A few miles from Portsmouth’s side of the Midtown Tunnel lie a handful of streets and homes on land that once belonged to a freed Black family named Ellet.
The southern portion of that property, once developers got their hands on it, eventually became a predominantly Black neighborhood known as Sugar Hill.
But the city, with help from the state, decimated the community over the course of several decades, seizing some of the property with tactics such as aggressive tax liens, because both wanted the land for major projects like railroads, freeways and tunnels.
And now the Portsmouth City Council wants to make things right. It’s working to determine how it can return city-owned parcels back to the property owners — or their heirs — some of whom were strong-armed in the government takeover of the neighborhood.
“I think that justice requires we move in the direction of returning it,” Portsmouth councilman Mark Whitaker, who’s championing the return of the land, said at a council meeting last week.
“I definitely don’t want us to ever conclude that just because something is legal, that makes it right. I’m dealing with an issue of righteousness and fairness. We can look at this country’s history and see that there were a lot of things that were legal but it didn’t make it right.”
These days, Sugar Hill can hardly be called a neighborhood. It’s a community of mostly empty lots — some homes have been razed by the city over the years — littered with old tires and broken appliances along the curbs.
Some residents occupy the few modest homes that are scattered throughout the swaths of undeveloped land. If the “No Trespassing” signs on doors and windows are any indication, the residents may be wary the community has become an illegal dumping ground for others’ trash.
Whitaker raised the issue of Sugar Hill’s decades-old undoing in September but first made the request to return the publicly-owned properties last month.
The area containing the parcels comprise about six blocks intersected by Marion Avenue and Roberta and Quebec streets, with the Martin Luther King Freeway to the west and Scott’s Creek to the east. The city owns 74 of the 87 parcels in the neighborhood; the rest are privately owned.
City Attorney Lavonda Graham-Williams provided council with a report about Sugar Hill last month, noting the historical trend beginning in the 1950s of displacing and disinvesting in predominately Black neighborhoods across the nation in favor of other economic development. For example, disadvantaged communities weren’t always afforded the same opportunities to be heard when freeways and highways were being constructed in the neighborhoods.
Whitaker wants the city to follow the lead of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which earlier this year returned some land in Manhattan Beach, California, to the descendants of a Black couple who were stripped of it in the 1920s.
No one on the council adamantly opposed Whitaker’s proposal, though some tempered their support, saying they wanted more information.
While he didn’t speak in opposition, Councilman Bill Moody said the council isn’t responsible for righting all the wrongs of the past.
Public acquisitions of property in the area date back to at least the 1960s, when the Commonwealth worked to extend Route 58 and develop the Midtown Tunnel, according to the city attorney’s report.
The city, which also had an eye on economic development, allocated at least $100,000 the following decade to acquire properties throughout Pinners Point, which also included the Sugar Hill neighborhood. By the end of the 1970s, at least 48 properties from the neighborhood were in public ownership.
The land acquisitions continued through the 2000s.
The majority of the properties were purchased by the city and not obtained through tax liens, eminent domain or foreclosure. It’s not clear whether the city would return all 74 properties or just the ones purchased through tax sales.
The city’s tax assessor’s office, according to the report, couldn’t determine whether the parcels were acquired for less than fair market value compared to nearby neighborhoods, but the report states there was “an aggressive use of tax sales in the Sugar Hill area.”
Whitaker said during Tuesday’s meeting that his biggest concern for the land was the disproportionate targeting of a community he says was the victim of environmental racism.
“I think it’s an atrocity what happened to that community, not only with what the city did through tax liens but also with what that community was impacted by with the Martin Luther King Expressway, which actually went through the middle of that (community) and was consistent with what had happened across other African American communities across the United States, which has been well-documented,” Whitaker said.
The council had a lengthy discussion about Whitaker’s request Tuesday, with some saying they support the idea but want more information about how the process would work before committing.
“(W)e still have information that needs to be determined,” Portsmouth Mayor Shannon Glover said. “And I think the responsible thing to do in restoration and fairness and justice is to take it through the proper process. I can support the legal team going and bringing back that information, taking a deeper dive into the information so that we can make the best informed decision based on the information that is provided to us.”
Whitaker said he didn’t disagree with needing more information but that the council “should be clear” that it intends to give the properties back and that the issue remains a priority. The councilman might have pushed for the council to make a decision because it was the last meeting before the four-person alliance that controls the council gets broken up at the start of the year.
That council majority, led by Whitaker, directed the city attorney’s office to move forward with giving the land back as it continues to provide legal information about the process. The directive came from a “show of hands” consensus vote by council members.
However, final decisions on returning the Sugar Hill land will rest with a council no longer controlled by Whitaker and his allies.
Formal votes would still be needed prior to giving the properties back, city spokesperson Peter Glagola said.
Natalie Anderson, 757-732-1133, natalie.anderson@virginiamedia.com
