Ghosts of Black neighborhoods past

I got my first dose of a COVID vaccine today! On Monday I got an email from my health provider offering the vaccine to me. I was directed to a page of appointments, which were every ten minutes through the day for Tuesday through Saturday. I chose a time for this afternoon. I have a different kind of appointment for tomorrow, so thought if I feel a bit ill from the vaccine the day after, perhaps I should change the vaccine appointment. A few hours later I went back to see if I could change it. All the appointment times were gone. The vaccination center has taken over a large suite in this health provider’s building. This is only one site of several for this health service. Three people were working hard to check people in. When I was called I was directed to one of nine vaccination rooms. The actual injection hurt a lot less and took a lot less time than drawing blood for lab work. Then I was directed to one of two observation rooms with well spaced chairs. I think there were ten of us in the room I entered. On the wall was a display, half with the time and half with a game show. A woman sat at a desk in the corner to observe us. A man with a mobile work station stopped near my chair and said it was up to me to watch the time and wait the 15 minutes. He then took my vaccine card and wrote the date of my second appointment. If I objected to the date he handed me (as a guy near me did) he would have changed it, but my calendar is rather empty these days. At the end of 15 minutes I got up. I waved to the woman at the desk who said, “See you in three weeks.” And I left. No adverse effects so far. I get my second dose at the end of March and should be protected by the middle of April. Architect David Cole tweeted with four images of urban freeways:

It doesn't work for every city, but in many cases you can zoom in on Zillow's satellite view and see property lines as they existed in old neighborhoods before the freeways were put through. ... As many have noted, these were mostly Black neighborhoods that were plowed under. Here's a before pic of Cincinnati's West End before I-75 was built, and Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway was deliberately built to serve as a barrier between Irish Bridgeport and the Black South Side.

Winged Isis confirmed what Cole tweeted:

Ghosts of Black neighborhoods past.

I scrolled down to see that Professor Groove responded to Winged Isis saying he did a project about freeways taking out black neighborhoods in Detroit. Click on the image to see the whole thing. I had heard about Detroit’s Black Bottom and how it was destroyed when I-375 went in. That highway is just a mile or so long, giving drivers a direct freeway access to the downtown riverfront. The reason why it was put in was to allow the city to replace Black Bottom with Lafayette Park, that has sharp looking housing designed by Mies van der Rohe. In the 1950s this was not housing for black people. They had to move elsewhere. A year ago, while the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was still doing in-person concerts, they had a photo display titled Black Bottom Street View. I recently discovered I still have the brochure for the exhibit. The brochure says the photos were taken as a way of assessing the value of buildings as part of claiming eminent domain before being destroyed. When the photos are displayed in order and by street they show the life of a small part of the community – and “belie the traditional narrative that Black Bottom was a slum that wasn’t worth saving,” as the brochure says. Every so often over the last decade I read stories in the newspaper about taking out I-375 and reusing the land for this or that project. I don’t know where the project stands. The news has been full of the interview Meghan Markle and Prince Harry did with Oprah Winfrey and how they decided to leave being Royals because of the way she was treated, because of the racism. I didn’t watch the interview. I also haven’t been following what the couple has been doing because I believe they deserve their privacy, even though I’m fascinated by people who reject a spot at the top of the social hierarchy. Lauren Floyd of Daily Kos discussed the interview and included a bit from activist Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu responding to British TV anchor Piers Morgan calling the interview a disgraceful betrayal. Floyd wrote:

Mos-Shogbamimu asked Morgan rhetorically what kind of grandmother would do nothing to protect Prince Harry and his wife but protect her son, Prince Andrew, when facing rape allegations. “And then you sit there hammering on about how the royal institution is not racist. Are you out of your God-forsaken mind?” Mos-Shogbamimu asked Morgan. She added: “Listen, you might learn something. The royal family as an institution is rooted in colonialism, white supremacy, and racism. The legacy's right there." That sounds like another country I’m familiar with.