How Highways Disrupted A Civil Rights Incubator
A few years after the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March in 1965, the Montgomery neighborhoods in which the march (and earlier bus boycott) had been planned and organized were destroyed by construction of I-65 and I-85. With federal funding, the Alabama Highway Department displaced over 1,700 families to build these roads, roughly 75% of which were Black (1). Daniel Neil, former director of the Rosa Parks Museum, says that the Department “essentially weaponized a public infrastructure project with the intention of destroying a civil rights incubator” (2)(3).
Earlier this year, Montgomery received a $36 million federal grant as part of the Biden/Harris Administration’s Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Initiative (RCN), which is the first federal program to recognize the racism at the core of much of the country’s highway building and “urban renewal” programs (4), and seeks to heal communities divided by past infrastructure choices. The grant will go towards improving pedestrian connectivity, to and within the primarily-Black western neighborhoods which I-65 divides from the urban core. The funds will also be used for pedestrian safety improvements along the length of the Selma-to-Montgomery Trail (which was designated a National Historic Trail in 1996, but consists mostly of highways, making actually walking it nearly impossible [5]).
While the grant is certainly not in any way sufficient to overcome the legacy of racist infrastructure planning in Montgomery, it is nonetheless a small step in the right direction. The improvements that the grant funds will bring concrete benefit to communities that have for decades been underinvested in and overlooked. Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed writes, “It’s the largest competitive grant Montgomery has ever received. It’s hard to overstate the impact of an award this size. The psychological boost nearly matches the financial lift. For too long, Montgomery residents have been promised real progress only to see their community used as a photo-op... The grant will enable Montgomery to make significant strides in rectifying past wrongs.”
[ENDNOTES]
1. Binkovitz, Leah. “How a Montgomery Highway Sought to Disrupt the Heart of the Civil Rights Movement.” Urban Edge, Rice University, 2019. https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/how... (accessed 10/9/2024).
2. Yawn, Andrew. “Cleaved by Concrete: The Legacy of Montgomery’s Interstates and the Neighborhoods They Destroyed.” Montgomery Advertiser, 2018. https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/... (accessed 10/9/2024). (@mgmadvertiser).
3. Retzlaff, Rebecca. “Interstate Highways and the Civil Rights Movement: The Case of I-85 and the Oak Park Neighborhood in Montgomery, Alabama.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/1... (accessed 10/9/2024).
4, Susaneck, Adam. “Segregation by Design.” 2021. https://www.instagram.com/p/CKj_il1sq...
5. Haile, Rahawa. “I Walked from Selma to Montgomery.” Buzzfeed News, 2018. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/... (accessed 10/9/2024). (@rahawahaile).
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