More than 1,400 neighborhoods in the United States, most of them African-American, were leveled in the name of urban renewal during the mid-twentieth century. South of Main recreates the culture and history of just one of those, the Southside of Spartanburg, South Carolina, founded in the 1860s by a group of ex-slaves who lived together at the end of a dusty road called Liberty Street. This poignant and painful history examines the experiences of the people who called the Southside home and whose lives were affected by the bulldozers of urban renewal. Their story is an American story, a complex chronicle of a people powerless against the whims of progress. This book received an IPPY award in 2006 from Independent Publisher magazine as the best multicultural nonfiction title by an independent press in North America.
