Introduction
According to historian Thomas W. Hanchett, Charlotte spent the early 1980’s studying its pre-world war two neighborhood for the Charlottes- Mecklenburg historic landmarks commission. Hanchett spent months walking the streets of places like Dilworth, Middleville, Washington Heights, and North Charlotte. Regarding charlotte his main concern was to research why most of the charlotte’s cotton mills are built on the edge of the town, the impact of the southern values on the Charlotteans including racial have upon the growth patterns of Charlotte, why most of the wealthy Charlotteans reside in the southeastern quadrant of the city (Hanchett, n.d).
According to Hanchett (n.d), Charlotte, like most of the southern urban centers,”l looked like a scattering of salt pepper.” The rich and poor, black and white lived, store owners and day laborers, says Hanchett frequently lived side by side in the same block. For most of its early history up to 1850 charlotte was a preindustrial city in which the social and economic elite controlled the political life and according to Hanchette, ”the urban landscape echoed that continuity”, (sorting out the new south city 1875-1975). Throughout the century of mid-1870s to the mid-1970s, the Charlotteans continually redefined their notion of a good place to live in. Populism threatened the continuity of the traditional social pyramid and to meet the challenges city fathers began to divide the city up into social and racial orders to ensure that the whites and the blacks would have difficulty overcoming the physical space to ever endanger white elites again. White business leaders came to view the city as a place for commerce and the suburbs of a place for living the good life.
Charlotte’s history makes it evident that across the 20th century, there was vast racism since the whites and the blacks could not live together making racial segregation thrive amongst them. The racism also was evident in the political leadership whereby the blacks regularly elected African Americans to the Board of Aldermen until 1893. The wealthy whites who were mostly small-scale merchants controlled charlotte’s politics and economy since the arrival of the railroad in October 1852. Despite having political leadership the whites were not contented by living side by side with the blacks and they felt to retreat into affluent residential districts and separate themselves from their poorer neighbors. Most of their daily activities made them interact i.e. the blacks and the whites since their homes, craft shops, stores, and livery stables were all mixed. This shows that their leadership was not effective since they had the mandate to improve the living conditions of the poor considering the fact that they controlled the politics and the economic activities of Charlotte (Hanchett, n.d).
Impact of Charlotte on Public policy
Public policy refers to the system of laws, regulatory measures, course of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by the government entity or its representatives. Public policy is supposed to accelerate change within society. This means that the leadership at the federal and local levels should prioritize the partnership of various groups in various sectors of the society to ensure that they foster more public policy engagement in their communities. This is because the process of formulation of policies always involves efforts by competing interest groups to influence the policymakers in their favor, (definition of public policy and the law, n.d).
This is because grass-root advocacy is an essential complement to ensuring that there is cohesion within the society. This also shows that the revolution within Charlotte or any other society is greatly influenced by the implementation of public policy. The policies should be prioritized to ensure that the key issues regarding development are addressed. The federal government has a critical role to play by ensuring partnership at the federal, state, and local levels so as to create a sustained change in community conditions and to improve lives. The government cannot do it alone nor the rest of the social service sector, (the United Way Public Policy Agenda for the10th Congress).
The public policy should ensure that there is a strong cohesion between the various groups despite their economic, social or political divide. The public policy implemented should ensure that everybody within the locality has an opportunity to be employed in the various sectors of the economy. The public resources should also be equally distributed to ensure that there are just a few who are enjoying it. The leaders should push for equity in the sharing of the national cake. The political and economic leaders had the obligation to developing good public policies to ensure that all the residents of charlotte have access to good living conditions. Some of the policies that were of paramount importance include those that would be geared towards ending racial or social class segregation by ensuring that they do not allow Charlotte to have some places that are reserved for the whites and others for the blacks, this would be in terms of the geographical subdivisions of Charlotte.
