Historic Town-Gown Partnerships: Planning, Race, and Power

Abstract

Though previous studies examine university expansion and impacts on adjacent, often economically disenfranchised and segregated communities of color, most focus on large urban areas of the Midwest and Northeast following World War II (WWII). We assess the founding of a land grant university in a Southern, majority African American town and its subsequent direct and indirect community impacts. Our findings reveal the range of planning and land development tools deployed from that university’s founding through the early post-WWII period that reinforced racial displacement, disenfranchisement, and segregation. Understanding this legacy is essential to pursuing racial equity and remedying structural disparities.