Imagine a neighborhood in the heart of Syracuse where residents didn’t need to lock their doors. A neighborhood with such a close community that the working class families living there didn’t have to worry about welfare during the Great Depression, because they could just go next door if they needed a few meals.

The 15th Ward of Syracuse was such a neighborhood, and Syracuse University remembered this lost community for its annual Sojourner Storytelling Conference on Thursday, Feb. 26.

‘The longstanding tradition for the storytelling conference here at SU is that the stories that different people tell are important,’ said Kendall Phillips, professor of communications and rhetorical studies at SU and one of the event coordinators for the conference.

The conference was held in Shemin Auditorium after a dinner reception in Shaffer’s foyer. At the reception, CRS professors, students and former residents of the 15th Ward were treated to a light dinner and gallery displaying photographs of the old neighborhood.

Audiences were shown a brief video put together by CRS students consisting of old photos and interview clips. SU English professor Sanford Sternlicht then gave a speech about the history of the ward’s Jewish immigrants.

The highlight of the event, however, was when Francis Parks got up to fervently narrate three stories – each one bordering on the life and stories written by Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Harriet Powers – in honor of the ward and Black History Month. The event closed with a 30-minute documentary featuring detailed interviews with former residents of the ward.

The Sojourner Storytelling Conference was started 11 years ago by Francis Parks, a former SU professor of storytelling in the CRS department. The 15th Ward, a racially integrated neighborhood composed mainly of African Americans and Jewish Americans, was chosen as the theme of remembrance for this year’s conference in celebration of Black History Month.

The 15th Ward community used to occupy the space between SU and downtown Syracuse, extending from Salina Street to Walnut Avenue and Burnet Avenue to East Castle Street. What used to be a close-knit community with a history that extended back to the 19th century is now occupied by deserted space, a parking lot, the SUNY Upstate Medical Center and the infamous Interstate 81, cutting across the lost territory of the community like an open wound.

According to Phillips, the city’s original plans after tearing down the neighborhood were to build new and affordable family housing for the residents. That plan changed quickly, however, soon after the community was torn down in the 1960s. The city’s leaders decided to instead construct I- 81, saying that its construction would benefit the economy.

‘It’s pretty clear; at least some people say the city’s fathers didn’t want so many black people living in the middle of the city,’ Phillips said, referencing an article published in The Post-Standard with blatant racial overtones. ‘So they used urban renewal and I-81 as excuses.’

There have been recent citywide discussions proposing the dismantling and reconstruction of I-81. Plans proposed include rebuilding the highway around instead of across the city of Syracuse, or making the highway an underground pathway for cars and building a park above it, much like the famous Big Dig in Boston.

‘This didn’t just happen. It wasn’t like an act of God,’ Philips said. ‘It was a series of political choices about who got displaced and whose voices were heard and whose weren’t.’

Regardless, the community’s destruction forced its inhabitants to disperse into unfamiliar neighborhoods in the South and West sides of Syracuse. This year’s storytelling conference serves to highlight the valuable history of Syracuse that has often been overlooked.

‘Now, if we (as a university) want to reach back out to parts of the city of Syracuse, first thing we got to do is remember with them what happened,’ Philips said.

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Published on February 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm