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MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
Temporary Housing How Defense Housing Shortages Spurred the
Creation of Housing Legislation and Shaped the
Landscape of America.
Kelsey Fields
12/7/2011
Fields 1
Today Americans are facing a collapsed real estate market. Homes appear largely to
outnumber the population’s potential buyers. This is the direct opposite of the America of a
century ago. Early twentieth century America was a time of great and re-occurring crisis; World
War II followed the Great Depression, which followed the Great War. All of these events were
characterized by an additional crisis—a shortage of adequate housing. Today's housing market
is glutted with single family homes, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) approved pre-
fabricated and mobile homes, and government subsidized low-income apartments. That is not to
say that all Americans have adequate housing, but the programs that are currently in place to
combat the problem would not be possible without the foundation in the federal response to the
housing crisis of the early twentieth century. This paper explores the early federal response to
the housing crisis and how it is intimately related to defense strategy and veteran housing needs.
Specifically it looks at the defense migration problems in areas of Tennessee and congressional
acts aimed at combating these problems.
Many of the same housing problems that the country faced later in World War II
characterized World War I. That is, the country faced shortages in building materials. The same
materials needed for family homes are necessary for and thus redirected to the defense industry
in times of war. The migration of workers to the sites of new military bases and defense
industries compounded this problem. This in-migration of workers and shortage of housing led
Congress to create the United States Housing Corporation in 1918.1 The corporation was
responsible for building housing projects for the in-migrant workers and set the foundation for
1 Joint Committee on Housing, “Study and Investigation of Housing: Hearings on the need for housing,
costs and supply of building materials, building codes and zoning laws, administration and operation of existing
federal housings laws, organization and operation of federal, state and municipal government agencies concerned
with housing; private and government housing finance, and other phases of the field of housing.” 80th
Cong., 1st
sess., 1948, Part 1 Preliminary Discussion at Washington, DC; 10. Here after referred to as Joint Committee on
Housing Hearings 1948.
Fields 2
governmental provisioning of housing. While these housing projects were created to fulfill a
specific wartime need and were not aimed at providing housing for the low-income general
public, it did set the precedent for federal housing acts in the 1930s and 1940s.
Other factors were at work changing American society at this time and influenced
America’s response to the housing and job shortages. Following World War I, the nation
experienced an increase in automobile tourism that greatly impacted the mobility of Americans.
Progressive Era thinking held getting back to nature as necessary for “character-building.” It
was essential to restoring white “manliness” in the face of urban life that was contrary to
America’s frontier roots. This led to the development of wilderness vacations for the wealthy.2
The advent of the Ford Model T assembly line stunningly increased the ability of the general
public to leave their urban homes. This allowed them to “go even further afield in their search
for recreation and readily travel long distances during weekends and vacations to places of scenic
interest where their favorite forms of outdoor life may be enjoyed.”3 However enjoyable and
character-building these vacations might be, it was difficult to pack necessary supplies and small
comforts into the automobile with the rest of one’s family. Those with ingenuity simply attached
modified horse carts to their vehicles for extra storage, while those who had money to spare on
luxuries had trailers built with tents attached. Eventually the trend grew and many people made
their own tent trailers or had them built by local handy men and carriage makers.4
What started as a trend for those who could spend a little extra on travel morphed into a
solution to a problem on housing. The stock market crash of 1929 and the following depression
2 Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness
Movement. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 22.
3Ibid., 19.
4Al Hesselbart, The Dumb Things Sold—Just Like That!: A History of the Recreational Vehicle Industry in
America, (Benton, Kentucky: Legacy Ink Publishers, 2007), 6.
