Icarus flew too high against good advice and the Sun burned off his waxen wings. I wonder what was on his mind as he hurtled towards the ground? He may have been saying he hoped he didn’t land in Norfolk. Norfolk is tricky, it gives homeless people drop off rides to Portsmouth.
Icarus may have also remembered his place in the world. Portsmouth the municipal old man with Alzheimers, has behaved like Tom cruise in the movie Edge of Tomorrow, where he has to kill himself to re-start a time loop over and over again. Each time we hope for a better outcome. the difference is that Tom Cruise had more information each time he failed.
Like swiss precision, an official in charge of crisis-communication talked that slick re-organized talk for the phoenix of a “NEWER PORTSMOUTH.” Each decade under a shuffled municipal deck, the masses bit the bait of a fresh plan for dynamic growth, but Portsmouth’s own not so dynamic policies impoverished Cradock and Southside to fuel a foolhardy flight towards the sun.
Some of the largest contiguous areas of concentrated homeowners were abandoned throughout the 1970–2000s by a partisan City Hall in a surprising move that is akin to cutting its own municipal wrist.
Not long after cleverly diverting resources from these areas, crime spiked, property values plummeted, prostitution skyrocketed, gangs moved in, drug culture anchored and derelict structures became shooting galleries.
What does Portsmouth do? It continues to siphon off the taxes from other areas, it delays infrastructure repairs in these areas and then congratulates itself for creating a new policy to fine owners of derelict buildings after neglecting its own communities until th blight and bad zoning decisions left areas with pawn shops, strip clubs and payday lenders.
Yet the resilient and Federal crime fund absorbent Portsmouth accepted appropriations for its Sheriff’s department task force in the war on drugs in communities it’s bad policies made become battlefields.
PRHA found the same source of drug prevention funds available as well. Like if I smack my supervisor his boss may promote me. We created the problem we get funded to mitigate. Other area’s that just needed a push and waters edge attractions also saw decline.
The big dreams of building marinas in City Park and riverboat gambling moored in between W. Park View and Shea Terrace dried. Our plans to create an Maryland-like Inner Harbor Marina just sat in 301 Crawford file cabinet.
Our ambition almost has a reverse gear from the 1920’s when City park is built for 80k. Portsmouth was industrious building the Jordan bridge and the Professional building.
Assessment revenue laid on a morgue gurney balance sheet until building inspectors armed with state code created new programs to rein in derelict abandoned properties in Craddock & Southside.
The new codes had to be enforced and aggressively implemented, but lifelong matriarch/patriarchal pillars had already died and families left these neighborhoods already. They took low-ball offers from out of town realty companies at pennies on the dollar.
Portsmouth didn't care that these old-heads put a lifetime of saving and investing into the family ranch so that one day the money would metriculate and pull their kids up the next rung of lower middle class. It all depended on steady home valuation.
Like mold, once the self-created “blight” took hold, and all kinds of pandora box evils were loosed leaving only “hope” inside. Predatory businesses were created to remove the blight. One such superpredator was the section 8 voucher program one of the very culprits of middle-class black and white flight in the first place.
Tragically Portsmouth betrayed its most loyal oldest living middle-class residents who had paid the most property taxes and voted in the most elections. They betrayed the municipal retiree and ship yard pensioner. These very people whose blood sweat and iron will made Portsmouth great.
Portsmouth treated their communities like shelters and its residents like transients until they packed moving trucks for the greener pastures of Chesapeake. The only thing I can compare it to is a tactic in warfare called demoralization.
Portsmouth allowed, and dumped drug dealers, rowdy families and the unwanted on these elder homeowners who watched, in turn, their property values plummet and property crimes rise, tip over and flood the bottoms.
Portsmouth destabilized dozens of its own communities over the next 20 years as the “community morale” eroded and community events like block parties community watches and community patrons ceased to exist anymore. Even communities like Park View which had one of the largest longest running parades lost its identity.
In Cavalier Manor, Cradock & Southside PRHA sent an influx of young poor and volatile new Section 8 neighbors to live next to them while they tore down historic PRHA hotbeds of crime.
The old saying goes:” make a new law make a new business”.
CHODO’s like CCDI, PRHA, Habitat for Humanity, Churches, and Real Estate investors were embedded with crooks and saints. They flooded the community, and literally financially retained candidates who advocated for tearing it apart to reconstruct it. they advocated for this and sat on board where they were compensated, double dipped, and were monetarily connected to the “goodwill.”
Between Brighton, Prentiss Park, and Douglass Park blight was opportunity all over again. These communities had the strongest civic leagues that had fought every kind of municipal and racist evil, but they started to crack. Their children were “on crack” their grandchildren were un-parented. In a ten year period the garden party social scene of black homeowners crumbled.
Their were more home going services than children being born to take the mantle. More grandmother matriarch pictures becoming dusty on the mantle piece. Our focus changed in some of our communities and we didn’t stay true to the essence of what started it all. In Africa, China, Philippines Brazil and many cultures the elderly are revered and worshiped.
