Carver Heights, Columbus’ the First Post-World War II Segregated Neighborhood

A collaboration by students of Cultural, Urban Geography and GIS courses at Columbus State University and Professor Amanda Rees

Introduction

Located in the west-central Georgia, Columbus lies in the heart of the region’s Black Belt. A term coined by W.E.B. Dubois at the dawn of the 20th century, the Black Belt describes a region with a high percentage of rural African Americans who had been enslaved in the 19th century cotton plantation agriculture. Today it remains a region of the South that is home to numerous majority-minority cities and rural counties.

Located in Midtown district of Columbus, the Carver Heights subdivision stretches over 84 acres and includes approximately 430 homes, the first of which was built in 1946. This community was the first African American suburb built in Columbus after World War II. Located just outside the 1940 eastern city boundary, the Carver Heights community reflected the same location as other southern segregated suburbs. The location of communities such as these were often negotiated between black and white civic leaders. This contrasted with black, segregated suburbs in the North, where expansion typically occurred into older existing white neighborhoods.

Segregated suburban developments constructed for African American residents have been divided in two major types: suburbs that combined residential and work spaces and welcomed blue collar residents; and suburbs developed for a small but growing black middle class. Carver Heights was built and marketed to returning African American veterans. It includes two primarily residential architectural styles that represents a unique period of building in post-war America: the American Small House and a small number of ranch-like homes. In addition, it was home to one of the city’s black civic leaders, the realtor E.E. Farley. Finally, it is home to the only formerly segregated motel still standing in the city and that helps use tell a broader city of travelling across the US for African Americans during segregation.

Building the American Dream

At a time of institutional segregation, Carver Heights gave African Americans access to the American dream: homeownership. The land was first platted for a series of post-WWII cottages, today known as the American Small House, interspersed with some early ranch homes. Interspersed amongst the single-family homes there are multiple duplexes and an apartment building. In addition, the subdivision included a commercial section where folks could buy gas, rent a motel room, eat at a drive in, launder clothes and grab a drive-through meal.

This new subdivision sought to honor African American leaders and institutions. It was named after the African American scientist George Washington Carver who conducted his research 40 miles west at the Tuskegee Institute of Alabama. In addition, streets are named for both Carver and Booker T. Washington. Washington was then President of Tuskegee Institute. Other streets recognize historically black colleges and universities such as Fisk University and Morehouse College.

Using single-story square design, and “box” floor plans with small rooms situated around a core. Emerging during the Great Depression it reached its climax during the nationwide housing shortage after WWII when labor and materials were in short supply. These early post-war period homes were built when resources and manpower were in short supply.  The American Small House met a clear national goal to provide well-designed, well-built, affordable, single-family homes.

Many of the Carver Heights homes were built using a brick facade, inexpensive at the time. These cottages have modest porches or stoops, often with decorative iron porch columns. While smaller than Victorian cottages, these post-WWII American Small Home porches still offered a small space for residents to sit and talk to neighbors. The two-bedroomed versions were often the most common, as it was the smallest house that could be guaranteed a mortgage. Many of the residents planted vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Indeed, on Morehouse Street was home to the Maddox family. A former member of Fort Benning’s School for Bakers and Cooks, Maddox subsequently ran a garden nursery from his home.  

At the end of World War II, some of the 100,000 African American soldiers who were stationed at Fort Benning were ready to settle down. After serving their country, these veterans qualified for home loans guaranteed by the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill). Loans could only be used for new construction, which meant that veterans could not use this resource to re-invest in existing buildings because they were deemed too great a financial risk. Bank managers and insurance agents routinely denied services to people and within city regions they considered to be a poor financial risk. City maps used red to indicate these so-called high- risk areas and to indicate to bankers which areas were deemed too risky for investment. This process is commonly known as ‘redlining’. This resulted in little to no re-investment in cities, while new suburbs flourished.

Until the mid-1960’s, suburb developers could legally discriminate against African American and Jewish home buyers. Thus, many suburbs were only open to ‘white’ homeowners. Carver Heights symbolizes both Farley and his colleague’s strong community leadership and the remarkable opportunity for African Americans to own a home in a new subdivision that welcomed servicemen’s loans. Carver Heights soon became home to the families of active duty military members stationed at Fort Benning, and veterans who became part of the post-war labor force as teachers, housemaids, ministers, and employees in local businesses, mills and factories.

