‘People just want to come back home:' The story of Lakeland, Maryland

Steps from the University of Maryland in College Park, there was once a tight-knit, self-sustaining Black community.

In some ways, the community still exists today.

"It's relationships that have gone back generations," said Maxine Gross, a current resident.

But in other ways, the homes, the businesses and the residents that made up the community are gone. For years, the neighborhood was prone to heavy flooding, and in the 1960s and 1970s, the people were displaced by urban renewal -- a promise for improvement by College Park that was never really delivered.

This is the story of Lakeland.

How it all began

To really understand Lakeland, you have to go back to the beginning.

In the 1890s, when Prince George's County had mostly white residents, developer Edwin Newman planned for Lakeland to be a resort community for whites.

But his plan didn't go as expected.

The land was difficult to develop because it was mostly wetlands, and in the midst of an economic crisis, white homebuyers weren't interested.

By the turn of the 20th century, African Americans began to move in. Joanne Braxton's great-grandfather, John C. Johnson, was one of those founders.

"He was the superintendent of the first school in Lakeland," Braxton said. "He was also one of the founders of the First Baptist Church in Lakeland. And he and his children and grandchildren all became landholders in Lakeland and helped contribute to the community."

The community's proximity to UMD attracted many new residents seeking new, long-term employment. Most became service workers on the UMD campus.

Johnson's daughter, Mary Johnson Wings, for example, was simultaneously one of the leaders of the community as First Baptist Sunday School's superintendent, and maid to the president of UMD, Braxton said.

"You look at 1900s and you see, you know, this person and their spouse and children living in the house with his brother and his sister," Gross said. "And then in the next Census, you'll see that brother and sister with their own household and another sibling living with them. So it's just that people found something that was good for them and they told somebody else about it."

'Everybody knows everybody'

It also meant that much of the community knew each other. Family names were familiar to everyone: the Hills, the Briscoes, the Lancasters, the Brooks, the Fields.

"It was like one big family, whether there were blood ties or family ties or, you know, traditional family ties," Gross said.

"It was a connection in every household," said Lakelander Patricia Middleton. "There was not one house here that I couldn't tell you who lived behind those doors."

"Everybody knows everybody," said Lakelander Abigail Cohen. "So it's like having multiple aunties and grandmas up the street."

According to Braxton, Lakeland had "five pillars of beloved community," which she named:

• Adequate housing
• Culturally appropriate learning
• Gathering spaces
• Connectivity
• Access to nature

With those, Braxton said, "we were largely a self-sufficient community that had relationships with other African-American communities up and down the Route 1 corridor."

The neighborhood helped each other, creating businesses that sold everything the community needed, and raising children together.

"It was the traditional village," said Willie Sellers, another Lakelander. "You knew everybody. Everybody knew you. If you got in trouble, you might get a whooping from somebody down the street. And then when you got home, you got a whooping from your parents," he laughed.

"But it was a great place to grow up," Sellers said.

The mutual support and community was especially important at a time that "the outside world was not as hospitable," Gross explained. Lakeland thrived, despite segregation, through the 1960s.

By that time, it had grown to about 150 households.

There was one catastrophic issue: the floods.

Emptying the flood zone

Every time it rained, even for two to three hours, Lakeland would flood -- and flood badly.

"Sometimes we had to go out in boats," said Middleton.

"There was basically no water runoff system," Gross said. "There was one pipe where all the water, all the drainage, where it let out right into the middle of the street."

That spot was on Navajo Street, one of only two legal entrances into the Lakeland neighborhood. Homes on that street would sustain water damage, but the entire neighborhood would also be impacted because nobody could come or go until the floods cleared.

"And that's where it came in from, the city of College Park," Middleton said. "And we moved into this urban renewal, that the residents had to move out of that area to fix the flood zone."

According to Gross, experts from the city said it was impossible for the flooding to get fixed while residents were in their homes.

"From the onset, there were some people who said, 'don't do this, don't go along with it. It's a trick,'" Gross said. "They'd seen what had happened in other areas, where urban renewal had been used as a way to take people's land and displace them from their neighborhoods."

But College Park talked to community leaders and made certain promises, Braxton said.

"...You will be able to come back," Braxton said. "You will be able to live in Lakeland. There will be a means for you to return and live here. Right of return."

The city also told residents and community leaders that, when they returned, the neighborhood would be better.

"For example, there will a flood control plan in place," Braxton said. "There will be single-family housing you can purchase."

Lakelanders were also told they would "have a voice in the process all the way through," Braxton said.

Once people began to leave, others followed suit. Middleton's family was the last on her street to leave the flood zone.

"4900 Lakeland Road was the last house..." Middleton said. "All my neighbors were gone. It got very lonely. It was like, 'Well, where is everybody?'"

At least 104 homes were demolished through the urban renewal process in Lakeland, which took place from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. Two-thirds of Lakeland disappeared.

It wasn't the only neighborhood in the U.S. to undergo that kind of change.

What is urban renewal?

The rollout of urban renewal began in the 1950s, under the Federal Housing Act of 1949. From there, it spread throughout the country.

According to the community research project, more than 1 million people were displaced. At least 75% of them -- 750,000 people -- were people of color.

"It was a huge project in 993 cities, 2500 projects," said Mindy Fullilove, a professor at the University of Orange. "And they all did pretty much the same thing, which is condemn a neighborhood that they said was blighted and basically clearcut it. Just, tear down all the houses, and then disperse the people and then use the land -- sometimes -- for what they called a higher use. Which was, could be, like a civic center or a hospital."

Sometimes, Fullilove said, they didn't use the land at all. Instead, the land stayed empty for decades -- or became a parking lot.

Even at the time, residents of some of those clear-cut neighborhoods felt they'd been tricked.

"I can't see anything that urban renewal has done for anyone," one Cleveland resident said in an on-camera interview in the 1960s.

"And for me, all they done is come and uproot my home. I was happy where I was and I haven’t been in a decent place. The place where I moved from a year ago, the ground is still leveled. They haven’t built anything."

Lakeland is another neighborhood that was cleared for a higher use that never materialized.

"Much of it was just left empty," Fullilove said.

Root shock

It took away more than just buildings.

"And that gave a broken spirit to all of us," said Middleton. "Because we would rather had those floods and kept living together then to see our neighbors go away. The friendships and the love of the people that we grew up with."

Fullilove compares it to the root shock that transplanted plants experience.

"It's like tearing a tree or a plant out of the ground and breaking the roots," Fullilove said. "And it's very difficult. A plant might survive being transplanted like that. People might survive. But, certainly old people, there are many deaths among old people in these urban renewal areas because it's just too stressful for them."

Lakelanders hoped to return to a better community. That didn't happen.

A third of the neighborhood was replaced with subsidized townhouses and high-density apartments, mostly rented by college students. There was also an elder housing facility.

Another third of the neighborhood disappeared completely, replaced by Lake Artemesia. The lake was created to fix the excavation damage done by Metro's Green Line construction.

"There were a significant number of lots that could have been redeveloped, that homes could have been put on, in order for folks to be able to at least have an option of moving into the central part of Lakeland," Gross said.

"But most of those lots weren't redeveloped until much later," Gross said. "So there wasn't, in my view, an honest effort to make a situation where people could could come back or could remain."

The neighborhood never came back in the same way.

"We lost a lot of families," Sellers said. "We lost a lot of people who contributed to the city ... and contributed to the fabric of what goes on in just this general area. And then now it has been dispersed, and it's not the same."

A turning point in 2020

In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed George Floyd's murder, College Park made a change.

For the first time in the city's history, the City Council officially apologized to the Lakelanders. College Park also established the city's Restorative Justice Commission to study the harm done to Lakeland.

"It's a part of the history, what went through in Lakeland," said College Park Mayor Fazlul Kabir. "That was not right. And we wanted to make it right. Make a wrong thing right. So we thought that the first step would be making a statement and then go from there."

That "wrong thing" -- the harm caused to African American communities by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s -- requires corrective action, Kabir said.

"What we are doing at this point, we have partnered with Columbia University on a six month, $150,000 project," Kabir said. "Our City Council has approved it fairly recently, and they are the one who are helping our Restorative Justice Commission in coming up with the final action plan and the reparation plan."

Howard University is also assisting in the process. Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center Executive Director Justin Hansford has spoken to Lakelanders at town hall meetings -- related to the commission -- about the project.

"One thing I’ve seen in commissions around the country is that, the more information you have to back up your case for reparations, the stronger your legal structure will be," Hansford said at one of those town hall meetings. "In other words, they won’t be able to challenge you if you have more information on the books about the harms that took place."

The town hall meetings began in 2020, but Hansford's involvement is the first time Lakelanders have been able to push the conversation forward with policy experts.

"These reports will tell us the truth," Hansford said. "Which is oftentimes that, strategically, there has been a disinvestment from these communities. They were blocked out. They were pushed out from access to the opportunity to build wealth. We know that homeownership is the primary vehicle for wealth-building."

Hansford has had similar success with similar projects, such as in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. It became the first city in the United States to issue reparations.

According to Hansford, the solution will look different in every city and community.

"What they did [in Evanston] was create a financial mechanism to provide housing vouchers, so that you could facilitate homeownership for those families that had been pushed out," Hansford said.

For families pushed out that now own homes elsewhere, they provided money to help with home improvements, Hansford explained.

"In Evanston, it was to the tune of $20,000," he said.

It's a solution more cities are seeking out.

"We now have almost 30 cities around the country that have also agreed to support municipal reparations efforts," Hansford said. "We want to make sure that people get a chance to have a say in what happens in this entire process."

Without those community voices at the forefront, Hansford added, it's not a legitimate process. College Park is committed to making sure of that legitimacy, Prince George’s Council Member Eric Olson said.

"Lakeland is a tremendous community with a rich history, and we need to do everything we can to work with the community to make sure that we're protecting it and that we are doing restorative justice," Olson said. "Which means listening to the community. It's up to Lakelanders to come up with the plan that they want to see implemented."

As the community figures out what that would look like, the common thread is righting past wrongs.

"They lost their history," said Steve Thomas, a speaker at a town hall meeting. "And here, 50 years later, they're still hurting. I thought that the whole notion of reparations -- or one might think of it as amenity -- how might we put back into this community what was taken away?"

'For the kids, for the history'

Though Lakeland the neighborhood isn't the same as it was, the community lives on.

Neighborhood descendants fill Lakeland Community Park. Most of the crowd that danced and talked, cooked and ate no longer lives in Lakeland. But every year, they return for Lakeland Day.

"It’s just great that everyone gets to get together once a year, you know what I’m saying?" said William F. Campbell Jr. "People we haven’t seen in a long time come back to the neighborhood."

One woman, who told News4 she left in 1957, said Lakeland "was a great place to grow up in, to where when I left here I didn’t know about segregation and all of this stuff."

While restorative justice studies are underway in Lakeland, recently, the name has been cemented in certain parts of the neighborhood.

"I’m happy that they’re doing this, gathering things and getting things together for the kids," said Derwin Clemmons. "For the history."

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The name of the community center and the park now reflect the community that once existed, so those from the past and in the future know the history.

"If I could wave a magic wand and I could wish for anything, I would want the homes that were promised to be here," Cohen said. "I'm sure that there are many people who would come back to Lakeland if they had the opportunity."

There's still hope for a Lakeland future.

"I think there's hope that we can maintain a place here in Lakeland, not just the memory of a place," Gross said. "And that is a hope and an effort that we are really trying to make here, and one that I hope folks will be able to see and really grab on to, not only for us, but for themselves as well."