“379 parking spots does not equate to the memories of the children in our community,” argued Pawtucket resident Tatiana Reis, testifying last August in front of the city’s planning commission. “The city has neglected Morley Field for so many years.”
In the Pawtucket neighborhood of Woodlawn—a ten-minute drive from Brown University—the fight over the future of Morley Field rages on. Morley Field is one of the only public green spaces in the poor, predominantly Black Woodlawn community. However, after dubious environmental testing revealed “hazardous materials,” the city fenced off the park. In August 2021, the Pawtucket City Council voted to sell the land to developers, who made plans to pave over the green space to create a new parking lot for their distribution facility. Legal issues have since complicated the sale, but the city has made clear that it still intends to destroy much of the park.
Race and racism are central to understanding the present physical and political dynamics of this neighborhood. The construction of the Interstate 95 (I-95) highway in the 1960s, white flight from Pawtucket, suburbanization, and deindustrialization have all shaped the neighborhood and present political climate. Regardless of whether the environmental testing is legitimate, these proposed changes reflect the cyclical nature of past discriminatory policies: The effects of past racism provide justification for new racism. In paving over Morley Field, city officials seek to justify overriding community voices using the adverse impacts of decades of discriminatory urban planning.
Industrialization birthed the Rhode Island urban environment alongside the Narragansett Bay and rivers, tracing back to cotton and wool textile factories in the 19th century. The factories soon turned to steam engine construction, costume jewelry, and electroplating. By the 1960s, these industries polluted the rivers with heavy metals and degraded the land with toxic contaminants.
The ensuing urban growth created congestion, prompting calls for improved infrastructure. After the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 created plans to build interstate highways across the country, Rhode Island voters approved highway expansion to address stifling traffic issues. As officials mapped out I-95 through the state, eminent domain and the condemnation of property displaced more than 1,100 families in Pawtucket.
This process was not random: White and powerful areas were privileged at the expense of Black and Brown communities. Claire Andrade-Watkins, a historian and filmmaker, describes a similar experience in Rhode Island with the neighboring Route 195 in the 1950s: “They pushed us out. The people who made the decision weren’t brown… We were never invited to the conversations. We didn’t know what was happening. They only contacted the landlords.”
The creation of these highways not only displaced residents and businesses, but it also contributed to the deindustrialization of urban areas. Better highway infrastructure drove down transportation costs, allowing manufacturers to move facilities to suburban areas and eventually out of state. Between 1960 and 1980, the manufacturing industry in Rhode Island’s traditional industrial core fell by 20 percent. This reorganization of industry, accompanied by suburbanization, led to vacant properties and a dearth of good paying jobs. Who would populate this disinvested and environmentally hazardous space? More racial and ethnic minority groups soon moved into these neighborhoods. Today, Pawtucket is 43 percent non-white. In the Woodlawn neighborhood, tucked beneath the tail of the “S” of the highway, one-fourth of residents are non-Hispanic white, a third are Black, and one-fourth are Hispanic.
Abandoned as a result of manufacturing and white flight, these neighborhoods and their residents bear the environmental consequences of past urban planning. A 2020 study found that the proportions of Black and Latino residents in Rhode Island have become increasingly likely to live in former manufacturing areas with legacy pollutants over the past 30 years. An environmental impact report from the 1970s describes the area of Woodlawn Athletic Field (Morley Field): “The area surrounding this parcel is predominantly industrial in character […] The site is a former landfill, and available information indicates that the surface deposit of miscellaneous fill of tin, bricks, paper and other debris extends between 10 and 20 feet in depth.”
According to current city officials, these legacy pollutants render Morley Field unfit as a recreational green space. If true, the presence of hazardous materials demonstrates the pernicious downstream effects of environmental racism and necessitates action to protect residents.
However, it is not clear that this narrative is entirely accurate.
After speaking with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Pawtucket Councilmember Clovis Gregor recounted, “I spoke to the engineer who was in charge of the remediation. He told me specifically and in no uncertain terms that the contaminants are there, but not to such a degree that DEM feels it necessary to close down the park. [DEM] never recommended closing down the park.” DEM later confirmed the content of this conversation.
Additionally, Gregor identified the mixed motives of the developers, JK Equities, who originally tested the park: “It was the developer, with the acquiescence of the city administration, who went ahead with the environmental testing. It was [the developer] that found the alleged contaminates.” JK Equities’ clear incentive in finding contaminants to compel the city to sell the land places their findings in doubt. Further, this instance would not be the first time JK Equities has been linked to shady business practices: In 2014, the company’s incorporators were sued for racketeering in Chicago.
City officials and advocates alike must ensure that bad actors with a vested interest in closing the park are not pushing illegitimate claims of hazardous materials for their own gain. If harmful physical contaminants are present in the park, the city should engage in a restoration effort that centers and empowers community voices to determine future actions. However, if these contaminants do not exist, something even more insidious is at play; racist categorizations of Black and brown neighborhoods as dirty and contaminated may be an implicit justification for this sale.
The current approach of city officials to push aside procedures gives credence to this dynamic. Morley Field was partly built using the US Department of Land and Water Conservation Fund. Therefore, the DEM and the National Park Service must review the city’s proposed sale through a recreational land conversion process, which includes accounting for environmental racism concerns. However, to date, the city of Pawtucket has filed no such application, so the state agency cannot review the plan. Advocates argue that the city is already noncompliant, for the park is currently fenced off and no longer used for recreation.
So long as the city of Pawtucket continues to not follow state procedure, they are actively choosing to shut out community voices and perpetuate further harm. The disempowerment of and disinvestment from the Woodlawn community have led to the present political environment that ignores the voices of Black and brown residents. White supremacy is in the soil, whether that includes physical pollutants or not.