From Interstate 90, stretching from Seattle to Boston, to Interstate 10, spanning Jacksonville, Florida, to Santa Monica, California, the nation’s interstate highway system has connected U.S. cities for half a century and serves as an economic backbone. But the development of this intricate, federal highway system has a dark history of destroying Black communities.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, federal contractors building the system deliberately mapped routes that rammed through and dismantled Black neighborhoods — payback, some say, for gains made during the Civil Rights Movement.
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That’s the premise behind “Interstate,” a new documentary currently on the film festival circuit. Created by Emmy award-winning journalist Oscar Corral and filmmaker Haleem Muhsin, the documentary explores the creation of the federal highway system and its impact on Black America.
“There were alternative routes that could have been taken that could have saved many homes and many lives from displacement, but they were not taken,” says Muhsin. The targeting of Black communities for demolition, he says, “was not done by coincidence. That was purposeful.”
A History Paved Over
The documentary begins in 1956, with footage of President Dwight D. Eisenhower signing off on the $51 billion Interstate construction project. Arguably his signature achievement, the plan was to create a 41,000-mile, coast-to-coast highway network. The interstate system would facilitate transportation and commerce by linking cities.
At that point, interstate travel consisted of federal routes and state backroads that were often little more than two-lane blacktop. But when it came time to build the new system within cities, officials were not subtle about their intentions.
“Whenever the government was going to route the Interstate Highway System into an urban area, they sought out the ‘redlined’ districts — the Black neighborhoods to target,” says Corral. He is referring to a New Deal-era plan that circled Black neighborhoods in red, identifying them as places where banks shouldn’t lend money for home mortgages.
In addition to uprooting Black residents and destroying their homes, highway development also created health issues, like asthma, for the people and families left behind and now living beside a major transportation route.
The filmmakers spent about a year documenting the stories of Black people whose neighborhoods were divided or dismantled during two decades of interstate highway construction.
Finding those stories was “like pulling teeth,” Muhsin said. The documentary team unearthed information from archival libraries about the construction procedures and dealings during these time periods.
Five Cities, One Pattern
The pair narrowed the film’s focus to five cities: Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Montgomery, Alabama. Black residents in each city had unique experiences with expressway development, but all endured devastation.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans and Baltimore, residents in upscale, predominantly white neighborhoods successfully prevented freeway construction in their communities.
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“From what we discovered, the Interstate Highway System was a sort of payback for the Civil Rights Movement,” says Corral. “While these horrible laws — these Jim Crow laws — were being overturned across the country, the government was actually baking in segregation through physical barriers.”
The federal government was able to disrupt Black neighborhoods by claiming eminent domain — a law, rooted in the Fifth Amendment, that allows the government to seize private property for public use in exchange for “just” compensation. However, the law doesn’t specify what constitutes a “just” payment. When interstates were being constructed, many Black homeowners reportedly received checks well below the value of their homes.
The government has used eminent domain to justify the systematic dismantling of Black communities throughout history, including for the development of Central Park in New York and Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia.
In a more recent case, a Black family in Georgia continues to fight to keep their ancestral home from railroad developers hoping to expand onto their property.