Rethinking Malone
Page 12 R Daily Nebraskan R Thursday, December 12,1996
Activist: Reconciliation
must start in church
MALONE from page 11
And the beat
GOES ON
A lack of adequate medical ser
vices. Businesses reluctant to move
into the area. Suppressed property val
ues. The lowest median income levels
in the city.
For decades, this has been the story
of the Malone neighborhood.
Why?
One common answer emerged from
all who commented on the the latest
crime records: Lincoln residents can’t
always believe what they see and hear.
For example, one popular percep
tion is that crime is linked to blacks,
said UNL sociology professor
Siegman.
Media images that portray minori
ties in a negative light are piped into
Lincoln homes. Some reports come
from as close as Omaha, Siegman said,
and Lincoln residents start to apply the
perceptions locally.
wnen inai nappens, ne said, per
ceptions tend to distort reality.
And Lincoln residents need to get
control of those perceptions, Wallace
said.
The community needs facts before
it can dispel some of the fiction about
minorities, crime and city neighbor
hoods, he said.
“We’ve got to have a dream. We’ve
got to have a vision, a clear picture,
before we begin to put the different
colors of paint on this canvas of the
community,” Wallace said.
Blaming minorities for the ills of
society is nothing new, said Soto, the
Southeast Community College diver
sity director.
Perceptions of Malone as a high
crime area, he said, affect those who
move there, other Lincoln residents,
city officials and local law enforce
ment.
“We have all been living under a
false impression of what the Malone
community is.”
False impressions, he said, are
rooted in racism.
“It is really an extension of the
mindset, that problems in the commu
nity have to do with minorities,” Soto
said. “Once people believe that, they
look for reasons to enforce that.”
Lcola Bullock doesn’t use words
like “perceptions.” She is more blunt.
“It is just as detrimental to white
people to grow up with this ignorance
as it is to people of color,” she said.
“Lies, just plain old lies.
“Just get rid of the lies and tell the
truth.”
Closure
So what are the solutions? What can
be done to bring age-old perceptions
and entrenched stereotypes in line with
the statistical reality of modern-day
Malone?
The data, Wallace said, indicates
one thing: There is work for all to do
in Lincoln.
“We need to wake up in this com
munity and come together and stop
polarization from being the driving fac
tor in how we exist,” he said.
To begin, Wallace said, developers
need to commit to building in the
Malone area. First-time homeowners
need to move in, and funds for streets,
sewers and parks must be made avail
able.
The Malone Center, a hub for the
area, needs to become a site for neigh
borhood children to learn about tech
nology and computers, Wallace said,
and UNL could play a vital role.
“The Malone Center and UNL
ought to become a model for the rest
of the country on how they can collabo
rate and create environments and op
portunity,” he said.
These are things that create stabil
ity, he said, something the area desper
ately needs.
Stability from businesses, housing,
ticalth care, recreation and places to
_ Matt Miller/DN
JUSHNA HINES laughs as she practices a dance routine with her friends at the Malone Center, 2032 U St
* ■
raise families.
“Places for people who want to go
to college,” he said. “Places for kids
to go and play baseball.”
Malone, Wallace said, is a vital part
of the capital city.
“We’re talking about the core com
munity of Lincoln. It is the community
that many others spun off.”
The crime numbers, he said, con
clude that city residents are just as
likely to get their cars stolen or see a
drug deal in south Lincoln as they are
in north Lincoln.
There needs to be a reconciliation,
Wallace said, between the perception
of Malone as a crime-ridden, undesir
able neighborhood and Malone as a
safe, historic community trying to
reach its potential. .st|
Wallace has a vision of who should
lead the reconciliation: The clergy.
“They are the ones who have to
stand in front of their congregations...
on Sunday mornings ... and ask how
can we just sit behind our doors and
think everything is all right when it is
not,” he said.
“We aren’t going to have reconcili
ation, we aren’t going to have anything
_ 4W Matt Milller/DN
COI THi DUONG worships at the Immaculate Heart ofMajy Church
on the corner of 26th and P streets during the church's Roman Catholic
Mass given in Vietnamese.
until it starts in the pulpit.”
Wallace was hesitant to call the new
crime data a vindication for Malone, a
neighborhood that has labored under
negative—and untrue—perceptions
i
for decades.
“Vindication,” he said, “is only a
word that a man of the cloth can speak
... All I can say is that these statistics
are the truth.”
-1
Bullocks watch as area changes
Forged in racism, Malone’s ‘black’ image crumbled in ‘60s v
By Matthew Watte
Copyright 19% Daily Nebraskan
From the kitchen of their
house near 73rd Street and
Havelock Avenue, Hugh
and Leola Bullock remi
nisced about their many
years in the Malone neighborhood.
The memories drifted from good to
bad.
Leola remembers when the first
black teacher was hired by Lincoln
Public Schools in the 1950s. During
that same time, Hugh remembers be
ing harassed by police when he walked
down city streets.
In many ways, the area’s history has
been like the Bullocks’ memories —
some good, some bad.
