Further Reading

FURTHER READINGS & RESOURCES

The following list of resources was compiled with help from instructors at Centre College, the Danville Boyle County African American Historical Society, and other individuals who helped research the content of the “We Were Here” exhibition. If you would like help accessing any of the following resources, please reach out to the Norton Center (Centre College).

BOOKS

Basso, K. H. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.

Description: A famous ethnography looking at the Western Apache relationship between language, geography, and the social construction of place. Also considers the ways in which “place-making” is central to all of our understandings of self and identity.

Biles, R. 2011. The Fate of Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945-2000. University Press of Kansas.

Connolly, N. D. B. 2014. A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. Historical Studies of Urban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson. 2016. Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It (version New Village Press edition, [second edition].) New Village Press edition, [second edition] ed. New York: New Village Press.

Description: An anthropological look into the origins and effects of urban renewal in the US, using historical, ethnographic, and oral history data.

Hughes, Michael Thomas and Michael J. Denis. 2022. African Americans in Boyle County. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing.

Description: A pictorial history celebrating local African American history, from the
Danville-Boyle County African American Historical Society. Buy your copy today!

Rothstein, Richard. 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America First ed. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company.

Sandoval-Strausz, A. K. 2019. Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City First ed. New York, NY: Basic Books, Hachette Book Group.

Self, Robert O. 2003. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Sugrue, Thomas J. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton Studies in American Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2019. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Justice, Power, and Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Teaford, Jon C, and Project Muse. 2016. The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise, and Reality. Third ed. Book Collections on Project Muse. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Weiss, Marc A. “The Origins and Legacy of Urban Renewal,” Federal Housing Policies & Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell, Rutgers University Press, 1985, pages 253 – 254.

Weston, William J. 2019. Centre College: A Bicentennial History: A Story of How a College Made for Scholars, Gentlemen, and Christians Developed into a College for Learning, Leadership, and Service While Still Holding Its Center. Revised version ed. Danville, Ky.: Centre College.

Description: A history of Centre College, written by Centre’s own Dr. Beau Weston.

William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies. 2011. Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region. Edited by Darren Dochuk and Michelle M Nickerson. Politics and Culture in Modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Zipp, Samuel. 2010. Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

WEB SOURCES

Cebul, Brent. “Tearing Down Black America.” Boston Review.
https://bostonreview.net/articles/brent-cebul-tearing-down-black-america/

Denis, Mike. We Were Here: African Americans in Danville and Boyle County, Kentucky.
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kydaahs/.

Description: An invaluable resource on local Black history, compiled and self-published by Mike Denis of the Danville-Boyle County African American Historical Society

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson. “Eminent Domain & African Americans: What is the Price of the Commons?” Perspectives on Eminent Domain Abuse. Institute for Justice.
https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Perspectives-Fullilove.pdf

Description: A short article exploring the racialized effects of using eminent domain in urban renewal projects in the US.

Glotzer, Paige. How The Suburbs Were Segregated. 

KY Place, Ep. 3: “Ninth Street Divide.”
https://kyplace.com/web-series/ninth-street-divide/

Description: A panel discussion detailing the legacy of urban renewal in Louisville, KY. Logan, Trevor. 2019. “Urban Revitalization or Planned Extinction?” TEDxColumbus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIoM8J7xwRE

Description: An Ohio State University economics professor talks about how he realized the racialized effects of “urban revitalization” in his own life and work.

Pathways to Diversity (Centre College). https://omeka.centre.edu/s/pathways/page/welcome

“Renewing Inequality: Urban Renewal, Family Displacements, and Race, 1950-1966.” University of Richmond. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogram

Description: An interactive map showing large scale effects of displacement from urban renewal projects in the US.

Susaneck, Adam Paul. 2022. “Mr. Biden, Tear Down this Highway (interactive article).” New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/08/opinion/urban-highways-segregation.html?smid=url-share.

Description: A multimedia visualization of the ways highway construction projects have led to continued racial segregation of neighborhoods in the US.

URBAN RENEWAL IN DANVILLE: A TIMELINE

Displayed in the “We Were Here” exhibition is a large-format timeline that shows how urban renewal began in Danville and how it gained momentum over the course of several years. In particular, the timeline focuses on the events surrounding the first two urban renewal projects in Danville: The Seventh Street project, which started in the early 1960s, and the Second Street project, which entered planning stages before the Seventh Street project was complete.

The exhibition timeline was compiled using newspaper articles from The Advocate-Messenger and other documentary sources as evidence. To access a spreadsheet that details which Advocate-Messenger articles correspond with timeline events, CLICK HERE