Eminent Domain and Civil Rights in Alabama (Op-Ed)

My op-ed piece, co-authored with Ilya Somin, has appeared in the Kansas City Star. We wrote the article in part to promote Tuesday’s public forum at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on the civil rights implications of eminent domain:

Few policies have done more to destroy community and opportunity for minorities than eminent domain. Some 3 to 4 million Americans, most of them ethnic minorities, have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of urban renewal takings since World War II.

The fact is that eminent-domain abuse is a crucial constitutional rights issue. On Tuesday, the Alabama Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public forum at Birmingham’s historic Sixteenth Street Baptist church to address ongoing property seizures in the state. The church was not only a center of early civil rights action, but also, tragically, where four schoolgirls lost their lives in a bombing in 1963.

Read the rest here

David T. Beito, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and a retired professor of history at the University of Alabama, is the co-author of T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer and is writing a new book, FDR’s War on the Bill of Rights.
Beacon Posts by David Beito | Full Biography and Publications
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