Smokey Hollow: Circulations of Race and Value in Tallahassee, Florida.

The historic neighborhood of Smokey Hollow was the center of a vibrant Black community in Tallahassee, Florida. While it was the site of the city dump and gasification plant, it had its own bustling circulations and flows. In this paper, we examine how the State of Florida and the City of Tallahassee mobilized conceptions of race, value, and circulation to categorize Smokey Hollow as blighted. We draw on archival documents and oral histories to illustrate how governing authorities linked white mobility with value and Blackness to stagnancy and waste. They used these discourses to forward urban renewal efforts that erased Black place and its circulations to make way for transportation infrastructure that better connected white suburban spaces to the Tallahassee Capitol Center, and later, greens-pace. Examining five moments in the historic transformation of Smokey Hollow—from Black place to greenspace—shows how relations of race, value, and circulation inform the production of urban space. We argue that logics of circulation and stagnancy need to be brought into conversation with critical analysis of racial capitalism and valuation to better understand urban renewal and how the destruction of Black place is rationalized in the U.S. South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]