On March 4, the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies held a public hearing in Rochester and gathered community testimony. The Commission is tasked with “examining the legacy of slavery, subsequent discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact these forces continue to have in the present day.” This was the fourth public hearing held across the state, following hearings held in Buffalo, Queens, and Albany.
The Rochester hearing was focused on the legacy of urban renewal and the impact of widespread displacement of Black communities. Urban renewal was a 1950s federal program that subsidized local governments’ efforts to address aging urban housing stock and infrastructure, primarily through demolition. The vision of urban renewal to revitalize America’s cities was overpromised and underdelivered. Reconstruction was often slow and rarely rebuilt sufficient housing units. Projects prioritized surface-level beautification, car-centric infrastructure (highways and parking structures), and large public-private developments. In some cases, lots were left vacant.
By the time the program ended in 1974, it was widely criticized for its disproportionate impact on communities of color and commonly referred to as Negro removal. According to city reports, Rochester’s urban renewal program was the 14th largest in the country, “with nearly $200 million ($1.2 billion today) in federal, state, and local funds earmarked for 11 projects.” In total, these urban renewal projects displaced 4,255 households (including 2,738 families and 1,517 individuals) and 1,012 businesses. The majority of displaced households, many of whom were homeowners, relocated to rental properties, while fewer than 20 percent were able to purchase homes.
Last week’s hearing ran late into the evening with members of the Rochester community lined up to speak. The commissioners listened to testimonies of hardship and resilience that spanned generations. They heard creative ideas for the future and a shared conviction for the importance of the task at hand.
“Reparations would be the start of the state of New York truly acknowledging the harm that follows the legacy of slavery—a tangible step towards prosperity for all New Yorkers,” said Shay Herbert, a lifelong Rochesterian and representative of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Center.
In her opening testimony, Dr. Candice Lucas, senior vice president of equity and advocacy at the Urban League of Rochester, said, “The call for reparations is not simply about acknowledging the wrongs of the past or providing financial payouts to individuals. … It’s about righting historical wrongs, healing generational trauma, and addressing the injustices that continue to leave countless Black New Yorkers behind.”
What could reparations look like? The root of the word is repair, but how does a community repair from historic harm? An important first step is accounting and accountability. In the context of urban renewal, there are clear local examples, and a significant amount of work has already been done.
Clarissa Uprooted
Nearly 60 years ago, the bulldozers of urban renewal carved up Rochester’s Third Ward, displacing 785 households and 135 businesses. The Third Ward was home to a thriving Black community with Clarissa Street at its heart. Despite demolition and displacement, former residents have fought to maintain their connection to each other and to the land. For decades, the Clarissa Street Reunion Committee, now known as Clarissa Street Legacy, has brought neighbors together to remember and celebrate their community.
In recent years, an intergenerational collaboration between Clarissa Street Legacy and The Center for Teen Empowerment has sparked a restorative revival called Clarissa Uprooted, which has produced a documentary, uncovered archives, and established a museum-quality exhibit. These acts of creative resilience honor and preserve the memories of what was lost and invite the community to engage in healing and repair. Clarissa Uprooted has also engaged in an effort to account for the generational wealth lost from home equity and displaced businesses.
Counting the cost
The true cost of urban renewal is hard to quantify, but students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning recently developed a methodology for calculating the lost intergenerational wealth. As part of their class “Hacking the Archive,” master’s students Alejandra Martinez, Becca Heilman, and Yvette Kleinbock partnered with Clarissa Uprooted to design interactive tools to count the cost. (I was an advisor.)
The students used urban renewal records to create an open-source digital toolkit that includes a replicable methodology for calculating lost generational wealth in a publicly accessible tool and an interactive map that layers archival material and multimedia memories from Clarissa Uprooted. Their analysis captures key characteristics of properties acquired during urban renewal sourced from archival appraisals, such as square footage, year built, number of rooms, and relevant financial data. These details are used to identify existing comparable properties through the city’s Bureau of Assessment. Once several comparable properties are identified, their assessed and market values are used to estimate an average value per square foot that can be applied to the original property demolished during urban renewal. These estimates provide an approximation of the potential current value.
“We shouldn’t ignore the past,” Martinez noted. “There’s important information that lives in archives, and the archives can be contested in terms of who has access to that information.”
Reflecting on the use of the toolkit beyond the classroom, Heilman said, “This is a potential model for engaging the community.” Her classmate Kleinbock added that it is “a way to engage with the neighborhood and the scale of the harm that had been caused, and drawing connections to the current conditions in the city.”
