The Urban Renewal and the Legacy of Smokey Hollow

(bluesy music) - [Suzanne] An old neighborhood is demolished to extend a new road in Tallahassee called FAMU Way.

The improvements in a poor area near the city's historically Black university are what some call progress, and others call gentrification.

It's a move we've seen before.

- We don't take enough emphasis and put it on history.

You know, to take lessons so we can learn from what happened.

And in the case of Smokey Hollow, just the idea that a whole set of people were moved.

Displacement really has a hardship on people.

We don't understand the factors that are involved, particularly when it comes to emotional trauma, when it comes to a loss of spirit, and loss of family, and loss of support systems.

- [Suzanne] Cascades Park sits on a 24-acre parcel in the shuttle of Florida's capitol.

Families are drawn to its ponds, imagination fountain, and pet-friendly walking trails.

Long before Cascades Park was envisioned, a neighborhood known as Smokey Hollow sat in this spot.

Born in the 1890's, it was home to hundreds of African-American families.

- It was a community that had churches, businesses, and so you go back into the time, 50's, 60's, on the 60's, segregation was prominent.

Blacks couldn't live where they so desired.

So it was one of the places where Blacks lived.

- [Suzanne] By the late 1950's and early 60's, the structures in Smokey Hollow were aged, and many looked ramshackle.

A two-lane highway was widened into a broad boulevard, Apalachee Parkway, with a majestic view leading right up to the capitol building, and cutting right through Smokey Hollow.

- [Announcer] A majestic sight indeed.

Florida's capitol building with its tall, white columns and glistening dome has dominated the entire Tallahassee landscape since 1839.

- [Suzanne] To white citizens working or living up on the hill, the neighborhood looked like a slum.

Urban renewal was the catchphrase of the day, according to local newspaper accounts.

A possible expansion of the capitol complex percolated with a grand vision of a campus-like array around the capitol building.

A referendum was held, and the state exercised eminent domain.

Smokey Hollow residents were told to leave.

- It's important for people to recognize the impact of what happens to a lot of Black communities.

They don't see it because it's not happening in their community, so as a result, you don't realize how many people may have lived in one of these small houses.

- [Suzanne] Smokey Hollow went under the bulldozer, ostensibly to make room for a much-needed growing capital infrastructure.

One government office was built in the area.

The Department of Transportation building broke ground in November of 1964.

Time went on, and not a lot happened with the remaining land.

The view approaching Florida's capitol was magnificent, but the community of Smokey Hollow was gone.

- So when part of my family left here, we scattered.

Some went to the Bond community, some went to Southside area, some went to the north side in the Frenchtown community, the Springfield area.

And so naturally, that separation caused us to not be together as often.

I still see a lot of that happening now with families who've been displaced, and many families are homeless.

You know, that's what I think led to a lot of the homelessness from the moving of the people from this area.

- [Suzanne] Public housing projects starting springing up around town as an answer to urban renewal.

Smokey Hollow residents dispersed and moved to areas they could afford, and were allowed.

Many moved south of the railroad tracks to an area known as South City.

Others went to Frenchtown, but gentrification began there in the 1990's.

- We watched it in D.C., we watched in Harlem, we watched it all over the nation, and we're watching it in Tallahassee, Florida.

We're watching communities that have been legacy communities, African-American communities, and there's a knowledge that where African-Americans dwell are some of the most valuable places in a community because we tend to be in the central of the city where accessibility is maximized, because it's a need.

- [Suzanne] As FAMU Way is extended, a South City housing project is being renovated and expanded to double the living space.

The area sits about two miles south of the old Smokey Hollow.

- So early on we were talking about urban renewal and eminent domain, and the government can come in and take the property if they wanted to.

Now we're talking about gentrification and redlining, and all these things, but they're all related to certain systems.

Housing, rough income, things of that sort.

- Many of them have been in generational cycles of survivalism that just have not been broken, and so those are things that, as a community, we have to speak to, and we have to own.

We can't just sweep it under a rug and say, "No, that's not the case."

No, it is the case.

The most vulnerable citizens are negatively impacted by eminent domain, for the most part, so we have to be at the table when these decisions are made.

- [Suzanne] 50 years after the demise of Smokey Hollow, the City of Tallahassee completed construction of Cascades Park, a beautiful public space at the site of the old neighborhood.

And the Smokey Hollow commemoration stands as a reminder that things have changed, but maybe there's more work to do.

- So when I think about lessons that I've learned, I know that it's important for us to keep up on what's going on in our legislature, to keep up with what's going on in our local community government, to be a voice, which the people in Smokey Hollow didn't have much of a voice.

You know, the ones who were on my side of the track.

We didn't have enough to say about legislature, or new things coming to take down a shanty family's home.

- [Suzanne] In addition to the creation of a symbolic memorial structure, as well as the preservation and display of a community gathering spot, the old barber shop, a written collection of oral histories about the Smokey Hollow community was recently published.

Efforts continue to preserve the memories of Smokey Hollow, and the cycle of urban renewal continues.