SPECIAL REPORT: A segregation wall in Detroit still stands. The consequences continue today.
nbcnews.to/3kygSij
In partnership with @BridgeDet313.
(1/11) #NBCNewsThreads
@BridgeDet313 Built in 1941, the Birwood Wall, a 6-foot-high, 4-inch-thick divider that sits just below Detroit’s storied Eight Mile Road, separated a Black neighborhood to the east from a community on the west that was developed for whites only. (2/11)
@BridgeDet313 In a 6-month investigation, @NBCNews and @BridgeDet313 discovered that one of Detroit’s most prominent families built the wall.
The side of the wall residents called home would later affect the sale price of their houses and the wealth they would inherit. (3/11)
@BridgeDet313 Federal lenders in the 1930s relied on color-coded maps that deemed some neighborhoods safe investments, shading them blue/green, while others were shaded red, meaning “hazardous.”
The gov't labeled the neighborhood “hazardous” in part because Black families lived there. (4/11)
@BridgeDet313 The practice, known as redlining, forced people living in red zones to borrow money at higher interest rates or resort to predatory lenders.
Federal policies encouraged builders to physically separate new developments from redlined areas.
nbcnews.to/3kygSij
(5/11)
@BridgeDet313 A 1939 federal housing map shows red ink across the Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood, where the wall was built.
This meant residents couldn’t access federal financing — and neither could developers of the new neighborhood to the west.
At least not until they built a wall. (6/11)
@BridgeDet313 “It’s ancient history, dear,” a grandson of the wall's developer said when reached by @NBCNews: “Why are you digging around in something that is maybe nothing at all?”
Reporters soon confirmed his grandfather’s ties to the wall.
“As you can imagine, I’m shocked,” he said (7/11)
@BridgeDet313 A recent report named Detroit the most segregated city in the nation.
The cost goes beyond economic impact, says Jacob Faber, a sociology professor at NYU.
“The consequences of that are immeasurable.”
nbcnews.to/3kygSij
(8/11)
@BridgeDet313 The wall’s existence serves as an enduring reminder of the reasons this country remains so starkly divided — why a nation that’s more racially and ethnically diverse than almost any other is packed with segregated neighborhoods.
nbcnews.to/3kygSij
(9/11)
@BridgeDet313 80 years later, the wall itself, now brightly painted in parts with colorful murals, no longer separates Black from white.
The discriminatory policies that made the wall possible have been outlawed.
Nearly all of the area’s white residents left for suburbs decades ago. (10/11)
@BridgeDet313 Today the wall still serves an educational role, says Teresa Moon, who moved to a house just east of the wall in 1959.
She makes a point to greet visitors.
“I want them to know not just the logistics of the wall … It’s important that people know about my community.” (11/11)
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