Fields 3
slowed down the manufacturing of those camping “house trailers,” but much less than some
industries as “homeowners who lost their houses were forced into an itinerate lifestyle by
economic conditions.”5 “By 1937…trailer production had become the ‘fastest growing U.S.
industry,’ with factory produced trailers supplanting homemade versions. By the late 1930s
According to journalist Samuel Grafton, the mobility of the Model T and the trailer
resulted in the automobile becoming home to many Americans. This situation, acerbated by
wartime shortages in building materials, defense migrations, and a moratorium of non-defense
construction, continued into the early 1940s. This resulted in an "important social phenomenon"
where “the American spirit" was adapted to "the demands of a rootless nomadic life." However,
the housing solution thus derived from the earlier vacationing trend came with misperceptions
and negative connotations. Grafton points out that none of those that he knew of living in trailer
camps were "depressed or unhappy," but he held that:
"Families on wheels, harassed by the uncertainties of the future, spending as little
as they can , consciously avoiding the letting down of roots, cannot and will not
take any responsible role in local life; they cannot and will not support local
institutions; nor can they feel any sense of participation in local problems. They
do not vote. They are connected solely by the payroll to the town in which, by
accident, they find themselves to be. "6
This housing solution came at a price for the mobile families and later the federal
government. Many residents and local governments held the belief that mobile families
have no connection to the communities, causing resistance to their physical
5Hesselbart, 7.
6 House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, National Defense Migration:
Hearings on H.R. 113, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 1941, 4274-5 Here after referred to as National Defense Migration
Hearings 1941.
Fields 4
incorporation into the these communities. Local governments of these communities often
failed to support the migrant workers by refusing to build roads or provide sanitary water
and sewage for the trailer camps, leaving that responsibility to the federal government
and defense contractors. This policy further cost defense contractors and the federal
government, as they also had to provide for the removal of trailers and other temporary
housing following the war, so as not to lower the area’s property values.
Of course, improvements to infrastructure remained. Although many of the defense
workers lived in trailer camps, many more were crowded into what little living space was
available in the form of rented rooms, converted barns, and even beds rented in shifts.
Out of the seven Southern states submitting reports to the Select Committee Investigating
National Defense Migration in March 1941, only three of the locations in those states
reported that there was adequate housing available for workers and their families.7
Success of housing in these three locations is attributed to the high organization of health,
7Ibid. 4597-4735. States included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee.
Fields 5
education, and recreation programs in larger cities like Alexandria, Virginia.8 Examples
of both failure and success are evident in the reports on Tennessee. Memphis was a
success while the remaining locations of Tullahoma and Milan, Tennessee reported
scarce housing and unsanitary conditions.
The Du Pont Powder Company constructed a plant in Memphis for the war effort.
According to 1941 reports, the migration of workers and families to the plant resulted in more
traffic on the roads leading to the plant and some crowding in the schools. However, “the influx
of migratory labor was easily taken care of through the numerous homes and boarding houses in
Memphis.”9
In Milan, construction of a shell loading plant occurred in a rural area “out in the open
country, many miles from any sizable city.” There it employed “four or five thousand people.”10
The location of the plant in Milan met requirements for its “remoteness from large centers of
population… [and] availability of large tracts of land to permit necessary safe distances between
facilities in both production and storage areas” for the ordnance.11
However, because there were
few residences in the original town, only ten houses, and little local infrastructure, the location
was unable to meet the housing needs of the workers. In March 1941, the report from Milan
painted the picture of the housing shortage, “large crowds of people have taken up practically all
homes and places to stay, and houses that would normally rent from $25 to $30 are bringing
from $75 to $150.” Also reported was a feeling of “ fear [that] the same situation will arise here
8Ibid. 4623.
9Ibid. 4623.
10
Ibid. 4270.
11
Jeffrey A. Hess, Milan Army Ammunition Plant, Milan, Gibson, TN. (Washington, D.C.: Historic
American Engineering Record, 1984.), 20.
Fields 6
[in Milan] as in Camp Forrest near Tullahoma, Tennessee
and Alexandria, Louisiana, where people slept in
automobiles or any other places where they could find
shelter.” This overcrowding caused a sanitation problem that
Mr. G.C. Cloys, Jr., the Assistant Director of Tennessee
State Employment Service, hoped would influence “health
department officials to arrange temporary toilet facilities and
water supply…in convenient spots for those who gather
outside employment offices.”12
According to Henry S.
Bloker, District Manager of the Tennessee State
Employment service, there was an influx of 15, 000 hired
workers to the Camp Forrest project. An estimated minimum
31,000 soldiers and additional 8,000 families of officers and
federal employees soon joined the 15,000 workers.13
Preston
Valien reported that those hired workers were only a fraction
of the estimated 23,000 workers who travelled to Tullahoma
from Alabama, Arkansas, and the surrounding areas of
Tennessee for a job.14
On March 1, 1941, Congress passed Public Law Nine on Defense Housing and
Temporary Shelter and later passed two additional acts that made up the Temporary Housing
12
National Defense Migration Hearings 1941, 4624.
