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Posted on 05/25/2021 2:47:16 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Baltimore has its Highway to Nowhere, a road that gobbled up communities before the project was abandoned.
Wilmington, Del., had neighborhoods wiped out by Interstate 95.
Thousands of Detroit residents lost their homes — and surviving communities were scarred — by the construction of Interstate 375.
The Overtown neighborhood in Miami, a majority-Black community, was “flattened,” also by I-95, forcing 10,000 people to leave their homes.
In Nashville, bulldozers demolished 620 houses, 27 apartment buildings and six Black churches to make way for the I-40 expressway.
All across the nation, American communities bear the scars of the headlong rush to expand the interstate highway system, mostly in the 1950s and 60s.
In many American cities, the federal government erected roads designed primarily to bring mostly White suburban professionals into urban job centers — slitting established Black neighborhoods in the process.
Many communities have never recovered, scholars and planners say.
U.S. Reps. Anthony G. Brown and Kweisi Mfume and Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Benjamin L. Cardin, who are all Maryland Democrats, are among federal lawmakers seeking to undo some of the damage.
Spurred on by U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has spotlighted the devastating impact the federal highway system has had on communities of color, Brown and the other lawmakers have introduced legislation to “reconnect” communities divided by elevated freeways.
The bill they’re backing would provide funding to remove and “retrofit” what they call “historic infrastructure barriers.”
“We have an opportunity to transform our infrastructure and invest in the transportation future of every community, with equity and justice at the forefront of our efforts. Communities of color have been chronically underinvested in and deliberately harmed by exclusionary infrastructure and transportation policies,” said Brown, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at marylandmatters.org ...
Thank LBJ
PING!
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
not only black houses were destroyed in those times
here’s a black man with a black cat
Livin’ in a black neighborhood
He’s got an interstate
Runnin’ through his front yard
You know he thinks that he’s got it so good
The one take away that I get from this is, don’t live in some shithole big city.
Got to patriate dem illegals quicker!
It wasn’t just cities....rural areas were also taken.
What are “Black churches”?
Practice Black Mass?
Interstate highways that go around cities (AKA Beltways) divided communities also
Ventura California got stuck with a freeway right down the middle of town.
Straight through the heart of a bucolic beach community.
Plenty of old white neighborhoods had it happen to them only to have their neighborhoods turn black. I highly doubt it had anything to do with race. Quite honesty when anything has race injected into it people become victims instead of seeing opportunities. Highways are opportunities for commerce.
To this day I can still get up off my ass and walk across the street if I need to. Doesn’t cost a thing.
Guess that’s actually white privilege.
With a high level of probability, arterial roads through established residential neighborhoods create slums. Most commuters don’t care if it shaves a few minutes off their commutes.
“In many American cities, the federal government erected roads designed primarily to bring mostly White suburban professionals into urban job centers — slitting established Black neighborhoods in the process.”
History lesson: In 1950, America was still 90% white; regionally a little lower in the South and higher in the North.
Interstates were a necessity for a post-war industrialized nation to move into the world leadership position. Social engineering programs at the time were focused on reducing urban poverty pockets and shanty towns, never expected to be permanent, by focused programs for black children and bootstrapping black adults into higher income brackets with affirmative action, preferential employment and education opportunities and numerous social services programs. In those years, generational welfare families was as foreign a concept as walking on the moon.
But why the handwringing over the displacement of blacks away from those freeways now?
Haven’t we heard story after woke story that ‘forcing’ blacks to live near freeways was racist? That living near freeways affected the health of those living near them?
Either the author has no knowledge of American history and demographics, or he’s being dishonest. He can’t have his race-baking cake and eat it too
Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were driving from my old neighborhood close to her old neighborhood in Niles, and we came across a street sign that said "Austin Avenue". This was on the other side of the Kennedy from where my parents used to live. She said, "Why do they have another street called Austin over here?"
Guess I missed being eligible for reparations by just a little bit.
Hmmmm.. I thought it was railroad tracks that did that...
“not only black houses were destroyed in those times”
Thank goodness interstates only go through cities and not rural areas or farms or ranches. They weren’t affected at all.
(Disclaimer: this is a joke. Actually, interstates do go through rural and country areas, and I do, indeed, know this.)
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