Resistance on the Hill

Resistance on the Hill. March Route for Fair Housing. 1960 , This Center Street Historic District was carved from the plantation of Joseph Riley Smith, who subdivided 600 acres that became Smithfield in 1886. In 1898, the Smithfield community was home to many Whites, including Italian and English immigrants. Residents built Graymont School for their children in 1908. White families lived on the hill up Center Street in the westward Smithfield neighborhoods of Graymont and College Hills. But they grew nervous as city officials zoned nearby areas for middle-income Blacks in the 1940s. Fearing declining property values and possible school integration, White residents organized to keep more middle-class African American families out of their section of Smithfield., "Whenever you are confronted with an opponent conquer him with love." , Mahatma Gandhi, Intent on forcing the city to keep the races separate, Whites in the Smithfield community organized the Graymont-College Hills Civic Association to protect their neighborhood from further inroads by Black citizens. Retired Army officer Horace Henson and Olin Horton, a leader in the pro-segregation American States' Rights Association, headed the organization. The Birmingham World, a Black newspaper, also noted the Ku Klux Klan's determination to use terror to enforce segregation. In 1948, it carried headlines such as "KKK Burns Cross in Negro Neighborhoods" and "New Wing of KKK Burns Cross to Warn Negroes to Stay in Their Place." Whites created other organizations like BRAIN, in 1960, in opposition to integration., Lesson H15: Discuss ways citizen organizations can help and hurt a community.