Other black war workers in North Richmond, not as fortunate as Frank Stevenson, remained in cardboard shacks, barns, tents, or even open fields. Black workers who earned steady wages at war industries could save to buy small plots in unincorporated North Richmond, but because the federal government refused to insure bank loans made to African Americans for housing, standard construction was unaffordable.* Some built their own dwellings with orange crates or scrap lumber scoured from the shipyards. By the early 1950s, some 4,000 African Americans in North Richmond were still living in these
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