“Development-induced displacement”: When was the first time you heard or read these words? For me, it was during the summer of 2021, when comedian, television host, and writer Amber Ruffin reported on the history of flooded African American towns in the United States, the most famous of them being Lake Lanier in Georgia and Central Park in New York City. Decades ago, numerous Black citizens were forced by the government, using eminent domain, to move out of their hometowns—some of which were burned down—so that other projects, such as lakes, dams, and bridges, could be built in their place.
According to sociologist and demographer Heather Randell, “Development-induced displacement is characterized by the permanent relocation of all households within a geographic area as a result of the construction of infrastructure projects.”
The United States has a long history of the government forcing people off their land—just ask those from Indigenous communities. In Appalachia, one particularly impactful development-induced displacement event was prompted by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Act.
The TVA Act was adopted in 1933 to “improve the navigability and to provide for the flood control of the Tennessee River; to provide for reforestation and the proper use of marginal lands in the Tennessee Valley; to provide for the agricultural and industrial development of said valley, . . . and for other purposes,” according to the TVA. Another primary goal of the TVA was to bring electricity to the region.
The act’s stated mission includes providing “for the general welfare of the citizens” of the Tennessee Valley but, ultimately, it would result in the development-induced displacement of countless Black farmers.
I spoke about this disturbing and little-known legacy of the TVA with William Isom and Alona Norwood, director and researcher, respectively, at the research and educational project Black in Appalachia. Isom shared the displacement story of his own family.
Two branches of Isom’s family, the Simpsons and the Isoms, lived and farmed in East Tennessee, along the Holston River in Hawkins County. He said that in about 1937, the government began purchasing land from people in that area in order to construct the Cherokee Reservoir. Part of that purchase was land belonging to Isom’s great-grandfather Gordon Isom.
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South Holston Lake was created by the construction of a Tennessee Valley Authority dam across the South Fork of theHolston River.
“[Gordon Isom] had about 200 acres, which is pretty impressive for someone whose father and mother were enslaved,” Isom tells me. “He’s the first generation after emancipation, and [he] managed to have a 200-acre farm where [he] raised hogs on the Holston River.”
On the other side of the river was the Simpson family, who were poor tenant farmers. This was Isom’s grandmother’s family, who moved after the TVA bought the land where they were living.
The experience of being displaced by the TVA was different for the two families, Isom says. The Isoms were able to relocate closer to Morristown and continue to farm successfully. But the Simpsons ended up marrying into other families that were also removed from the land around the river. One was the Brickenstaff family, from a Black community farther down the river that had also been removed by the TVA.
In an article for the journal Agricultural History, historian Melissa Walker describes how the TVA changed the lives of those it displaced for projects that have been historically lauded, including improved infrastructure and electrification in rural communities in East Tennessee and around the South. But thousands of families were uprooted, and even the manner in which the TVA notified people of their removal was discriminatory.
Walker notes that wealthy families were able to either stay on their land or move to better towns. “Poor landowners and landless farm families often did not have these options,” she writes. “A shortage of land and a declining need for agricultural laborers drove these families into low-skill industrial jobs.”
In some cases, Black families were provided no relocation assistance at all. They weren’t referred to other agencies that could have assisted them in finding new properties. Several were encouraged to move before the sale of the properties they were farming was complete.
Although Black farmers represented only about 4 percent of East Tennessee, two-thirds of them owned their farms, according to Walker. Through its Reservoir Family Removal Section, the TVA assigned removal workers to interview families who would be affected. These workers were primarily young residents of East Tennessee, and they were all white. “All relocation workers were white,” Walker writes, “most of them whites raised in the segregated culture of the pre-civil rights movement South.” As a result, Black families did not receive adequate assistance with the relocation process as white families did.
Tenant farmers, in particular, were often moved to new farms that eventually would be removed by the TVA, and they were given housing in pitiful conditions. In some cases, Black families were provided no relocation assistance at all. They weren’t referred to other agencies that could have assisted them in finding new properties. Several were encouraged to move before the sale of the properties they were farming was complete.
Norwood recalls hearing stories about a “ghost town” under a lake in Carter County. “It was like an urban legend,” she says. “They drain [the lake] every so often, and you can still see buildings and remnants of Old Butler,” she adds, referring to the town that was flooded by the TVA in 1948.
“I’m going to assume that there were some Black people in Butler, so whenever the TVA was being created and the Watauga Dam was built, thousands of people and families were displaced from Butler,” Norwood says.
Butler was the only incorporated town the TVA displaced by flooding. Of the hundreds of families that were displaced, some rebuilt the town in a new location, earning it the nickname “the town that would not drown.” Today, a museum helps to memorialize the town’s history.
Development-induced displacement is not just a thing of the past. Each year, millions of people around the world are displaced by infrastructural development—especially as climate change escalates. Generationally, this has left many people without assets. It can also affect people’s health. Research has shown that the very thing infrastructural development is supposed to help—quality of life—is often worsened by it.
“The hardship experienced in the displacement process can make the displaced vulnerable to disease and increase their chance of injury,” researchers observed in a 2012 study of large-scale population displacement resulting from the construction of China’s Three Gorges Dam, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. “The coercive nature of involuntary displacement may heighten relocatees’ feelings of powerlessness,” they added.
So where does this leave Black Appalachians? What can be done to help them deal with the lasting impacts of development-induced displacement trauma? Isom says that firstly, Black people in the region need better political representation. And secondly, for those who have been uprooted, he says, “the holding and maintaining of our cultural and spiritual infrastructure is really important.”