In the 1890s the city started sorting out itself, first into a quilt-like pattern of business and residential districts that were drawn along racial or income lines and then into entire quadrants extending outward from the city center. As time went by there was a sorting out of the land uses leading to a halt of the development of Charlotte. According to Hanchett, the abandonment of the traditional landforms and the consequent transformation was political. The growth in the size of the economic enterprises was pulled back by the conservative nature of the people i.e. tradition and if not for the series of political upheavals that rocked Charlotte during the 1890s, Hanchett writes that there would not have been experienced any positive change. This is evident from the fact that it was the Populist Party which was made up of the small farmers, factory workers, and African Americans who sought to wrestle for political control from the Democrats and institute fundamental changes in the economic system. They championed issues regarding the government regulation of the railroads, abandonment of the gold standard for currency, and the recognition of the rights of the factory workers. The development of political, racial reforms amongst the American cities has greatly contributed to their development during the twentieth century. In 1900, there was a campaign where the white North Carolinians went to the polls and approved a series of amendments to the state constitution. This was aimed to deny the chance of winning by the majority of blacks making it difficult for the Populists to prevail at the ballot box. The democrats also developed literacy tests for voting while keeping open loopholes for the poor whites to continue voting even if they could not read. Hanchette writes that with the disfranchisement of the black citizens through the literacy tests, the black would not be in a position to effectively muster the votes to challenge the democratic control. This shows that the black Charlotteans were being denied their right to vote and hence the spirit of democracy was being infringed. The whites through these amendments would therefore gain absolute control of the political and economic leadership of Charlotte. The political domination of the wealthy white businessmen in Charlotte became even stronger after 1907 writes Hanchette when even the poor whites could not or did not seek to pass the more stringent literacy requirement for voting that went into effect in North Carolina. This shows a great deal of division along with the economic class.
The commercial civic elite class used their political strength to reshape the physical form of the city into a network of homogenous districts to include immaculate neighborhoods like Myer Park, Eastover and Dilworth. Hanchett explains that “Charlotteans had undergone a conceptual shift in their definition of a desirable urban landscape.this shows that leadership greatly contributed to the development of most of the American states.
Charlotte’s history suggests that there is a strong positive relation between politics, ideology and municipal planning and governance. The parties who greatly influence the formulation of policies have the mandate of ensuring that there is no marginalization and the violation of the rights of the people who depend on them for effective leadership. They should not misuse their mandate to favor themselves as this will eventually destabilize the development of the society thus affecting their lives negatively. There should be respect for the diverse ideologies from the various groups of people regardless of their social or economic class, race or even political inclination. The leadership should involve all the parties in their formulation or amendment of the policies that govern them or the constitution. Thus the political platform should not be used as the bases where absolute controls of the society’s affairs are manipulated so that only the elite class can have their opinions heard. It also shows the strength with which unity amongst the people to whom injustice is being directed can make positive change. This is only through networking amongst themselves and voicing their concerns in the effort to break their conservative nature and appreciate progressive leadership. These coalitions of the people and the civil society groups should always uphold and negotiate their rights collectively. They should fight against the violation of fundamental rights such as voting rights, the right to reside in any part of the country. This is evident from the fact that there were deeds that advocated that certain locations would be extremely residential meaning that workplace and domicile would not exist side by side and that the African Americans could not own or rent homes in Piedmont Park. This shows that the laws that were being developed by those in power were very ineffective and they propagated racial segregation. The cost of housing was also exorbitant which kept the poor whites out from owning homes in Piedmont Park. The municipal leadership has the authority of ensuring that the city residents have access to proper housing and they should control the cost of housing so as to keep out segregation on economic lines. Hanchette notes that the introduction of Federal insured home mortgages especially those provided by the Federal Housing Administration, helped healthy neighborhoods to become stronger and caused the marginal neighborhoods to weaken even more. This shows that municipal planning and governance can effectively result in the development of the cities by keeping ‘dirty’ politics in the leadership.
Influence of the national, regional and local forces on Charlottes politics
Charlotte’s politics is greatly influenced by national, regional and local forces. This is evident from the fact that the national government is responsible for the formulation of regulatory Acts relating to issues such as land usage. In Charlotte, it is evident that there were intentions to divide the land into regions where one district could be exclusively devoted to business, another to manufacturing, another to laborers and another for the blacks. The national government has the power to decide on the administrative structure of a particular region. Since the local government is delegated tasks to conduct by the central government the local government should ensure that they help increase the efficiency of operation. If the forces at the national level are not effective due to ‘bad’ politics, the effect definitely trickles to the local government. Regional politics also have an effect due to the development of international bodies that influence the operations of their member countries. This is in the form of trading blocs or international accords that relate to the utilization of natural economic resources such as the water treaties.
Comparison with the Oakland politics
The Oakland politics are no different. The laws that regulate the national and local governments are very rigid. The democrats cannot pass a bill without at least one of the Republican senators voting for it which has usually lead to the fallout of crucial issues such as those to do with budgeting. This has usually led to inefficiency in the operation of the public service sector such as the education, lying off the state employees and many state offices remain closed. (What the State Budget Means for Oakland, 2009).
References
- A Review of Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City. Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte 1875-1975 University of North Carolina Press.
- Thomas H, Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
- Definition of Public Policy and the Law Web.
- What the state budget means for Oakland.