When Claire Hagan first began her work as a mayoral fellow for Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz, she never imagined how much work she would pour into the R-51 urban renewal project
“I mean, where I picked it up, it was in the very, very early stages of research,” Hagan said.
Research for the project began in 2023 from Girtz’s effort to better understand the effects of urban renewal on Athens. Hagan — one of the various fellows who worked on the project — began working on the project in 2024, under his guidance.
For a while, it was primarily just her working on the project, which presented various logistical difficulties. But the work would eventually become a joint-project, one between the mayor’s office, Historic Athens and the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia.
Interest in the initial R-51 research increased as a result of renewed attention from the R-50 urban renewal project concerning Linnentown — a Black neighborhood that was destroyed in the 1960s as a result of urban renewal.
“[Linnentown] also sort of coincided with this great consciousness around racist historical strains in America,” Girtz said. “In some ways, it’s like these two lanes [R-51 and R-50] converged.
But what stood out to Girtz and Hagan about R-51 the most is the sheer scale of the harm.
Over 400 households were displaced and various businesses, homes and community gathering spaces were destroyed. Nearly 60% of the residential households displaced were Black.
What made the work even more difficult was that much of the information came from white government officials and actors, creating “inherently biased” information.
“We don’t know exactly what happened,” Hagan said. “These stories are being told from the perspective of the government actors that were charged with having these interactions and enacting these policies, distributing documentation and recording all of this information.”
As such personal stories from residents have been difficult to find. Researchers are still in the process of finding residents affected but — so far — nobody has come forward.
I wanted this census to not focus on the addresses per se, but the people who lived in those homes,” Hagan said.
Hagan and Girtz said the release of the website was only the beginning. Understanding what actually happened is the first step toward government accountability and a restorative process.
“Certainly documentation is a necessary piece of truth telling, but I think it’s the truth telling that’s the more important piece,” Girtz said. “In part for acknowledgements sake, and in part because that helps us have a guide today for ‘Hey, how do we do things, particularly things done with your tax dollars, in a more humane and effective and supportive way?’”
Hagan echoed this sentiment and said the feedback they’ve gotten from the community has been encouraging.
“The feedback has been really, really phenomenal, both constructive and also people letting us know that they’re proud of the work that we’ve done, which means a lot,” Hagan said.
Caroline Feagin is a journalism major in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
