’ relationships to security/securities.