Tainted Tap

Flint's Journey from Crisis to Recovery

Katrinell M. Davis

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781469662114
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios afroamericanos

After a cascade of failures left residents of Flint, Michigan, without a reliable and affordable supply of safe drinking water, citizens spent years demanding action from their city and state officials. Complaints from the city's predominantly African American residents were ignored until independent researchers confirmed dangerously elevated blood lead levels among Flint children and in the city's tap water. Despite a 2017 federal court ruling in favor of Flint residents who had demanded mitigation, those efforts have been incomplete at best. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts to advocate for improved living conditions, Tainted Tap offers a rich analysis of conditions and constraints that created the Flint water crisis. Katrinell Davis contextualizes the crisis in Flint's long and troubled history of delivering essential services, the consequences of regional water-management politics, and other forms of systemic neglect that impacted the working-class community's health and well-being. Using ethnographic and empirical evidence from a range of sources, Davis also sheds light on the forms of community action that have brought needed changes to this underserved community.

PART I

Before Evidence of Lead Contamination Surfaced in Flint’s Water

1

Flint during the Model Cities Era

The Challenges to Community Advocacy

By the early 1960s—after picketing, staging boycotts, and enduring white mob and police violence—little had changed in the lives of working-class Black Americans. Frustration was building.¹

In northern states, attempts by Black Americans to secure suitable housing were quashed. For example, civil rights groups in Chicago initially led by Martin Luther King Jr. formed the Chicago Freedom Movement. Participants declared a war against decaying and segregated slums—where arrests were high and services neglected—with rent strikes and marches to protest slum conditions. But their efforts were undermined by city officials who refused to work with citizens or the civil rights establishment to address the lack of public services in poor and segregated communities. Although Black Americans and other poor racial and ethnic minorities typically paid a higher percentage of their monthly earnings for housing than did whites, their neighborhoods were run-down, with deteriorating homes and poorly maintained tenement buildings. This was especially true in cities like Flint, Michigan,² where Black Americans were relegated to segregated housing rife with crumbling infrastructure (while they scrounged for work in an increasingly dead-end labor market).³

Despite the passage of public laws like the Federal Housing Act of 1949—implemented to provide suitable homes and living environments for all Americans—major cities in Michigan and throughout the United States continued to be marred by substandard and blighted housing stock.⁴ Local leaders and planners undermined actual living conditions by embracing destructive urban renewal and community development projects that sought to lure businesses and the middle class back into cities, while municipalities further weakened communities by opting to overlook—rather than intervene against—the rigid patterns of housing segregation, which included a dual housing market that relegated Black Americans to the parts of cities most hampered by substandard accommodations. This reality typically contributed to disproportionate rates of health issues in Black communities, including tuberculosis, asthma, measles, and low-weight births.⁵

In cities like Detroit, where the automobile industry brought not only employment but also funding for urban renewal programs that financed highways and skyscrapers, Black neighborhoods were being dismantled. Federal urban renewal programs took jobs and resources to white suburbs by routing highways, such as Detroit’s I-375 and Flint’s I-475, through Black neighborhoods—wiping them out and displacing their residents.⁶

The Model Cities program, authorized by the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, was a federally funded initiative implemented to improve poverty-stricken areas within selected cities. It was originally conceived in October 1965 by the Task Force on Urban Problems appointed by President Lyndon Johnson and chaired by Robert C. Wood, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After some consideration, the task force generated a report recommending that President Johnson develop a five-year program that targeted and coordinated existing government resources to address blight and disenfranchisement in the nation’s largest cities. Embraced by the Johnson administration, this program inspired the passage of the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act and was considered a solution to urban violence and a response to frustration with Great Society programs. Congress allocated $924 million to jump-start this initiative and granted the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the authority to develop a selection process that would determine which cities received funding. With the help of the Washington Interagency Review Committee—consisting of representatives from the Office of Economic Opportunity as well as the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare—HUD announced that sixty-three cities were initially selected. Later, in March 1967, another twelve cities were included, followed by seventy-two more in the autumn of 1968.⁷

In many ways, Model Cities was a unique policy intervention. It primarily attempted to intervene in resource-deprived areas by revisiting how public services were provided and uniting citizens and local politicians in plans to address local problems. Under the watchful eyes of Regional Interagency Coordinating Committees meant to monitor local activities, Model Cities provided opportunities for struggling municipalities to revitalize neighborhood conditions, rejuvenate community relations, and improve the range of employment and housing options available to residents of blighted spaces.⁸ This program also made attempts to address interrelated social problems, ranging from inadequate housing and underemployment to disparate health outcomes and physical disorder.⁹