13
Ibid. 4625.
14
Ibid. 4626.
Fields 7
Acts. Public Law Nine gave the President the power to assign government agencies to “provide
temporary shelter, either by the construction of buildings or otherwise…in localities where by
reason of national defense activities a shortage of housing exists.”15
Therefore, government
agencies constructed trailer parks, as seen in photograph one, to house the workers.
One such agency was the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA was
responsible for ordering at least 4,000 trailers for defense purposes. The Palace Travel Coach
Corporation of Williamston, Michigan and Newport, Arkansas built some of these homes.
Palace was one of the companies to receive a contract with the FSA to create deployable
temporary housing for emergency response—that is, to provide housing for refugees in case of
the destruction of American cities by Axis powers. These mobile homes, marketed later as the
1942 Palace “Expando,” were built on their own chassis and designed to be towed by a civilian’s
personally owned vehicle. It unfolded from both sides to form a triple wide home with four
rooms and a shower. The process by which it unfolds is seen in photographs two through four.
Another agency tasked with providing temporary shelter Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA), which was the cover organization for the development of the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory as part of the Manhattan project. The Manhattan project developed the Oak Ridge
15
Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act, 1941, Public Law 9, U.S. Statutes at Large 55 (1941-1942): 14.
Photograph 5
Trailers that house those constructing Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Photo from the American
Museum of Science and Energy. Note the Palace Expando homes second and third from the right.
Fields 8
site in a generally unpopulated area of Tennessee near the TVA’s Norris Dam site for many of
the same reasons that the powder plant was located in rural Milan—so as to protect population
from accidental or enemy caused explosions. As such the location had a sparse amount of
buildings in which to house defense workers. Reports on the housing conditions at Oak Ridge
were not made to the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration as Milan and
Camp Forrest were, partly because construction of the community did not begin until 1942 and
partly because of wartime security concerns. Yet, historic photographs clearly show the
conditions of community brought on by the population boom and recollections of Oak Ridge
residents show that the site followed the pattern of other sites in Tennessee. According to Jay
Searcy, a 10 year-old at the time of his residence in Oak Ridge, some workers slept in abandoned
outbuildings, barns, cars, and even in tents, which was here his wife’s family lived, before they
were able to move into a trailer.16
Furthermore, the National Register Nomination for Oak Ridge
documents the Army's response housing concerns.
According to the nominations,
reports showed that the Army
responded to the housing issue with
nearly every method previously used
at other defense sites. Firstly, they
utilized the 181 farmhouses that were
in the area prior to the military's
16Jay Searcy, “My Nuclear Childhood,” on Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association, updated
August 2005, http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS-C/OR-JSEA/ORP-JSEA-01.htm.(Accessed April 14,
2011.) This is a reproduction of an article that ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer on August 9, 1992. It is reproduced
on the website with their permission. It should be noted that this is the reminisces of a 60-year-old that is informed
by many outside sources of information of varying degrees of accuracy. As such, his version of history should be
critically examined in the matter of facts, such as numbers and dates. However, his accounts do serve to illustrate
examples of other facts found in more reliable sources.
Photograph 6
Schult “flat-top” at the Oak Ridge site. Curtsey of the
Recreational Vehicle and Mobile Home Hall of Fame
Fields 9
condemnation of the land. These briefly housed the administration of the project while new
housing was constructed.17
To provide housing for the workers constructing the atomic
processing plants and for the plants future employees, they provided 1071 trailers from the FSA
program and constructed 980 hutment houses.18
Original estimates stated that additional housing
was necessary for 13,000 workers at the plants. However, this number immediately increased
and the military responded by instituting another trailer camp to provide housing for 2000
workers.19
In 1945, the project was still under construction. Buses brought construction workers
in from surrounding towns to complete new projects so that the housing space at Oak Ridge
remained open for use by Manhattan project employees. Housing eventually consisted of 9324
family units such as, Cemesto homes. Cemesto was the name given to panels covered with a
mix of concrete and asbestos from which the houses were constructed. Housing also included
pre-fabricated homes built by the Schult Corporation, a trailer and pioneer mobile home
company from Elkhart, Indiana. The design of the Schult homes differed from traditional trailers
because they were transported in eight foot by twenty-four foot sections by a large tractor-trailer
instead of being built on a chassis. The pieces were then set onto a foundation with a crane in
the same manner as a modern pre-fabricated home. This process is seen in photograph six. They
were nicknamed “flat tops” because of their flat roofs. Furthermore, the project housed families
in duplexes, optimistically called Victory Cottages. In addition to the family housing were 93
dormitories, barracks, 400 trailers in trailer camps, and hutment housing. All totaled these
17“Historic and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” National Register of Historic Places
Multiple Property Documentation, July 24, 1991, E5.