This is how and when opportunist found a new market to exploit. It was a market created by Portsmouth City Councils fixation with being Icarus and building a Utopian Olde Towne at the expense of its own wings and flank. Portsmouth
* Don’t let me lose you here because it is important you follow multiple timelines in the course of our 40-year discussion.
House of Burgess
Portsmouth, had Mansions in early 1900 and not those Mc Muffin mansions popping up all over Atlanta. Park View was the place to be to catch the street car line and Park View and Chesnut The Navy, our shipyard and the fleets that temporarily moor here bring honor to our name, but our dependence on fluctuating Shipyard employment rates makes it difficult for a middle class to rise. High St. is paved becoming a real thoroughfare, but Portsmouth has three cultures.
The first is the disadvantaged or untouchables. The second is the military which is split into societal ranks with a E-1 swilling beer at a waterfront dive bar not being equal to men of ranking and education. The last are the Historicals who have the Mansion’s and some sort of historigraphical connection to Portsmouth. Some can trace their origins back hundreds of years.
No matter what your standing was— they all heard the 9 o’clock gun.
The “Historical’s” pushed, prodded and influenced while consolidating power on boards and in City government. From the beginning, Portsmouth’s most prominent citizens belonged to The Chamber of Commerce.
These “Historical's” were relentless savants of all things “English.” I call these first citizens “Britianiac’s” and their center of gravity was Olde Towne. They were also supremely cerebral professional working as Superintendents and Doctors.
Museum boards had enormous ability to raise millions of dollars, fund campaigns and build endowments for the culture “they” believed in. This ability to raise money was literally a supreme being that tied into politics philanthropy and real estate.
The Portsmouth Historical Society was adept at blind perseverance and had such blissful stories of a culture that were savages toward black people. It makes you wonder why they clearly identify with Victorian principals embedded in the wood slaves built Olde Towne homes with.
If Portsmouth has a caste system it would divide into four main categories — (1) Olde Towne Gentry, Admiralty & Staff, U.S. Naval Hospital Commander, Military Officer (Maritime Coast Guard, National Guard Col,), (2) Real Estate Mogul & Politicians (School board) ( Byrd Era legacy) (3) Media: Publishers, Portsmouth Star, WAVY, Virginian Pilot, WASP, (4) Law Enforcement ( Judges, Lawyers, Commonwealth Attorney).
As special category, “Powerhouses of personality and influence,” like Bernard Rivin, owner of the Famous practiced discrimination, but brought a beloved business to Portsmouth. Almost all retail giants like Hoffenhiemer had influence even if because of their Jewish ancestry they didn't quite fit in. Somewhere on the periphery they existed, sat on boards and traded real estate aware of the caste.
The “Historicals” believe that these caste categories came straight from God of creation… Almost every other person either black or white is outside of this Olde Towne caste system were the untouchables.
As the Supreme Court started to intervene and halt “Historical’s” policies, a strategic retreat started happening much in the way the Germans got caught not believing the Normandy Invasion was the allies “real invasion.”
The “Historical’s” were could’nt pour bleech in the pool anymore and in a series of bitter defeats they were forced open the Portsmouth Library to the untouchable coloreds.
New Journal & Guide’s Mr. Jordan wrote: “the Portsmouth Public Library could become some DIXIE model of desegregation.” My heroine and forward thinking library technology expert, Ms. Bertha Edwards and Mrs. Charlotte Foulk left the now closed Colored Community Library on South St. If that wasnt extreme enough. the library Board now had three colored members.
Invitations for the desegregation event with light refreshments were sent out to those who made contributions to the library, which is in this case, would only be the “Historical’s.” Another huge crack happened inn 1954, almost exactly sixty five years to this day when the the first Interracial Memorial Day Parade was Held in Portsmouth.
Memorial Day in Portsmouth had two separate parades in which African Americans marched to their owned cemeteries. They did maintainence by cleaning the graves. They said prayers, the I.C. Norcom band played and the entire Portsmouth negro community prayed and picnicked.
The white poor got candy thrown at them from town cars, they celebrated Memorial with the “historical’s ,”well aware of their place in the caste system. The inclusion of negro’s in many cases by default actually elevated the white working class poor who were not on the bottom.
I’m lumping the entire blue collar white workforce, all the white Irish and all immigrants, men like Lebanese “Doumar”( Doumar’s Ice Cream Cone) who appeared white without any of the benefits of societal elevation plus all of the white working class who lived in Swanson homes, Academy Park and Dales homes are right on the untouchable struggle bus with the ebony hued boiler room worker, janitor, cook, street cleaner, garbagemen and dregs of Negrodom.
The white untouchables skincolor granted them acess to places their bank accounts and social standing would’nt allow them to remain.
I will call this wing in its entirety the “Portsmouth Purist Society” who ultimately shaped Portsmouth in the image they desired. This is the secret society inheritance hierarchy and who Mark Whitaker attempted to confront when he went after the LAW FIRM that made 500k or the equivalent, per year for 75 years, managing all PRHA liability against the Negro.
Of course, the backdrop is segregation and discrimination/classism, so every municipal and civic decision is weighted with an obvious intent to disenfranchise and exclude poor white & all black people.