It turns out that race- and class-based antagonisms diluted the program’s impact well before Congress withdrew funding in 1974. Although citizen participation was required in almost every phase of decision making,¹⁰ efforts to dismantle long-standing structural exclusions and inequalities with Model Cities initiatives in Flint and other US cities were undermined by a consistent conflict between citizens and local leaders. Model Cities efforts also struggled to live up to the program’s potential because these initiatives could not overcome or neutralize entrenched opposition from local elites who challenged attempts to desegregate public spaces and improve the quality of public services and accommodations for all residents. Like Flint, many of the communities that implemented Model Cities plans realized they needed a more substantial and long-lasting financial investment. A gamut of issues needed to be addressed, including the need for better jobs, higher quality and affordable housing, better schools, and an end to police abuse. Model Cities did not ultimately meet the needs of these communities.

I document in this chapter how, after the Model Cities program concluded, many of the problems that it was designed to alleviate blossomed: troubled schools, high crime rates, and deteriorated housing. Further, the shift to neoliberal policy making on the national level and lagging faith in the effectiveness of public participation in poor communities severely undermined efforts to address neighborhood blight through collective action effectively. In Flint, this set the stage for a public health crisis to explode decades later.

The Model Cities Program: Hope for a Greater Society

Before Model Cities initiatives were implemented in Flint, Black Americans faced nearly insurmountable barriers to improving their segregated neighborhoods or escaping these dilapidated spaces. White southerners—overwhelmingly from Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee—had migrated north for General Motors jobs and made up a heavy presence. Lingering Jim Crow social dynamics legitimized the harassment and humiliation of Blacks in American society and were amplified in Flint.¹¹

With few exceptions, pre–World War II Black Americans were denied service in many of the city’s public establishments, including restaurants, hotels, bowling alleys, skating rinks, and taverns. They were confined to the neighborhoods south of downtown near Thread Lake. City officials, business elites, and the real estate apparatus helped to protect segregationist norms, especially within Flint’s schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. Police officers protected strict color lines, including enforcing the Flint River demarcation that separated St. John Street from the city’s predominantly white east side. Black Americans were prohibited from attending school or being found “walking up and down the street” on the wrong side of this line unless they were employed by a white person in the area.¹²

In the 1940s, the white St. John Street community was dominated by immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Over time, it would emerge as a business epicenter for Black residents, whose share of the Flint population increased by more than 400 percent between 1940 and 1960 (from 6,559 to 34,521) as black southern migrants flocked to Flint’s factories.¹³ As Blacks moved into this area, white families and small businesses moved out, creating hardships for St. John residents, many of whom worked as janitors and foundry workers in the Buick plants.

Although the area had become more racially and economically diverse, it started to be known as a poor and dangerous area when compared with the southern and eastern sections of the city. Due to its proximity to the Buick factories, which flooded the area with soot and ash, it was polluted, overrun by a significant rat population, and marked by its stock of crumbling houses. According to a 1954 survey by the Urban League, Black Americans living in neighborhoods like St. John also lacked access to reliable public services. Some 56 percent of Black Americans, according to this survey, lived with people they weren’t related to, while almost 70 percent of these living quarters lacked private bathrooms (this area encompassed the St. John and Floral Park neighborhoods as well as areas along Saginaw Street).¹⁴ The pollution was omnipresent in St. John and neighboring Oak Park and Martin-Jefferson; industrial waste dusted automobiles, windows, clothing, and pets. Due to these respiratory contaminants, area residents posted the highest rates of infant mortality, lung and throat cancer, and asthma in the city.¹⁵

Despite increased demand by Black Americans for homes in more diverse areas of the city, even those who managed to save for a home could not overcome the institutional barriers they faced, which included obstacles to securing financing and the local practices and social norms that restricted their housing choices. Flint’s Black residents were stuck living in neglected and deteriorating segregated neighborhoods littered with uninhabitable structures and vacant units, with some neighborhoods even lacking sidewalks, as well as proper water and sewage services. Homes in these neighborhoods also had a reputation for being unsanitary and overcrowded.

