Harold,
Two things on this matter. First, I would suggest reading, if you
haven't, Sheryll Cashin's excellent book_The Failure of Integration: How
Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream_. She deals especially
with black gentrification in Prince George's County, Maryland but also
she cites some interesting Northern Virginia examples.
Second, about gentrification in the Northern Neck--I remember my
students at UVA back in the 1970s, when I was teaching Afro-American
History (a period piece), describing what was beginning to happen in
that region of Virginia. Even then, a lot of retirees (mostly white)
were moving in and the land, especially near the water was becoming very
valuable. Because the railroad near went down there after the civil war,
the land had not had much value in the late 19th century, so it passed
often into the hands of black watermen or farmers. A century later their
descendants were beginning to get high prices for that land--perhaps the
working out of justice, in a way.
Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe wrote:
> Gentrification by African-Americans generally brings out very strange,
> not to say atavistic reactions from rural and small town
> European-Americans. The story of the shift in Montgomery County, MD is
> telling. As tens of thousands of black people moved out of
> Washington, DC into that suburb, the country became obviously blacker,
> but also wealtheir and better educated. While this integration was
> carried out fairly peacefully, I will bet there is a doctoral
> dissertation lurking in a close research of the process.
>
> A similar gentrification is taking place to the south, in Virginia,
> where I read even the Northern Neck region is being subdivided. As an
> historian of the South, I never simply dispose of race as a subject of
> analysis, but the moving of portions of the black (and Latino)
> administrative and professional elite (I hate the term middle class
> because it describes so little) into developing northern Virginia will
> also raise sharp questions of class as well.
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Morrow"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 10:10 AM
> Subject: Re: VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE... free speech
>
>
>
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