Saratoga Springs activists and organizations are hosting a fundraiser to help complete a years-long project documenting the impact of urban renewal in the city.
Like in other communities across the country, between 1962 and 1986, the U.S. Federal Urban Renewal Program provided funding to Saratoga Springs to clear out “blighted” areas of the city.
In order to make way for redevelopment, 53% of the homes slated for demolition were owner occupied, and 70% of homes were owned by minorities.
Decades later, individuals and organizations have taken up the task of documenting the impact of the effort that displaced the city’s Black community once prominent in the city’s West Side neighborhood.
Joy King is a seventh-generation Saratogian — the multimedia project, Erasing Spaces and Faces: The Legacy of Urban Renewal in Saratoga Springs, was born out of her own lived experience.
“We go over there and things are being closed down and they’re disappearing and then finally I go over there and it’s gone. And I said, ‘what happened?’ So, I felt like I lost a part of my self-worth, my heritage,” said Joy King.
Filmmaker Careina Yard played a pivotal role in bringing the project to life.
“I felt like it really should center those stories of the individuals who were personally effected as opposed to being really strong on the research initially. Like, how can we connect these stories to the real lives of people who were effected so that the people who are seeing this are understanding the joy and the resilience that that community embodies in order to connect in a way where the rupture feels real,” said Yard.
Yard is working to complete a documentary film. She also wants to create a digital gallery to preserve first-hand accounts of the city’s transformation.
“What they did in Saratoga is, once they did this, they created projects one and two which was 81% African American in these project areas. And the initiative was to go in and totally demolish these homes which were not blight, but under the guise of ‘we’re taking you out of your space to renovate it and then we’re putting you back in. Most of the time when they got people out of these spaces, there was no putting them back in,” said Yard.
The upcoming fundraiser is being held in the Hilton in downtown Saratoga Springs, which Yard notes has its own link the documentary.
“Isaiah Jackson created Jack’s Cabaret and Grill which turned into Jack’s Harlem club, and that’s where we’re having the fundraiser. But, in that space, Duke Ellington performed, Cab Calloway, Black Patti, Billie Holiday. These are some really outstanding individuals and legacies. It was essentially a space that was nicknamed Little Harlem,” said Yard.
Julie Lewis is a co-founder of C.R.E.A.T.E. Community Studios, a partner in the documentary project.
“The first two years of the project were a lot of information gathering, a lot of community conversations that we had both in small groups with individuals and also larger community groups really to just listen. And from those restorative practices place, be a part of the conversation and learning from the individuals who were impacted,” said Lewis.
The fundraiser will help to complete Erasing Spaces and Faces, but will also help establish a fund to help other BIPOC filmmakers in the Capital Region pursue their own projects.
“You know long-term what we hope is that this is sort of a seed that can build and grow a greater fund that’s sustainable over time. In particular, it’s harder for artists of color to access funding and financial resources for their projects,” said Lewis.
Yard says it’s important to allow Black filmmakers to tell the stories of their own communities.
“Giving Black, Brown, Indigenous creatives the ability and the resources to do that, is extremely powerful. And it honors us as creatives in a way where it’s almost as if like, yeah time has been overdue to do that,” said Yard.
The fundraiser runs from 5:30-8:30 Friday at the Hilton on Congress Street.
