This article describes a demonstration sponsored by the Ann Arbor Fair Housing Association - CORE in response to City Council’s support for a weakened fair housing ordinance at the end of July 1963. The protest mentioned was part of a larger summer of civic action to get the City Council to invest fully in the idea of a fair housing ordinance.
This photograph depicts an all-Black baseball team at the Jones School in 1939. The Jones School, now Community High School, is described as an "anchor" of what was known as the North Central area of Ann Arbor, a historically Black neighborhood in present-day Kerrytown (Jones School, n.d.). While it was open, the school served as a site for food drives, donation efforts, and recreational programs for Black students living in the area (Jones School, n.d.). In 1963, the Ann Arbor Board of Education formed a 12-member Citizens’ Committee to study and provide statistics about the dynamics of race, specifically in regards to the racial composition of student populations, in Ann Arbor public schools (Jones School, n.d.). Through the report that the Committee created and released the following year, the Jones School was determined a de facto' segregated school by the Ann Arbor Board of Education and subsequently closed due to community pressure (Jones School, n.d.). More broadly, the work of the Committee spurred action to address segregation across the city’s school system (Jones School, n.d.).
This unidentified land assessment of the North Central area of Ann Arbor provides context for the historical settlement of the region by Black residents, while providing ideas for its potential redevelopment. The focus on specific plots along North 4th Avenue connects with other materials from the period (see “Related Item(s)”) that recognize the street as a site of heavily contested meaning for the predominantly Black residents living there and increasingly encroaching forces looking to make a profit from the neighborhood.
Prepared by Ann Arbor’s City Council with funding from the federal Urban Renewal Survey and Planning Advance, this document describes the potential redevelopment of the North Central area of the city. As is made clear through maps, proposed housing policies, and a lot-by-lot breakdown of envisioned governmental intervention, the plan of Ann Arbor officials was to exert control over a neighborhood which housed the majority of the city’s Black residents. Of particular note is the government’s preparations for seizing the land of any residents who do not comply with the city’s codes, rendering any objection to urban renewal as grounds for losing one’s property.
