Linden Hills

“There were other black communities with showcase homes, but somehow making it into Linden Hills meant ‘making it.’ The Tupelo Realty Corporation was terribly selective about the types of families who received its mortgages […] No, only ‘certain’ people got to live in Linden Hills, and the blacks in Wayne County didn’t know what that certain something was that qualified them, but they kept sending in applications to the Tupelo Realty Corporation—and hoping. Hoping for the moment they could move in, because then it was possible to move down toward Tupelo Drive and Luther Nedeed.” 

Living in Linden Hills has come to symbolize a superiority of status in the wider Wayne County society, and so everyone aspires to live there. The Tupelo Realty Corporation—owned and run by the Nedeed family—has sole control over who is given a mortgage to one of the properties. It maintains its exclusivity by only selecting “certain” people and keeping its selection criteria hidden. In doing so, Nedeed is able to uphold Linden Hills—and Tupelo Drive—as the pinnacle of Wayne County’s black community, and uphold his position as its lord and arbiter.

“Because when men begin to claw men for the rights to a vacuum that stretches into eternity, then it becomes so painfully clear that the omnipresent, omnipotent, Almighty Divine is simply the will to possess. It had chained the earth to the names of a few and it would chain the cosmos as well.”

Here, Luther Nedeed is considering what has gone wrong with Linden Hills and his ancestor’s dream. He recognizes that the neighborhood and community he has inherited is nothing more than the “will to possess,” and when this is the only thing that men aspire to, then it leads to the enslavement—or chaining—of all to “the names of a few,” meaning that only a very few will benefit—the very privileged—while the rest of society will remain beholden and enslaved.

“Linden Hills wasn’t black; it was successful. The shining surface of their careers, brass railings, and cars hurt his eyes because it only reflected the bright nothing that was inside of them.”

Even though the original Luther Nedeed intended Linden Hills to be “a black wad of spit right in the white eye of America,” it has become simply “successful” and so has lost its black identity entirely (9).