Content area
Full Text
This article examines the intersection of race, space, and resistance as we revisit the legacies and contemporary implications of urban development policies in historically Black communities. With the understanding that spatial matters are Black matters (and Black matters are spatial matters), we argue that exploring this intersection allows us to raise questions about the differential impact of urban policies on Black communities. Against the historical backdrop of devastation and loss caused by urban renewal and highway construction in the mid-20th century, activists and residents fight current proposals for a highway expansion project originally called TBX. While we examine the proposed project and its implications for the entire city, we are particularly focused on responses to this project by communities we have studied for many years. Drawing on ethnographic research in two historically Black communities, we discuss the work of two Black women leaders, whose struggles for spatial justice are informed by histories and memories of geographic domination. To examine the rationale for community pushback to proposals for infrastructural improvements, this article examines the intersection of race and space theoretically, historically, and through the lived experiences of community activists whose primary work is making Black communities matter.
Key words: historically black communities, Black women and community activism, urban highway expansion, intersection of race and space
On a warm spring evening in Tampa, a large and excited group of community activists, professors, students, and residents from local neighborhoods gathered at the University of South Florida campus for a forum on issues related to expressway expansion in the city. Although the forum was organized by faculty members from the departments of anthropology and sociology,1 this event was not an academic exercise. By the time of the forum in April of 2016, activists and residents of the Tampa Heights community had already heard many iterations of the expressway expansion plans from representatives of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). They had held meetings with various groups from other communities who would also be affected by the expansion plans (Johnston 2016). They had interacted with local, state, and national governmental officials, and they had educated themselves about the broad implications of highway expansion to the urban core. They had even organized and participated in public protests against the project...