The motivation for urban renewal…

And its effect on millions of Americans, according to James Baldwin

“A boy last week who was 16 in San Francisco told me on television – thank god we got him to talk maybe somebody will start to listen – he said I got no country I’ve got no flag. He’s only 16 years old, and I couldn’t say you do. I don’t have any evidence to prove that he does. They were tearing down his house because San Francisco is engaging as all most northern cities now are engaged; it is something called urban renewal, which means moving the negroes out. Getting it means negro removal; that is what it means. And the federal government is is an accomplice to this fact. Now we’re talking about human beings.”

– TV interview for Perspectives: Negro and the American Promise
May 24, 1963 (full recording)

Above: Time-lapse photo series of New and Newark Streets by Camilo José Vergara illustrates the transformation of 19th-century homes into a multinational corporation’s biomedical research lab.