18
Ibid. E15.
19
Ibid.
Fields 10
structures provided housing for approximately 75,000 people.20
This increase in population
exemplifies the magnitude of the housing challenge faced at Oak Ridge. The growth in
population made Oak Ridge the fifth largest city in Tennessee—a far cry from the small number
of people residing in the 181 farm homes previously inhabiting the property.21
While defense migration clearly influenced the population and infrastructure of towns in
America, it also offers insight into the American idea of what a house is and who should have
one. The housing constructed at Oak Ridge was rigidly segregated by "rank and race."22
High-
ranking military officers, scientists, and engineers deemed valuable to the project's success lived
in the bigger and semi-permanent Cemesto homes. Those lower ranking personnel with families
lived in the Schult homes and the duplexes. Project administration would not grant single men
and women homes but housed them
instead in apartments, dormitories,
and barracks. Married couples with
children made their home in
"victory-cottages" and trailer parks
unless they were a large family and
an opening became available for
them in the Cemesto or Schult
housing.23
Single men in menial
positions lived in hutments.
20Ibid. E14.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid. E16.
23
Ibid. E16.
Photograph 7
Pictured is a segregated hutment house neighborhood at
Oak Ridge. Photo curtsey of the American Museum of Science and
Energy.
Fields 11
While this list covers the range of housing available to white workers, black workers
were segregated into hutment neighborhoods segregated from the white neighborhoods. They
were even segregated according to sex, as men and women lived apart from one another,
separated by “five-foot fences topped with barbed wire.”24
Four to six persons lived in each
hutment, which were approximately sixteen-feet squares constructed from un-insulated plywood
featuring pyramidal roofs surrounding a chimney and rows of plywood awnings covering
glassless windows.25
They were without running water, forcing their occupants to use
community bathhouses. Coal stoves heated the structures. Because of these conditions, many
black workers lived separately from their families, who remained behind. Policy held that black
children could not live in Oak Ridge until it was changed 1946.26
Such segregation was justified
by the military as being in line with a "policy of respecting, local customs and laws in areas
where federal installations were located."27
The company hired by the military to run the city
justified their policy by asserting that responsibility “is not to promote social changes, whether
desirable or undesirable, but to see that the community is efficiently run and that everybody has a
chance to live decently in it."28
While defense migration clearly affected the population and infrastructure of towns in
America, it also offers insight into the American idea of what a house is and who should have
one. Even though Public Law Nine and the Temporary Shelter Acts gave the President the
power to “provide temporary shelter, either by the construction of buildings or otherwise,” the
24Searcy.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid. E 21-22.
27
Ibid. E 21.
28
Ibid. E 22 as quoted from Charles 0. Jackson and Charles W. Johnson, City Behind A Fence, (Knoxville:
The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), 118.
Fields 12
government was not technically authorized to build permanent housing in defense areas even to
house returning veterans.29
This was likely for practical reasons. Constructing buildings was
more expensive as well as more permanent. Since the increase in population in these localities
was due to defense migration, as soon as the war was over industry would abandon newly
constructed buildings as industry returned to normal employee numbers. Using mobile homes
and semi-permanent demountable housing, which was cheaper and movable to meet housing
needs in other parts of the country or sellable for profit is the more cost effective answer. In
testimony given to the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration in 1941,
speculation that between the Army, the Navy, the FSA, private defense industry, and even
individual defense workers, an estimated more than 85% of the 20,000 trailers produced in that
year were used for defense housing.30
What is interesting is the effect that defense housing, housing laws, and racial
segregation had on one another. The problems of defense migration informed the government
that the nation could not face the housing shortage of discharged veterans without federal aid.