Most of Malonfe’s wooden houses
woe built between 1910and 1930. For
decades, it was a white, middle-class,
working-family neighborhood. But as
time passed, the color of the neighbor
hood shifted from white to black.
As the racial face of the neighbor
hood changed, so did its homes. By the
late 1940s, the housing stock deterio
rated until it had transformed Malone
into one of the city’s poorest areas.
Hugh Bullock arrived in Lincoln
from Mississippi in 1948. He was look
ing for a way out of the segregated
South and adecent home for his bride.
Two years later, in 1950, leola joined
\ her husband, and the couple settled into
their new home on 22nd and T streets,
the heart of “T-Town.”
Their home had no indoor plumb
ing, so they used an outhouse in the
back.
When they looked around, accord
ing to the Bullocks, this is what they
saw: *
They saw a lot of poor people, like
themselves, trying to eke out a living.
Jobs were hard to come by — espe
cially for blacks. Many employers were
reluctant to hire people who lived in
Malone because white customers
wouldn’t patronize their businesses.
That left mostly menial labor — the
kinds of jobs that often couldn’t pay
for a good home, a decent car, much
food or clothing for their children.
Hugh got lucky. After years of odd
jobs, he got a job in 1964 with the U.S.
Postal Service after iLopened up its
driving corps. He was the Lincoln post
office’s only black employee — and
not welcomed by his co-workers.
“I was the only black guy out there, and
that’s what they wanted me to know.”
Most of his neighbors weren’t as
fortunate when it came to getting jobs.
Although the people were poor, their
houses were well kept. Lawns were
mowed, kids played safely in the streets,
and neighbors talked to one another.
In those days, they said, if a black
family had the means to move from
Malone, their new white neighbors of
ten reacted violently. Angry mobs were
not unheard of, they said, and discrimi
nation was commonplace.
As a result, Malone residents stuck
a—
There is no black
neighborhood.”
Leola Bullock
former Malone resident
together. Neighbors warned neighbors,
and they all looked out for one another.
“They informed each other because
there were no signs like in the South,”
Hugh said. “Black people worked to
gether to keep each other out of
trouble.”
In 1964, the Bullocks left Malone
and moved to a home near Ninth and
Park streets.
In 1968, four years after the land
mark Civil Rights Act abolished un
fair housing practices, other blacks
began moving from Malone, too.
By the 1970s, Lincoln’s black
neighborhood largely had splintered
apart, spreading die once close-knit
community throughout the capital city.
Now, 20 years later, the city’s black
population is still scattered, hit the
perception of Malone as a largely black
neighborhood remains, despite Malone
havinga white population of more than
70 percent.
“There is no black neighborhood,”
said Leola Bullock, sitting in the
kitchen of her northeast Lincoln home.
Her husband nodded his head.
City, UNL had plans
for Malone’s future
By Matthew Watte
Copyright 1996Daily Nebraskan
Since its start in 1869, the
University of Nebraska’s
Lincoln campus has
| slowly crept into the his
toric Malone neighbor
hood.
The campus started near where
the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery
and Hamilton Hall are now at—a
two-block area bounded by T and
R streets and 10th to 12th streets.
From that core, it expanded.
Much of the expansion occurred
between 1920 and 1970. From
Avery Hall in the ’20s to the George
W. Beadle Center in the ’90s, City
Campus has crept east, eventually
taking much of Malone with it.
In 1967, UNL released a Cam
pus Master Plan, the university’s
ultimate expansion goals.
That blueprint specified that all
parking, traffic and residence halls
were to be shifted to the campus pe
rimeter. Academic buildings, mean
while, were to become the center
of a pedestrian campus.
In 1975, another university study
detailed a “Malone Neighborhood
Plan”
In that study, the authors de
tailed UNL’s expansion plans into
the Malone neighborhood. They
•.
f
saia tne campus s easternmost ex
pansion would stop between 20th
and 22nd streets — it now reaches
out as far 23rd street.
In 1988, the campus stopped its ad
vance into Malone when the university
and the Malone Neighborhood Asso
ciation signed an agreement.
Historically, UNL is not the only
institution that has had plans for the
Malone neighborhood.
Starting in 1952, the city of Lin
coln drafted — and rejected —
plans to route traffic along major
thoroughfares through the neighbor
hood. The plans were dropped in
1974, but their impact remained.
In 1969, the city started buying land
between downtown Lincoln and 48th
and Fremont streets. A total of297prop
erties were bought—196 were leveled,
and the rest were rented out.
Between 1980 and 1984, the city
proposed three plans to reuse land
bought for the Northeast Radial.
The first two were rejected; the third
worked out, resulting in Trago Park
and the surrounding area.
Mayor Mike Johanns said Malone
now provides housing for students
who rent for the first time or young
couples who buy their first houses.
“Ideally, your inner-community
neighborhoods experience that,” die
mayor said. “In many cities, the in
ner-community neighborhoods have
just been given up (to crime and pov
erty)”