Builder of the American Dream

Carver Heights was the home of Edward Edwin Farley (circa 1902–1956) and his wife Ella.  The Farleys were successful business people owning the Farley Realty Company, and they sold property in Carver Heights. This new development offered African American veterans and active duty service members the opportunity to use their earned military benefits under the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, to purchase and/or build a home. At least eight additional segregated subdivisions were subsequently constructed including Willis Plaza, Washington Heights, Bel Mar, Quail Creek, East Carver Heights, Cedar Hills, Dawson Estates and finally Mount Vernon.

In the post-World War II American South, black businesses and residents, began moving from the traditional downtown areas to the suburbs. This was typically negotiated between black and white civic leaders. Black civic leaders saw separate community building as a source of black improvement, and as a solution to often wretched contemporary conditions. This contrasts with the North, where white civic leaders contained black housing development to the central city.

Built in 1954, Farley moved his family from the heart of Columbus’s African American commercial and residential community at 934 Fifth Avenue to the new subdivision. Unlike suburbs developed for white residents, much of the suburb was built prior to the creation of paved roads and storm drains. The Farleys regularly rented out rooms to newly trained school teachers from Tuskegee who relocating to Columbus. As Fort Benning offered only 4-5 homes that could be rented by black soldiers, others in the community rented rooms to newly located soldiers and their families The community opened their homes to newly relocated folks like themselves who were seeking to make a new home in the city.

Farley was active within the local community. He led the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Farley also served as executive secretary of the Army and Navy YMCA at Fort Benning. His membership within the local African American fraternal organizations allowed him to work alongside other influential civil rights leaders such as Dr. Thomas H. Brewer, Primus King, and A. J. McClung. Farley was instrumental in funding critical 1925 improvements to the 9th Street YMCA established in 1907. In 1941, his personal appeal to the wealthy African American Columbus business woman, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lunsford yielded $15,000 of the $20,000 needed to fund the new African American USO. Farley, Brewer, and other prominent local African Americans orchestrated the annual football classic held at the A. J. McClung Memorial Stadium between Tuskegee and Morehouse. Established in 1936, this annual fall football game remains a staple social event in the city.

Farley only lived in his Carver Heights home for two years. He died of a heart attack in late 1956. Being an astute businesswoman herself, Ella Farley continued their real estate business until selling it in 1971. The business was purchased by Booker Edmonds and it continued under the name Edmonds-Farley Realty.  

Home Away from Home: Carver Heights Motel

The Carver Heights Motel, built in the early 1950s, is one-story building laid out in the shape of the letter v.  It was constructed at the same time as the homes in the subdivision. Five contiguous lots were assembled to form a small triangular commercial district on the development’s western boundary. This triangle included the motel that offered 12 small en-suite rooms, a small grocery store, a gas station, and a drive-through restaurant.  In the early 1960s, Becky’s Beauty Parlor opened at the motel. To the east across Illges Road there was the Wash House Laundry, and a Penny Profit store next door. The community was remarkably self-sufficient.

Not only did Jim Crow laws segregate African American residential developments, they also segregated public transportation and public accommodations such as libraries and swimming pools. This situation, coupled with an emerging and more mobile African American middle-class, led Victor Hugo Green of New York to publish the Negro Travelers’ Green Book in 1936. Green’s guide, organized by state and city, gave Black travelers information on lodging, food, and other services that would welcome them. The initial volumes focused on the New York area but soon covered much of the nation.  Green’s guide first featured the Carver Heights Motel in 1950. It was one of three places that provided lodging for African Americans in Columbus; the others were the Lowe’s Hotel and the 9th Street YMCA - both located downtown in what is now known as the Liberty District.

The Carver Heights Motel pays homage to the courageous African American travelers who faced barriers across the nation and in Columbus. The Negro Motorist Green Book ceased publication three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Carver Heights motel maintained its service as a motel into the 1960s, it also played an important role as a community center. In 1958 Polio, a highly debilitating disease, caused 15,000 cases of paralysis in the US annually. Columbus sought to inoculate its residents in May of that year, and doctors set up a clinic at the Carver Heights motel to offer the polio vaccine to everyone under 40 years of age in the neighborhood.

Columbus City plans reveal that in 1975, Carver Heights Motel’s rooms were considered for repurposing with one half envisioned as a restaurant. Today, the Carver Heights Motel is the only building in the city left of the three Green Book listings.