Citizens as planners in Washington Park
At a time when urban renewal typically meant “negro removal,” Otto and Muriel Snowden published an article in the Journal of Housing demonstrating that another way was possible.1 The 1963 piece recounted their work at Freedom House, the nonprofit organization they had co-founded fourteen years earlier in Boston, and the unlikely partnership they had forged with city authorities to facilitate resident participation in the urban renewal of Washington Park, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Thanks to these efforts, the Snowdens proudly stated, community members had been “truly partners, not pawns” and stood to benefit from federal investment in their neighborhood.