What does Chattanooga's Big Nine look like now?
Chattanooga University was first built in 1886, blocks away from one of the city's largest Black settlements.
Chattanooga University (now University of Tennessee - Chattanooga) constructed its first building on the corners of Douglas and McCallie Streets. It was just two blocks north of one of Chattanooga's largest Black settlements.
During the Civil War, contraband camps, the Union’s term for African American refugee camps, sprang up all over Chattanooga. By the time the troops fully withdrew occupational forces in 1863, more than fifty percent of the city’s population was Black.
After the war, Black settlements began to develop in various parts of Chattanooga. Citico City, which lay east of Chattanooga’s downtown, was one of the first official Black municipalities in the country.
December 5, 1887, Chattanooga Times.
It would later be annexed by Chattanooga proper in the 1890s and become the Lincoln Park Neighborhood. One refugee camp on the North side of the river became a permanent settlement. It was called Hill City, and was established in 1860's, and was annexed by the city in 1940's. The last settlement of significance was directly in Chattanooga’s downtown and existed along and around Ninth Street.
*Image of map sourced from Hamilton County ARC GIS.
By the turn of the century, Ninth Street “became a foundation of the downtown activities of African Americans and housed the institutions of the relatively self-sufficient community” (Scott, 2008). Being self-sufficient was an absolute necessity with the codification of Jim Crow laws that allowed banks to practice discriminatory zoning through Redlining. Given few other options, living in the Big Nine was a refuge and allowed independence from the segregated trolleys other Black Chattanoogans had to use to shop for necessities.
*original map source unknown. Circulated online at https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/TN/Chattanooga/areas#mapview=full&loc=12/35.0581/-85.2935
The Big Nine, as it became locally and regionally known, was central to Black American culture in the Southeast. Blues, R&B, jazz, and soul music rang through The Big Nine, and stars of the era such as Bessie Smith– The Empress of Blues– performed on Ninth Street. Iconic businesses like Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium, which hosted the likes of Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix, Martin Hotel, which was the largest luxury Black-only hotel in the South, Live and Let Live Barber Shop, one among many barber shops in the area, and the now over 100-year old Olivet Baptist church, drew people in from all over the country. The Big Nine would remain the epicenter of Black business in Chattanooga until the mid-1950s when Urban Renewal came along.
*photo sourced from Southern Tennessee Blog titled The Big 9: Chattanooga's vibrant musical past (September 2, 2020).
The Golden Gateway Urban Renewal Project, which connected Hwy 24 to the newly built Highway 27 met downtown Chattanooga on W. Ninth Street. It is commonly referred to as the starting point of Black displacement in Chattanooga, a trend that has continued into modernity. During the urban renewal project, the city demolished “more than 100 homes, 196 businesses, 21 churches, 2 schools, 2 community centers, 1 hospital, and 1 mental health facility”, most of which were owned by and catered to Chattanooga’s Black community.
Some elements of the urban renewal project were overt, like the seizure of private land by eminent domain, others were less obvious. Records of federal financing during the time are hard to acquire, but one can only wonder what institutions directly benefited from the urban renewal program, especially when so many Black homes and businesses were leveled in the revitalization efforts. What is left of the Big Nine sits sporadically along East Martin Luther King Blvd, the name given to Ninth Street in 1981.
The businesses that remain from the Big Nine era now sit amidst a mixture of newly built properties and the dilapidated skeletons of old ones, though painted memories of its hay day are adorned on concrete walls along E MLK BLVD.
*pictures sourced from Visit Chattanooga Blog title "Discover the MLK neighborhood through murals" (April 30, 2021).
To better understand the current state of Martin Luther King Blvd., formerly Ninth Street, we performed a few analyses on the buildings that currently exist along E. Martin Luther King Blvd., the area that was once the most dense within the Big Nine.
In an effort to analyze the physical and demographical differences between present-day populations and that of the Big Nine, our group asked three questions:
1) What types of buildings are on E. Martin Luther King BLVD?
2) Who owns them?
3) Who lives in them?
Census tract data was gathered from Esri and it was determined that the area that previously held the Big Nine is included in Census Tract 124 in Hamilton, County, Tennessee. This was the most micro-scaled information available to the group, which provided complex limitations around the aggregation of data to the specific area in question, E. MLK BLVD. Because of those limitations, summaries, and analyses made based on these maps are limited to the entire census tract and may not accurately reflect the constitution of the specific area in question.
*All statistics in this section are averages of Census Tracts 11, 124, 14, and 31– the tracts surrounding E M. L. King Blvd.
The most predominant type of housing unit on M. L. King Blvd. is renter occupied units, with approximately 2,796 of the 5,041 housing units occupied by renters. 1,213 of the housing units are owner-occupied, and 1,032– or 20%– are vacant housing units. Historically black communities have a higher rate of vacant housing units because of stalled mobility caused by neighborhood segregation, intergenerational poverty, and barriers to access and success.
On M. L. King Blvd, the percentage of occupied housing units that are owner-occupied is lower than the national average– standing at approximately 35.35%.* Historically Black communities like MLK Blvd. are below the national average of homeownership because of income disparity, the ramifications of historical redlining practices, etc.
The Esri Updated Demographics Variables came as a provided data source through Esri’s Living Atlas. According to the data, census tract 124 has a population total of 5,406 persons. The majority of the population (33%) living in this area is between the ages of 20 and 24, and a lesser majority (26%) is between the ages of 15 and 19. The remaining 41% of the population is dispersed in other ages between 0 and over 85.
The majority (69%) of the population identifies as white. The second most common race in tract 124 is Black at 13%.
The majority of the population (68%) over 25 years of age has attained at least a bachelor's degree. The second majority (7%) has attained a doctorate or terminal degree.
The population where the Big Nine once stood is overwhelmingly white, young, and educated, hardly reflective of the area’s history. The neighboring tract, census tract 4, that holds historical Citico City, now the Lincoln Park Neighborhood, has a much different demographical makeup.
The population of census tract 4 has a much more equally stratified age range where the majority of people are 60 - 64 (8%), 30 – 34 (10%), and 55 – 59 (7%), and the other ranges are similarly dispersed. In census tract 4, 82% of the population is Black and 11% is white. The highest level of education attained by the majority (22%) has at least a high school degree, and the second greatest majority (15%) has some college.
Because we know that the University of Tennesee–Chattanooga is present along E MLK BLVD, we can assert, based on the census data, that the demographic difference between tracts is significantly influenced by the presence of the university. Demographics reflected in the data most likely include student and faculty residents that dominate the population narratives.
The Esri Poverty Status Variables came as a provided data source from Esri’s Living Atlas. The data on this map lends insight into the economic status of people living in census tract 124. Of the 5,406 people living in this census tract, 50% are determined to be at or below the national poverty level, and 12% are reported to be living under the poverty line. Again, this data is largely influenced by the university students living in the area.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
To review, we asked ourselves three questions:
1) What types of buildings are on E. Martin Luther King BLVD?
Buildings on E MLK BLVD are commercial, including non- and for-profit businesses, along with residential, including single- and multi-family homes, government buildings, federal and local, and other, which included museums and churches. The University of Tennessee - Chattanooga is owned or affiliated with - properties on E MLK BLVD.
2) Who owns them?
This question remains unanswered. While we were able to source the specific owners of buildings along E MLK BLVD, we were unable to uncover a narrative that helps us understand controlling stakeholders in the community. Future research could lend clarity here. A relatively equal balance between private and commercial owners was discovered.
3) Who lives in them?
The large majority of residential buildings are not owner-occupied and, based on the demographic data, are rented to teachers and students of the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga and reflect the population of the institution.