However, housing conditions were no better for Black Americans living in city-owned public housing projects. These too were in deplorable condition, often infested with rats and roaches and eventually requiring extensive renovation. Residents of public housing projects also lacked access to properly paved roads and regular garbage collection. Even requests for identifying unit numbers in public housing projects were oftentimes denied. These spaces seemed to exist solely so that city leaders could claim to be doing something to provide low-cost housing to people who had previously been displaced by urban renewal projects. While the passage of legislation in 1966—including Senate Bill 1054, which required displaced families to be provided with standard housing, and House Bill 3781, which required those displaced by highway construction to be placed in suitable housing—was a step in the right direction, these public laws lacked necessary enforcement provisions (much less protections against discrimination).¹⁶

Consequently, living conditions and public services available to residents continued to deteriorate. Frustration among Black Americans regarding the persistence of substandard housing increased. This boiled over when Flint’s Black residents joined those of over 150 other urban areas across the United States in civil unrest that challenged Jim Crow restrictions and housing conditions during the “long hot summer” of 1967.¹⁷

Residents of Flint’s Black neighborhoods filled the streets on the corner of North Saginaw and Leith Streets and near South Saginaw and St. John Street on July 24, a day after civil unrest had begun in Detroit (which ultimately led to five days of rioting in that city that claimed over forty lives and caused millions of dollars’ worth of property damage). In Flint, a group of instigators began throwing rocks and bottles at passing vehicles near an East Stewart Avenue grocery store. This escalated to torching establishments with reckless abandon.

While some rioters avoided looting businesses with windows labeled “Soul Brother,” other establishments took direct fire and sustained considerable property damage in the predominantly Black areas of the city. Henry Sergis, owner of the Shorthorn Meat Market on North Saginaw, reported over $11,000 in damages. And even businesses that weren’t torched were not spared entirely. Some were looted while others, like the People’s Furniture and Appliance Co. on East 8th Street, were vandalized and storefront windows and doors were shattered.¹⁸

The Flint riot was relatively short-lived and neutralized by the strong presence of law enforcement. Although initial attempts by police to break up the crowds around Saginaw and Leith Streets was unsuccessful, law enforcement was eventually able to gain control within twenty-four hours. This was aided by Governor George Romney’s declaration of an emergency in areas throughout the state where civil unrest was occurring, including Genesee County, and the deployment of the National Guard. Michigan State Police set up checkpoints along North Dort Highway and, with the aid of almost 250 law enforcement officers, stopped the cars of suspected rioters, barricaded neighborhood intersections, and patrolled the streets (armed with rifles) in actions meant to intimidate residents and discourage additional upheaval. Flint’s first Black mayor, Floyd McCree, also imposed mandatory curfews and bans on the purchase of liquor and gasoline to help keep the peace.

On the heels of this social conflagration that resulted in the arrest of 102 Black citizens—most of whom had taken part in the civil disturbance by firebombing stores, smashing windows, and vandalizing vehicles¹⁹—residents and leaders of Flint were eager to believe that the Model Cities legislation could help solve the blight and discrimination that were plaguing their community. At the time, no other policy or community effort seemed capable of resolving the housing issues in the city’s segregated neighborhoods. Flint had seemed immune to attempts by residents to bring attention to the overcrowded and dilapidated housing problems in Black neighborhoods, even after citywide campaigns were launched to advocate for better living conditions.

A decade earlier, attempts had been made to improve housing conditions by inspecting living quarters in the city’s segregated neighborhoods. The owners of rental units were fined for violating building codes and cramming families into rundown homes (and occasionally basements with faulty wiring, leaking roofs, peeling paint, and rodent issues). However, these code enforcement efforts were short-lived and did not instigate meaningful improvements in Flint’s Black housing stock (where over two-thirds of the residents owned their homes).²⁰

In April, a few months before the 1967 riot, the Genesee County Board of Supervisors executed a resolution authorizing the Genesee County Planning Commission to draft a planning grant application to help develop a fully realized Model Cities proposal. The hope was to address housing conditions as well as mobilize local leaders and agents of change in the community. The application, however, was not successful, and Genesee County was dropped from the program’s first round of cities.

After local officials made considerable effort to revise the application and address gaps in its plans for incorporating citizen input into the program, HUD accepted Genesee County’s application in March 1968. The county was awarded $200,000 to develop its Model Cities program plan, including taking into account the needs of residents in the 3,200-acre area that included Flint and the townships of Genesee and Mt. Morris. Before the planning grant contract was received on August 8, major appointments to the Community Development Act (CDA) staff had already been made, and a headquarters “opened with little or no fanfare, equipped with two pop cases for chairs and...