Story
The Great Migration and the South Mall
Beginning in World War I—and at a faster clip after World War II—thousands of Black southern migrant families moved to Albany as part of the Great Migration. Many made their home in Albany's South End, including what would later become the South Mall redevelopment area (where the Empire State Plaza and South Mall Arterial now stand).
By 1962, when the State of New York seized the South Mall, the area's population was predominantly white but increasingly Black. Southern migrants were moving in as the children and grandchildren of European immigrants were moving out.
This walking tour follows the path of southern migrants who, like Europeans before them, first settled in the heavily commercialized areas between Broadway and S. Pearl Street. Over time and with the pooling of wealth, many families were able to move west up Madison Avenue into the more residential sections of the city. But at Lark Street and Delaware Avenue, African Americans confronted a barrier unique to their experience—the dividing line between Black and white Albany.
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19 stops•3.7km•42 min
African American Cultural Center of the Capital Region
This section of S. Pearl was once a great place to buy discount shoes, clothing, and furniture. The area east of S. Pearl (to the right of the photo above) was known as Albany's "Gut." Notorious for booze, gambling, and brothels, it was also where many Southern migrants found their first homes in Albany.
The African American Cultural Center of the Capital Region, where you're standing, is just outside the frame of this photo.
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Prince Hall Masonic Lodge
This building is an artifact of ethnic succession. (See where the Prince Hall plaque replaces an earlier one.) In 1916, this was Sons of Italy Hall, a symbol of the growing numbers and clout of Albany's Italian American community.
In 1924, federal law put the brakes on migration from Italy. By 1964, Michael Nardolillo (leader of the Roma Intangible Lodge, Sons of Italy) estimated that only 20-30 new immigrants settled in Albany annually. Combined with process of assimilation and South Mall-related disruptions, this meant that the city's Italian population was by then largely American-born and in the process of settling in western Albany and the suburbs.
In 1971, Sons of Italy Hall was sold to help pay for construction of a new Italian American Community Center on Washington Avenue Extension in west Albany. The building at 120 Madison became home to the Capital City Lodge, Prince Hall Masons (a Black fraternal organization) and a meeting site for civil rights organizations.
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American Legion, Henry Johnson Post 1257
This American Legion post (clubhouse on the left side of this photo, at the corner of Hamilton and Grand streets) was founded by Black veterans in 1944 and named in honor of Albany's World War I hero. In 1955, members' wives organized an active auxiliary.
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Albert and Marian Drake's Home
In 1962, when Democratic Party canvassers asked him how he felt about the South Mall, Albert Drake responded, "I’m satisfied where I am. It is hard enough for a colored person to find a decent place to live, and now that I have bought this place, the State wants to take it away. It is not fair."
Albert moved to Albany from Aiken, South Carolina in the 1930s and found work as a drugstore porter. In 1940, he became a bartender at Black entrepreneur Amos Dorsey's club down on Broadway near Van Tromp Street—a job Albert still held in 1962.
In the mid-1950s, Albert and his wife, Marian, purchased the house at 236 Madison Avenue from Morris Landau, a S. Pearl Street merchant and real estate investor. Because by this time South Mall area bank mortgages had become scarce—particularly if the buyers were Black—the Drakes borrowed $4,300 at 5% interest from Landau, to be paid back at the rate of $50 per month.
Photo courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art.
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John and Vivian Robinson's Home
In 1955, John and Vivian Robinson signed a 13-year lease-and-option contract with slum landlords Sidney Albert and Irving Kirsch. Under the terms of this agreement, the Robinsons paid a monthly option fee toward the (inflated) purchase price of 45 Jefferson Street at 6% interest. On top of these payments, the Robinsons were responsible for the cost of all home repairs, insurance fees, taxes, assessments, and water rents.
Like the Drakes' agreement with Morris Landau, this contract is an artifact of redlining. But unlike the Drakes, the Robinsons did not hold the deed to their home, when it was seized by the State of New York in 1962. As a result, the reimbursement payment went to Albert & Kirsch, rather than to the Robinsons. To learn more about Albert & Kirsch's lease-and-option scheme and William Kennedy's 1965 exposé, read No Down Payment on the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
Photo courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art.
