Overview

The purpose of this media project is to explore the effects of integration, urban renewal, and gentrification on the West Broad Street / Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard business district in Savannah, Georgia. During segregation, this district was the highlight of the African-American community and was the cornerstone of economic prosperity for African Americans. If integration was the answer to the social deviancy of legal apartheid, why did this business district decline? The project will reveal the various circumstances leading to the decline of the West Broad Street businesses and present the current economic conditions of this once thriving community. Finally, this new media project will propose that African Americans must now remember and continue the legacy of the Civil Rights movement by rebuilding this community.

The struggle for civil rights by African Americans was to secure political, social, and more specifically, economic justice. During segregation, African Americans stood at an economic disadvantage because major businesses and industrial arenas proved only to hire whites. If such organizations did hire African Americans, the wages were miniscule. As a result, many African Americans in the South worked as sharecroppers, industrial laborers, domestic servants, and railroad workers. African Americans were usually paid significantly less than whites. Even college educated African Americans were displaced from the economic sphere of American society.

While segregation restricted employment and resources for African Americans, they economically enabled themselves by operating and patronizing African-American owned businesses. Such is the case with the West Broad Street business district, now Martin Luther King Boulevard in Savannah, Georgia. African Americans lived under an oppressive and dehumanizing system and yet, developed their own unique and distinct communities. Commonly called the ìmain dragî by many of its residents, the West Broad Street business district included black-owned hotels, doctorís offices, pharmacies, barbershops, nightclubs, and restaurants. This community was the cornerstone of the African-American community in Savannah and the epoch of black success.

Today, few African-American-owned businesses remain on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Gentrification, urban renewal, and integration seemingly caused severe regression in this business district. Did integration and urban renewal mean that African Americans in Savannah would no longer have their own thriving community? W.W. Law, a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement in Savannah, fought effortlessly to restore this vibrant African-American business district and was ridiculed by younger integrationists. Law stated that ìif we are going to have an integrated society, then there has to be an appreciation of the contribution that everybody made.