The Cogswell Interchange is gone. What now for the Black families it uprooted?

Manny Grosse, 73, has lived his whole life in Halifax, most of it in public housing. 

So have eight of his 10 siblings who, like Grosse, moved into public housing and started families there.

It didn't begin that way.   

Grosse was baby No. 7 when his parents, Henry and Irene Grouse, were renting on Jacob Street. Their neighbourhood, just south of where Cogswell and Brunswick streets met, saw poor and working-class families living in wooden tenements dating back to the 1800s.

But in the 1960s, those Victorian-era homes on 10 blocks were bulldozed in the name of urban renewal. White, immigrant and many Black families, including the Grouses, were forced out to make way for the Cogswell interchange and the massive concrete buildings that were constructed around it.

Six decades later, that interchange, which came to be viewed as a gigantic urban planning mistake and an eyesore, has been demolished. It has opened up some 6.5 hectares of land — the size of 21 football fields — for redevelopment once again. 

Sitting at the heart of it is a piece of land that serves as a reminder of a forgotten community, and now also the hope of an African Nova Scotian group to build a new community on its own terms. 

It's called Parcel D.

The uprooting of Black families from the Cogswell area was part of a larger pattern of displacing Black residents, including the razing of Africville, a historic Black settlement of 400 families.

Shawn Grouse, Grosse's son, said more than homes have been lost.

"The importance of having community and other people around you, and loved ones, and people who can support you, and tell you that anything and everything is possible — those are the aspects of when communities are destroyed, that people get displaced," said Grouse.

"People of African ancestry, we really rely and depend upon each other," he said.

The Cogswell families were moved into Mulgrave Park — a housing project funded in part by the federal government — and later, Uniacke Square. There weren't enough units, however, so some people — particularly those who were childless — were sent farther away.

The displacement started a dependence on public housing and social assistance — one that exists to this day, said Treno Morton, 26, who wants to break the cycle.