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Lucas Family Home
Barbara Lucas Roberts (shown above with her sister and parents) grew up on Jefferson Street and remembers her lost neighborhood fondly: "I was 5 years old when my family moved to Jefferson Street," she writes. "My childhood memories are so vivid, and the Jefferson Street memories will be forever etched in my mind and heart. As I write this narrative 65 years later, I still remember the sights, sounds, and all of the special neighbors. Jefferson Street was such a beautiful tapestry of people, dialects, music, and cuisine--truly a reflection of our shared Southern roots." To read more of Barbara's story, go to You Can't Demolish Memories, on the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
Photo courtesy Barbara Lucas Roberts.
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Lena Clark's Home
Lena Clark moved to Albany from Virginia in the 1940s, settling in with her daughter Thelma and son-in-law Burnis Wilson in a section of Bleecker Street that now lies beneath the South Mall Arterial.
In 1952, with help from her son Samuel, Lena purchased the house at 111 Jefferson Street (above). A widow herself, Lena was living with her two widowed daughters and grandchildren in 1962, when the State of New York seized the family's home.
Photo courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art.
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Lena Clark's Home
In addition to the seizure her home, Lena Clark (right) and her children were forced to confront police brutality in the summer of 1962, after her son Samuel was arrested and beaten so badly that he required hospitalization. His crime? Double-parking in front of the family home while unloading picnic gear. The photo above is from a protest and prayer meeting at City Hall. To learn more, read Double Parking While Black on the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
Photo courtesy Times Union.
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Jimmy Strawn's Home
Look over the edge of the platform down onto the South Mall Arterial. Somewhere below that stretch of highway is 29 Grand Street, where Jimmy Strawn used to live.
Jimmy Strawn moved to Albany (from Newark, we believe) sometime in the 1940s. During World War II, he worked at the Army depot in Voorheesville. At the same time, he was making a name for himself as a band leader in Albany's downtown music clubs. In 1943, Jimmy Strawn's Orchestra played a regular gig at the Red and Blue Club on S. Pearl Street. After the war, the Turf Club on Hudson Avenue and Rhythm Club on lower Madison Avenue advertised dance music by Jimmy Strawn's Barons of Swing. In 1947, the Paradise on Schuyler Street featured Jimmy Strawn's Sultans of Swing three nights per week.
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Jimmy Strawn's Home
Like most South Mall area residents, Jimmy was a tenant rather than a property owner. In March 1962, he was out on the street with two neighborhood friends (also tenants) when a Knickerbocker News reporter asked what they thought about the State's South Mall plan. One neighbor responded, “These houses are old. I think it would be swell to tear these buildings down.” Strawn agreed that demolishing “these 50-and-60 year old buildings might make for some decent places in which to live.” The second neighbor added, “This would be a pretty good deal if they included housing projects too.” To learn more area residents' attitudes toward the South Mall, go to the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
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Dr. Robinson's Office/Harry Vodery's Home
In 1933, Dr. Joseph Robinson, a graduate of Howard Medical School, moved to Albany from New York City, where he had been working at Harlem Hospital. He opened a practice at 387 Hamilton Street in the neighborhood now known as Hudson Park. The following year, he married Wardell Parrish, an educator and graduate of Talledega College in Alabama.
The Robinsons played leadership roles in local community organizations, both social and political, including the Albany branch of the NAACP. In 1937, Dr. Robinson treated and testified on behalf of William Tucker, who sued two Albany police officers for injuries sustained after police arrested and beat him for "imposing on a white man's place" (i.e. a Hudson Avenue bar). In 1962, Dr. Robinson did the same for Samuel Clark.
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Dr. Robinson's Office/Harry Vodery's Home
Joseph and Wardell Robinson purchased 227 Hamilton Street as both home and office in 1942. Even after the family moved to Loudonville in the 1950s, Dr. Robinson continued to practice medicine at 227 Hamilton Street, until the building was seized by the State of New York.
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Dr. Robinson's Office/Harry Vodery's Home
Harry Vodery (left) moved to Albany around the time of his 1946 marriage to Opal Seabrook, a graduate of Lincoln School for Nurses in New York City. They started out on Green Street but soon moved into an apartment at 227 Hamilton Street. While Opal worked on her master's degree in psychiatric nursing, Harry ran his news service and wrote the "Upstate New York Column" for the New York Age.
