South of Main Complied by Beatrice Hill and Brenda Lee ISBN: 1-891885-45-6 Paperback 200 pages, 8.5 x 8.5 250 photographs Publication Date: November 2005 $19.95

More than 1,400 neighborhoods in the United States, most of them African-American, were leveled in the name of urban renewal during the mid-twentieth century. South of Main recreates the culture and history of just one of those, the Southside of Spartanburg, South Carolina, founded in the 1860s by a group of ex-slaves who lived together at the end of a dusty road called Liberty Street.

This poignant and painful history examines the experiences of the people who called the Southside home and whose lives were affected by the bulldozers of urban renewal. Their story is an American story, a complex chronicle of a people powerless against the whims of progress. This book received an IPPY award in 2006 from Independent Publisher magazine as the best multicultural nonfiction title by an independent press in North America.

Between 1970 and 1978 urban renewal razed 50 blocks of their neighborhood, scattered 90 businesses and displaced an estimated 2,000 people. Through oral histories, photographs, and maps, their memories survive in this rich collection of stories called South of Main.