For Katherine Sprague Dexter this project is deeply personal. Her family home was demolished during urban renewal, uprooting her childhood and tearing apart her community. According to archival documents, in September of 1970, the city of Rochester acquired her family’s home for $7,600 (a present-day value of roughly $70,000 when adjusted for inflation). Using the students’ methodology by evaluating comparable properties’ assessed value and market data, Katherine’s family home could be worth over $450,000 today.
Source: Clarissa Uprooted Exhibit, courtesy of the Sprague family and the city of Rochester
“My heart fills with great sadness and pain because my hopes and dreams for our future were taken away from us,” Dexter lamented. As a seasoned real estate agent, Katherine knows the value of home equity as the primary source of generational wealth for American families. “I had to struggle to get my children through college.” While generations of Americans have used homeownership to secure their families’ financial future, residents of the Third Ward had their assets and opportunities stripped away.
The voice from the past
As the commission confronts this loss half a century later, the community understood the implications of urban renewal from the beginning. In a 1966 article titled “Urban Renewal Poised For Big, Big Steal,” published in The Frederick Douglass Voice, one of Rochester’s most prominent Black newspapers, editor Howard W. Coles cut to the heart of the issue:
“…where some of the most valuable land within the city of Rochester is located. This land or rather these land sites are going to sell sky high to those that stand in with the politicians and the king makers. Many Negro and White home owners will never be able to buy another home again. At the moment there aren’t any available housing units for the 886 families that the BIG BULL-DOZERS WILL PUSH OUT OF THE WAY, however, they …keep saying, don’t worry we will take care of you.”
“We weren’t taken care of,” says Joan Coles Howard, Coles’ daughter. “My father understood what was really happening, and he was right. He spent his life advocating for our community, and he always spoke truth to power. In addition to publishing the newspaper for over 60 years, he was also a licensed real estate agent and assisted displaced residents to acquire homes in other areas.”
Source: Genesee Appraisal Service
Despite relentless advocacy, the bulldozers came for Coles’ property too. In 1967, the city acquired his property for $5,400 ($51,800 adjusted for inflation) and slated the home for demolition. According to the MIT students’ analysis, the property could have been worth over $200,000 today. “Yes, we lost our homes and generational wealth,” said Howard, “but for me, the most important loss was the loss of those communal values which seem to have disappeared through the destruction of our ‘village’.”
Bulldozed businesses
Some residents lost more than just their homes. George Fontenette’s family lost their businesses as well. His grandparents owned a grocery store and a restaurant called Vallot’s Tavern on Clarissa Street, and a few blocks north, on the corner of Ford and Troup Streets, George’s parents had their own grocery store. The entire family enterprise, including homes, businesses and rental properties, were sold off for pennies on the dollar and torn down.
Source: Michael F. Quinn Appraisal
Reflecting back, Fontenette said, “All they told us was, ‘The highway is coming through and we have to move!’ But there are homes in that area that are still up, that never got torn down, and I think to myself, why? Why did they leave some of them up and not tear them all down? Where I lived at, there’s nothing but a tree. It’s so upsetting. … My house could have still been standing there, with a new roof, new siding, different things like that, you know. I’ve come to realize they had a master plan, but they never told us.”
The Fontenettes were not the only family who lost businesses. The Third Ward was the economic and cultural hub for Black Rochester, home to long-established Black-owned restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. Many of the businesses were even listed in “The Green Book,” a national travel guide published annually to help Black Americans find safe businesses and accommodations during the Jim Crow era. After urban renewal, residential zoning prohibited commercial businesses from returning to the neighborhood.
A case for reparations
This project builds on existing research and provides a public tool to assist communities and policymakers in calculating real costs. Of the 11 states and 22 localities that have taken formal steps towards reparations, the majority are engaged in studies and drafting recommendations. Some include specific references to urban renewal, notably, Asheville, N.C., which states in its reparations resolution that the city will make “amends for carrying out an urban renewal program that destroyed multiple, successful black communities.”
The MIT students’ analysis provides a starting point to make amends by quantifying lost assets and offers an opportunity for others to build on their work. As the community and the commission wrestle with the details of reparations, this methodology is worth serious consideration.
“When I think about reparations,” Dexter reflected, “the first step would be to rebuild our community, to rebuild my home right where it used to be! I’d move there tomorrow. The Third Ward is my home and it always will be.”
In her powerful testimony, Dr. LaShunda Leslie-Smith, executive director of Connected Communities, urged the commission to action.
“I come from a family where generational wealth was never a possibility because each generation was forced to start from a deficit,” she said. “Reparations are not a handout. Reparations are necessary correction, a moral obligation, a long overdue acknowledgment that this country and this state owe a debt to Black Americans that cannot be ignored any longer. … The question before us today is not whether or not reparations are deserved—the evidence is undeniable. The question is, do we have the courage to act?”
Brennon Thompson is an urban planner and a fair housing advocate.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].