In 1962, Harry had recently been named NAACP regional director and was already becoming a thorn in Mayor Erastus Corning's side. Harry blamed Albany's Democratic Machine for the South Mall project, which would ultimately displace him and his wife: "\[H]ad the mayor used half as much energy in fixing up the city and building the much needed housing as he is fighting the state, the mall situation might not have happened." Five years later, Harry made local headlines with a letter claiming to have personally witnessed vote buying by Democratic Party operatives (Albany's notorious $5 vote).
Photo courtesy of Times Union.
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Samuel Jefferson's Dental Office
Dr. Samuel Jefferson was a graduate of Howard University College of Dentistry. Although his dental practice (pictured above) was located in the South Mall area, Dr. Jefferson was one of just a few Black professionals who managed to breach Albany's color line and purchase a home in west Albany in the late 1950s. Before moving to Brevator Street, Dr. Jefferson and his wife Geraldine rented from Dr. Joseph and Wardell Robinson.
Photo courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art.
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Arthur Harvey's Law Office
At a 1963 rally memorializing Medgar Evers and William Moore at First Methodist Church, white civil rights lawyer Arthur Harvey urged listeners not just to condemn Southern segregation but to "fight segregation right here in Albany." He called on white property owners to support the "open occupancy pledge" to rent or sell to Black tenants or buyers. The large number of people displaced by the South Mall made this effort more urgent.
Harvey was one of a large group of Black and white lawyers, reformers, and clergy who actively promoted open occupancy in Albany. Their efforts, though earnest, proved largely ineffective.
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Arthur and Yvonne Mitchell's Home
In the mid-1950s, Arthur and Yvonne Mitchell moved out of their Hudson Avenue apartment into a home of their own on S. Hawk Street (right). Both Arthur and Yvonne were Southern migrants who arrived in Albany in the late 1930s. He played baseball for the Black Sox. She was a performer at the 68 Club, down on Green Street, which promised entertainment "direct from Harlem's hot spots."
In 1962, when they learned they would lose their house to the South Mall, the Mitchells decided to search for a new home in west Albany. But back then, realtors and sellers could legally refuse to show them residential properties. In the fall of 1963—even though they had plenty of money for a down payment—Arthur and Yvonne were still stuck in place as their white neighbors moved out and vermin and vandals moved in. (Notice the boarded and broken windows in the photo above.)
The Mitchells were eventually able purchase a house in west Albany, around the block from Arthur Harvey's home.
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Arthur and Yvonne Mitchell's Home
Arthur Mitchell (second from right) is shown here with Kingsmen officers presenting a humanitarian award to educator and boxing coach Ben Becker (center) in 1963. At the time, Arthur was a steelworker, president of the Kingsmen (a social and civic organization he helped found in the 1950s), a lay leader at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, and had just begun broadcasting a Sunday morning radio show about Albany's Black churches on WABY. The previous year, he served as NAACP's Albany representative at Samuel Clark's trial for "disorderly conduct."
Photo courtesy Times Union.
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Wilborn Temple Church of God in Christ
Albany's First Church of God in Christ got its start in what would become the South Mall area. In 1933, the congregation purchased 79 Hamilton Street (left) east of S. Pearl Street as their first permanent church structure. Twenty-four years later in 1957, the congregation purchased the former synagogue where you are now standing.
Today, 79 Hamilton Street lies beneath the South Mall Arterial and Wilborn Temple stands beside the Empire State Plaza. To learn more, read Old 79 on the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
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Wilborn Temple Church of God in Christ
In September 1961, church leaders paid off and ceremonially burned the $30,000 mortgage on the former synagogue. Six months later, they learned that the building was situated on the edge of what would become a major construction site. Even worse, many congregants were among those who would be displaced.
If your family or business was displaced for construction of the Empire State Plaza and South Mall Arterial, we'd like to hear from you. You can reach us by email at 98acresinalbany@gmail.com or find us on Facebook and Twitter. If you'd like to read more about our research and plans for a Picturing Urban Renewal website, check out the 98 Acres in Albany blog.
Photo courtesy John Garman and Susan Hess.
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