As a temporary measure, the government utilized the same housing they had previously utilized,
by selling surplus trailers and
converting barracks into apartments.
These solutions were to
meet private housing needs and on
college campuses to provide for
veterans attending college on the
G.I. Bill. This resulted in the first instances of married student housing on college campuses. In
29Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act, 1941, Public Law 9, U.S. Statutes at Large 55 (1941-1942): 14.
30
National Defense Migration Hearings 1941, 7306.
Photograph 8
Photograph of the CTD barracks at MTSC after
conversion into apartments for married veterans attending
college on the G.I. Bill
Fields 13
Tennessee, one of the best-documented examples of this was the creation of "Vet Village" on the
campus of Middle Tennessee State Teachers College (MTSC), now Middle Tennessee State
University. The village began with the placement of the Eleventh College Training Detachment
(CTD) on the MTSC campus in 1943. The CTD program was developed by the Air Corps to
educated and train future pilots.31
Barracks
were constructed on the campus to house the
cadets. After the war, the university
converted these barracks were into
apartments, but even this did not provide
enough housing for veterans and their
families. Trailers soon joined the barracks,
making a "trailer town" for the families.32
They even elected a Mr. and Mrs. Vet
Village to be included in the 1950 school
yearbook, the Midlander.33
The little community even featured a "laundry house, grocery store,
and even a mayor."34
As for the veterans that did not go to college, the G.I. Bill provided the opportunity of
home ownership in the form of a loan program. Originally, the loan was a small amount simply
31Middle Tennessee State College, Midlander, Vol 17 (Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State
College, 1944), 56. See Also Edward Humes, Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream,
(Orlando: Harcourt, 2006) for discussion on the University of Denver’s experience with veteran housing.
32
Middle Tennessee State College, Midlander, Vol 22 (Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State
College, 1947), 92.
33
Middle Tennessee State College, Midlander, Vol 25 (Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State
College, 1950), 72.
34
Middle Tennessee State College, Midlander, Vol 27 (Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State
College, 1952), 41.
Photograph 9
Shown here is the trailer town section of Vet
Village on the campus of MTSC.
Fields 14
a “50% guaranty by the government on a first-mortgage loan made for home purchase or
construction” on a character–loan basis where the loan does not exceed $1000 or 40% of the
value of the property”35
Additionally, Kathleen Frydl points out, these were not generally direct
loans, but rather loans subsidized by the Veterans Administration (VA). Because of this, it was
up to the private lender to determine whether they would profit from loaning a veteran money,
thus many lending institutions denied loans to young, working class, female, or black veterans.36
While congress immediately increased the loan amount of the G.I. Bill in 1945, there was
much confusion on behalf of both veterans and the remaining public as to the process by which
how loan decisions were made and how a VA loans differed from an FHA loan. Much of the
confusion, at least in 1948, seems to stem from the 1947 changes to Title VI of the FHA
legislation. The confusing change was the “section 610 program” wherein FHA mortgage
insurance was made available to all “permanent war housing built by the government during the
national defense and war periods,” which were then being sold with priority to veterans. This
program thus provided veterans with the means by which to “obtain the financing necessary to
acquire war housing units at moderate prices.”37
These were not VA loans, although they were
direct mortgage insurance for veterans by the federal government.
Of further confusion was the similarity of the FHA loan insurance program with the VA
loan insurance program. One of the differences was that the FHA uses staff appraisers to
determine the property value before loaning money. The VA used outside appraisers hired on a
fee system. This is significant because veterans were not only receiving two seemingly different
35 Joint Committee on Housing Hearings 1948, 15.
36
Kathleen Frydl, “African-American Veterans.” in The G.I. Bill, (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 222-262.
37
Joint Committee on Housing Hearings 1948, 12.