The branches of VFW, American Legion Post, Junior Police Color Guards, Marine Corp Color Guards, Disabled Veterans (DAV,) Fleet Reserve, Gold Star Mothers, Kiwanis, Red Cross and all military assistance organizations were also part of a social chain of command that was just as segregated by social status as they were by race.
The waters edge was the communities that connected and were dissected by the railroad tracks where cool ass white boys mingled and fought with cool ass black boys caught in a tense teen struggle they didnt even create. The term “Sunset Town,” comes from enforcement of severe penalty if youre caught in the wrong neighborhood after dark.
After many years they all had hard conversation about the ignorant person they were and how the monied society made them hate each other.
Commoners like Craddock’s and Truxtuns citizenry became colateral damage for a portsmouth that decided it had no more use for America’s first downtown. The town literally shaped like an anchor was dropped into the murky Elizabeth. These are inescapable conclusion intertwined with actual policy decisions.
The destruction of Craddock as a center of commerce was a conscious policy choice. Cradock, became part of Norfolk County after failing to govern itself. By all accounts, Craddock the 1st Downtown in America was also supposed to be the darling of the “historicals”. Why wasn't it? It could be a story like Princess Anne County never losing its identity?
In Craddock, the history could’nt be fudged and tampered with. It was solidly cemented. In Olde Towne they could romp the room and be loose with the truth and sentiment.
It’s also where we find the greatest division between the historical class of Portsmouth purist and the country redneck class of inner-city inhabitants of untouchables.
Welfare for its most vulnerable and its office had been an institution since before 1943 in Portsmouth. This was a bi-racially dependent Portsmouth that expanded its welfare dole with appropriations of $2,982,000 with $500,000 for the (38) member administrative staff costs. This is the lick stamps, handwritten, typewriter age of bureaucracy.
Welfare checks would bounce or go out late in Portsmouth and negro women would protest — landing them in jail. The cyclical poverty pendulum had its highs and lows. In Portsmouth women who were found guilty of protesting at the welfare office would be issued fines by a judge. This is before Ronald Reagan’s team perfectly marketed the lazy black double dipping fraud of a “Welfare Queen.”
The Olde Towne class representing admiralty, rank, and victorian white bread didn’t want to share traditions with Cradock’s untouchables and through a budgetary process slowly squeezed Craddock to death. They threw in some strip club debauchery in the zoning to ensure other areas would be more desirable to more affluent families.
We won’t even touch the hurt and loss of identity that came with the destruction of Cradock’s School or Manor before that. the hurt was bi-racial and deep. The schools were the hot bed and test cases for our society and the Olde Towne “Historical’s” controlled the School boards. their kids safely ensconced in layers of private prep, and catholic repositories of segregation.
Truxtun would be suffocated by the same City Council neglect. The twin communities of working class people never even saw it coming.
If one asked how two old communities representing blue collar Portsmouth war heroes were to fall into squalor crime and neglect? Who could give me a better answer? The Olde Towne elite would just smirk and knowingly walk into a time-loop like Tom Cruise. This isn’t conjecture. It’s based on budgetary priorities passed through Portsmouth City council over the last 40 years. I’ve read the slash and burn budgets.
This is a conversation about professional management of Municipal revenue in the form of stories and images in our volatile timeline as if Portsmouth was a publicly traded stock. I’m not emotional, nor do I have a grudge against Olde Towne. I’m not specifically talking about race or racism because so many of the decisions had to do with who had more money-not always skin color.
The United States Housing Authority said: “Truxtun Proves Wisdom Of U.S. Aid In Public Housing Program.” They didn't mean porting or housing Parks, they spoke to building communities and the new technology of converting demountables into homes.
When it was time to save the historic Truxtun School that was the heart of Truxtun, and put money into saving the buildings downtown Truxtun- our city flat out refused. In the wake of the 100 year anniversary of Truxtun, the organizers didn’t even have a building left from their childhood. They had a rolling mobile outdoors reunion because …Portsmouth.
I met Nelson Mandela, It was a once in a lifetime meeting that happened at my Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, community High School. Nelson Mandela asked where in New York had the highest density of black people? He said that was where he wanted to go. Not City Hall. My family ran the cultural wing of the schools neighborhood outreach. If we allowed the “Historical’s’ to destroy our community school... where would we have hosted a newly freed Mandela?
A City, like Portsmouth that prides itself on looking backward and preserving history ironically preaches forward vision in its municipal fumbles. When 1st and 10 become 4th and 40 we throw hail mary’s into the future. In Truxtun, the destruction of the last place containing the cultural essence was a travesty.
Icarus’s flight is one for the ages. Our metaphor explores the tactics our municipality used to fight for its future growth and how it burned off its general fund wings in doing so. In many cases, each Portsmouth starting line-up was already playing defense. Portsmouth had few alternatives on how to win.
In other decades, Portsmouth was just as unlucky like the Griswold family in National Lampoon and our plans just turned into a vacation disaster. Most notably are the failed initiatives to put feet on the street and create density Downtown and the Portsmouth Partnerships reign.
