Neighborhood Composition Rule Written by Sarah Becker © 2016 In 1932 America was in the throes of the Great Depression. Thirteen million people were unemployed and, because of this, newly elected Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt was given unprecedented authority to jumpstart the economy. His first 100 days, starting March 4, 1933 were action packed. Roosevelt traded Jim Crow and his newly created Neighborhood Composition Rule for Democratic passage of New Deal legislation. The Neighborhood Composition Rule assured southern Democrats, segregated cities like Alexandria that the new federal presence would not alter the existing racial composition of any given project area. “The southern attitude toward the Negro provides the bedrock of southern sectionalism,” V.O. Key, Jr. wrote. “Democratic Congressman Howard W. Smith, of Alexandria, was even more extreme than Virginia Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd.” Southern Democrats, typically segregationists voted as a Congressional bloc 85% of the time. The Public Works Administration was created soon after passage of the National Industry Recovery Act of 1933. It was designed to make grants to Federal and local bodies for various types of construction, construction which included public housing. The PWA was a New Deal construction agency whose policies “effectively established…an overwhelmingly, inner-city, multi-family, rental non-white, public housing program. “Because many urban neighborhoods then housed both black and white (mostly immigrant) low-income families, the Neighborhood Composition Rule resulted in placing all black housing projects in neighborhoods that were only partially black, further concentrating the black population.” The victim of late-19th, early-20th century segregation policies, Alexandria’s Braddock cum Old Town neighborhood (Census Tract 16) developed a disproportionate share of concentrated public housing. The Braddock neighborhood, mostly mapped in 1798, is of two eras. Described now as diverse, it is promoted historically as black. In 1870 census data was reported by ward. In Ward Three, the…