Fields 15
appraisal values, but rather it is important because of the method behind the FHA appraisal
process. Kenneth T. Jackson has made a career out of delving into Home Owners’ Loan
Corporation (HOLC) records. He and others like Amy E. Hillier have shown that the HOLC
system of appraisal was racist and had the effect of segregating blacks and other ethnic
Americans into slums by denying loans to applicants in areas deemed to contain adverse
influences. More importantly, they have clearly shown that the HOLC utilized The FHA process
of appraisal. As clearly stated in the FHA’s underwriting manual, adverse influences had “a total
weight of 20 [percent], making it one of the most important features in the rating of location.”38
This goes beyond insuring that zoning ordinances are followed and that houses are up-kept.
Instead the manual calls for “prevention of the infiltration of business and industrial uses, lower-
class occupancy, and inharmonious racial groups.”39
In addition to advocating harmony among
racial groups, the FHA went so far as to recommend restrictive housing covenants in deeds to
insure that no racial “in-harmony” occurred.40
During the 1948 “Study and Investigation of Housing,” Senator McCarthy repeatedly
discussed the confusion that the two systems caused “some 20,000,000 people.”41
He requested
and even threatened to write into law an order forcing the FHA and VA programs to use the
same appraisal system, which would also have the effect of insuring a racially motivated
appraisal.42
Furthermore, as the VA would only guaranty those loans and not make them directly
38Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under
Title II of the National Housing Act, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936), part 226.
39
Ibid part 229. Emphasis mine.
40
Ibid part 228.
41
Joint Committee on Housing Hearings 1948, 24 and 84-88.
42
Ibid. 84.
Fields 16
many local lenders denied loan applications on older housing on unimproved lots.43
Such
policies of local control of lending and administration clearly enforce local norms of racial
segregation. But then, that was the purpose of writing local control into the G.I. Bill according
to Edward Humes.44
This argument is supported by the findings of Robert Weaver, Kathleen
Frydl, David Onkst, and Ira Katznelson.45
Furthermore, this is not surprising considering the
attitude of the federal government toward segregation at the time. The assertion that they policy
of the federal government was to follow local custom on the issue of race relations as discussed
earlier, was essentially federal sanctioning of institutional segregation.
The movement of industrial jobs around the country directly affected housing segregation.
According to Schulman, defense manufacturing and military reserves were placed in the south in
an effort to combat the oppressive poverty that the Sunbelt faced during the Great Depression. 46
As seen in the report by Fisk University’s Preston Valien, these new industries attracted many
workers of both races hoping to get a job.47
However, the overwhelming majority of positions
went to whites like Jay Searcy’s parents who were “$4-dollar-a-day cotton-mill hands in
Stevenson, [Alabama].” Moving to Oak Ridge offered the Searcy’s the chance to triple their
income.48
43Ibid. 88.
44
Edward Humes, Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream, (Orlando: Harcourt,
2006).
45
Robert Weaver, The Negro Ghetto, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948); Kathleen Frydl,
The G.I. Bill, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); David Onkst, “‘First a Negro…Incidentally a
veteran:’ Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944-1948,” Journal of
Social History, 31 no. 3 (Spring 1998), 517-543; and Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action was white: An Untold
History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005).
46
Bruce J. Schulman, “Persistent Whiggery: Federal Entitlements and Southern Politics.” in From Cotton
Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980, (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1994), 112-134. For discussion on the politics of placing defense programs in the south.
47
National Defense Migration Hearings 1941, 4626.
Fields 17
Weaver argues that blacks followed the advertised opportunities of migrating for defense
work and were repeatedly turned away; many were forced into northern industrial areas. In
response to this increase in black population, communities relied heavily on racially restrictive
covenants to protect their property values from adverse influences as stated by FHA and HOLC
appraisal policy. This resulted in segregated neighborhoods where rent was inflated due to the
increased demand and lack of space.49
Even though the Army’s mission was solely to complete a
project as rapidly and with as little resistance as possible” in the social development of defense
towns, Oak Ridge’s black population eventually gained some benefit from post-war government
programs.50
In 1949, after the opening of the city behind the fence to the general public, black Oak
Ridge residents had their first opportunity to move from the plywood hutments and later (post
1946) Victory Cottages that they had occupied since 1942. New neighborhoods were being built
according to the original city development plan written by the Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill
architectural firm. One of which was designated for black residents. The neighborhood known
as Scarboro contained the identical type of buildings as the new white neighborhood that was
being constructed. Furthermore, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC), which was in charge of
post-war atomic research at Oak Ridge, “consulted with the leaders in the black community”
who reportedly chose to move the construction site from the proposed “east village” area to a
different valley known as Gambell Valley.51
When the construction finished in 1950, it
48Searcy.
