SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Fear continues to loom over folks living in the New Helvetia neighborhood, following a controversial vote by Sacramento City Council to renovate the area -- a plan that could also include the demolition of some homes.
The push to save the public housing district on Broadway stems not only from people like Marcheri Smith, a single mom of two young boys.
"This is our home! We live here! We sleep here every night," Smith said.
It comes from a historic push, too.
"It was a battleground for ending segregation and civil rights in Sacramento," Chris Lango, a historian and documentary producer, said.
Lango said just about a half-century ago, a man by the name of Nathaniel Colley, the first African American in Sacramento to open up a law firm, found out the Sacramento Housing Authority was segregating African American residents at New Helvetia into just 16 of their 310 units.
"You couldn't apply to any of the other units if they were open, you had to wait for one of those 16," he said.
And in 1952, Colley won an injunction, just two years before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
"Colley was able to secure an injunction against the Sacramento Housing Authority that put a legal stop to that practice and that was one of the early victories in the civil rights movement," he said.
It later made New Helvetia a nationally-recognized historic district.
"So, to demolish the visual evidence of all of that history would be tough," he said. "It would preserve a visual reminder of the battle that was fought there and the victory that was won."
Despite pushback, the city council still unanimously approved the West Broadway Specific Plan to revitalize the corridor and build a new street grid, with the word "demolition" still written into their lengthy plan, even though the council claims it's a last resort.
"We're disappointed that demolition is still included in the plan as well as the street grid that would result in demolishing the New Helvetia historic district," said Dan Visnich, the standing chairman of the Nathaniel Colley Civil Rights Coalition.
But Visnich says their fight is far from over.
"So we'll continue to work with the mayor and the city council and SHRA to ensure that a significant portion of New Helvetia is preserved and that an educational cultural center [is] created to honor Nat Colley," he said.
The coalition now wants to build a library and cultural center on civil rights within this district, along with a statue memorializing Colley out front.
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