Rainbow-colored homes spring up from the street grid in New Bedford’s West End like children’s play blocks. However, underneath the colorful patina of the Temple Landing Apartments lays a dramatic history of protest, neglect, and reuse.
To understand the full history of these bright new houses you must travel back half a century to the summers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During the Civil Rights era, Black residents of New Bedford increasingly voiced their discontent over high unemployment and discriminatory hiring practices, poor public schools, and inadequate, unsafe housing.
In a series of actions called “the rebellion” by protestors and “the riots” by many others, the summer of 1970 erupted in arson, looting, sniper fire, and street confrontations in an increasingly hostile relationship between New Bedford’s Black residents and the police department. At one point, the National Guard was placed on alert in nearby Fall River.
These conflicts started in a variety of ways. Protests arose over the arrests of young African American men without obvious justification, and again when three white teenagers from surrounding towns drove into the neighborhood and shot indiscriminately into a crowd, killing one bystander and wounding several others. A white resident driving through the area told police he had been shot in the ankle as he passed the protest headquarters. The following day, New Bedford and state police raided the building, targeting the Black Panther-affiliated organizers. Twenty-one people were arrested, including unaffiliated activists, community supporters, and bystanders, and were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, anarchy, and riots.
Following this unrest, a group of community members established the United Front Development Corporation, which supported the construction of more and higher quality housing in the neighborhood on the site of the New Bedford Cordage Company, established in 1842 by ship owners and captains who needed rope for whaling vessels. The company grew and eventually filled a four-acre parcel bounded by Court, Emerson, Ash, and Kempton Streets, before closing in 1964. In 1973, a massive fire destroyed a two-block section of the vacant rope factory, and the remainder was demolished, along with older, blighted housing to make way for the United Front Homes.
The project was progressive and experimental for its time. Closed off from the general street grid, the 200-unit affordable housing development was accompanied by green space, a community center, and a daycare facility.
However, these 200 units did not meet the demands of the housing shortage. Meanwhile, the closed-off nature of the compound prevented police from driving through the development. Crime flourished, much of it committed by the United Front street gang, further damaging the development’s reputation. In 2008, a quarter of all shootings in New Bedford took place in United Front.
The tide began to turn after 2009, when several gang members were arrested. In 2010, the Boston-based group Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) extensively renovated the complex, partnering with United Front Development Corporation to improve 138 units, demolish 62 others, and build 35 new units. The net loss of 27 units was caused by reopening the complex to the street grid, connecting United Front with the rest of the city, and making crime prevention easier.
The new developers, eager to shed the connotations that United Front carried, renamed the development “Temple Landing” after Lewis Temple, the African-American inventor of the toggle harpoon that revolutionized whaling. Crime in the neighborhood has decreased since the opening of the new units, but only time will tell if this project serves the community better than its predecessor.
]]>Heeding the words of Booker T. Washington, a young Providence minister and his wife decided to open their own institution of learning for Black Rhode Islanders. Reverend William S. Holland, the son of a Virginia slave, had come to Providence in 1902, to take the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He quickly realized that the racial realities of the twentieth century – namely, the lack of educational and economic opportunity – threatened his congregation and the Black community at large. In 1908, the couple founded the Watchman Industrial School on Codding Street in Providence, naming the school after the Reverend’s favorite biblical passage:
“…Watchman, what of the night?
The Watchman said, ‘The morning cometh, and also the night…”
Isaiah 21:11-12 Young men at the institute were offered academic instruction as well as courses in carpentry, masonry, and machine repair. Such tremendous learning opportunities were intended to increase young Black men’s chances of gainful employment. Interestingly, Reverend Holland recruited many of his students from Providence’s juvenile court. He defended youth who committed acts motivated by poverty – such as food theft – by asking judges to place them in his care at the Watchman Industrial School rather than sending them to the Sockanosset School for Boys.The Watchman Industrial School became a beacon of hope for Rhode Island’s Black community. The variety of vocational and academic courses offered, in addition to the child care services that the school provided for working-class parents, made the Institute extremely popular – so popular, in fact, that by the early 1920s, it had outgrown its Codding Street location. Miraculously, by 1923, Reverend Holland had scraped together enough funds to purchase a spacious estate in North Scituate, Rhode Island.The four acres that came with the new property allowed for the addition of courses in agriculture, blacksmithing, shoe repair, cooking, and sewing. Additionally, Reverend Holland established a summer camp that utilized a nearby lake. Unfortunately, the Watchman Institute’s move to rural Rhode Island brought an entirely new set of problems.
Within a decade of moving to North Scituate, the Watchman Industrial School was plagued by a rash of unexplained fires – vicious attacks attributed to Rhode Island members of the KKK. The hate group terrorized the Institute and its young Black residents relentlessly, hoping to force them out, or burn them out. While the Watchman Industrial School was never physically destroyed, the repeated arson succeeded in financially draining Reverend Holland’s dream. After the Hurricane of ’38 further damaged the deteriorating buildings, the year-round school closed. Reverend Holland continued to operate the Institute’s summer camp until his death in 1958. His wife continued the program until a lack of funds finally ended it in 1974.