The Racial Injustice of American Highways

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2020/06/protests-black-communities-history-highways-george-floyd/612496/

Thousands of peaceful protesters in the Twin Cities occupied Interstate 94 over the weekend as they marched from the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to Minneapolis. For the region’s African-American community, which has been leading the ongoing protests over the fatal arrest of George Floyd and the use of police force on black Americans, the concrete they were standing on bears significant meaning.

It was this highway that, in the 1950s and ‘60s, tore apart the once-thriving neighborhood of Rondo — the heart of St. Paul’s largest African-American community — and helped spur decades of racial segregation in the region.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz acknowledged as much during a Saturday press conference. “It wasn’t just physical — it ripped a culture, it ripped who we were. It was an indiscriminate act that said this community doesn’t matter, it’s invisible,” he said. “This convenient place to put a highway so we can cross over this place and go from the city out to the suburbs.”

This kind of destruction and devastation are familiar to older African Americans in other cities across the U.S., whose communities were decimated by the construction of the Interstate Highway System. And as protesters take over major highways — from I-630 in Little Rock, Arkansas, I-40 in Memphis, Tennessee, I-75 in Cincinnati, Ohio — the symbolism has not been lost on some of those marching.

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. Kick. It's all connected.

[pecosbob]

3. Entire swaths of NYC were leveled for the freeway system

That was what brought about NYC's eventual bankruptcy in the 1970's due to the wholesale destruction of local business and industry and the resulting loss of revenue. Robert Moses and the city planners screwed up NYC. There's was a great nine-part American Experience documentary that covered much of this.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Evening kick. This country was built on bones.