49
Robert Weaver, The Negro Ghetto, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948); Kathleen Frydl,
The G.I. Bill, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
50
Searcy.
51
“Historic and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” National Register of Historic Places
Multiple Property Documentation, July 24, 1991. E 29.
Fields 18
consisted of “15 cinderblock single-family units, 143 frame duplexes, and seven dormitories”
which were to be converted into apartments at a later date, and an elementary school to service
the black students that had been attending the Bethel Valley School since 1946.52
Soon after,
this the AEC started leasing land to residents for the construction of private housing. However,
local loan agencies failed to provide loans for construction on land that was not owner-occupied.
To remedy this and in response to a new law requiring the liquidation of housing at Oak Ridge,
the AEC began selling the lots. In an effort to “avoid speculative buying,” a policy was
instituted in which residents had the first option on purchasing their homes.53
While black were
not given the option of purchasing the new ranch housing constructed under FHA titles IX and
VIII, it appears that they were given the option to buy their homes in Scarboro.54
Although they
were limited in opportunity by the fact that only fifteen single family homes were built, they
were also theoretically eligible for the FHA’s section 610 programs discussed above which
would allow a black resident making the fifty-eight cents-an-hour the opportunity to purchase a
home.55
Notably, even though the community of Oak Ridge integrated in 1955 with the
desegregation of the school system and the acceptance of blacks living in the same dormitories
and apartments as whites, the neighborhood of Scarboro is still predominately black in
population.56
While Oak Ridge offers an interesting and seemingly rare example of blacks benefiting
from federal defense housing policies directly following World War II, it should be noted that
52Ibid. E30.
53
Ibid. E30.
54
Ibid. F22.
55
Ibid. E32.
56
Ibid. E32-33 as of 1991.
Fields 19
specific documentation of home ownership in Scarboro was not researched. Assumption of
homeownership was based on the AEC’s need to sell homes and the consistent demographic
make-up of the neighborhood from its creation in 1950. While it is true that the homes in
Scarboro are now owner-occupied, this may be a recent occurrence and speculative selling of the
neighborhood as rental property could have occurred. Deed research in Oak Ridge could bring
this information to light and find whether there were restrictive covenants involved in selling of
Oak Ridge lots even though such covenants were ruled unenforceable by the Supreme Court in
1948’s Shelley v. Kramer decision.57
Furthermore, additional research should be undertaken to
compare Oak Ridge and Tennessee’s other defense sites with other well documented defense
sites such as those located in Hartsford, Connecticut; Norfolk, Redford, and Newport News,
Virginia; Childersburg and Sheffield, Alabama; Detroit, Michigan; Erie, Pennsylvania and others.
Roger W. Lotchin has already undertaken extensive research on defense housing in San Diego,
California. To a lesser degree, Christine Killory and Leroy Harris have also researched San
Diego’s defense housing.58
The majority of the work on San Diego focuses on the impact of the
Linda Vista defense housing project on San Diego’s infrastructure and demographics. The
defense industry had a tremendous impact on housing options and attitudes. A close look at
housing history leaves no doubt this nation’s housing profile is greatly derived from military
need and federal practices to address that need.
57 See Clement Vose, Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, The NAACP and the Restrictive Covenant
Cases, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1959) and Joe T. Darden, “Black Residential Segregation Since the
1948 Shelley V. Kramer Decision” in Journal of Black Studies, 25 no. 6 (July 1995), 680-691. For discussion of
Shelly v. Kramer.
58
Roger W. Lotchin. Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992); Roger Lotchin, "The Metropolitan Military Complex in Comparative Perspective: San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, 1919-1941," in The Urban West, ed. Gerald D. Nash, (Manhattan, Kansas:
Sunflower University Press, 1979); Leroy Harris, "The Other Side of the Freeway: A Survey of the Settlement
Patterns of Negroes and Mexican Americans in San Diego," Ph.D. diss., (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University,
1974). Christine Killory, “Temporary Suburbs: The Lost Opportunity of San Diego’s National Defense Housing
Projects,” The Journal of San Diego History 39 no 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1993).
Fields 20
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