An incisive history of government and corporate failures to infuse capital into Black urban neighborhoods—as well as the organizers and activists who stood up to predatory financial practices.

In the 1960s, conditions in impoverished Black neighborhoods attracted mainstream attention as civil unrest erupted in hundreds of cities across the United States. Finally recognizing the dire effects of racial segregation and urban disinvestment, politicians and corporations joined community activists to call for capital infusion, or reinvestment, in struggling communities. Proposals for reinvestment universally claimed the shared goal of reviving Black neighborhoods, but most of these efforts—some well-meaning, others cynical and predatory—failed to do so.

As renowned historian Beryl Satter shows, private and government interests have long manipulated reinvestment programs to benefit outside business, finance, and real estate professionals. Because these programs focused on corporate tax breaks and federal insurance for lenders, they were easily exploited by private interests to divert funding from poor urban neighborhoods. Meanwhile, community organizers proposed much bolder reinvestment plans that directly confronted institutionally racist practices. They called for a significant reallocation of resources, including government investments in depleted areas and guaranteed incomes for poor people. Activists, often working-class women, also united across racial divides to challenge predatory finance and real estate practices. Yet while they successfully advocated for laws to impede such behaviors, reform legislation often contained loopholes that accommodated racism and corporate greed.

To revive impoverished neighborhoods, we must not only challenge institutional racism in finance and real estate but also resist government policies that enable predatory practices. Cash on the Block envisions a future in which reinvestment policy, guided by community leaders, at last benefits those it is meant to serve.

Beryl Satter is the author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America and Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920. She is Professor Emerita of History at Rutgers University-Newark and has held both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.