A6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 , 2019
the south side for more than 25
years. The homeowners here say
they were the best houses that
families could get when banks
were cautious about lending toAfrican Americans. Neighbors
helped each other renovate their
kitchens and paint their front
porches.
On this side of the highway,used to exist before the highway.”
For Davis, reinvestment in his
neighborhood is more than a
dream; it is a form of reparation,
a way for the city to atone for the
damage the highway inflicted on
this community.
For decades, discussions about
reparations in this country have
revolved around the merits and
feasibility of handing checks to
descendants of enslaved Ameri-
cans. But there’s a growing inter-
est, from activists to presidential
candidates, to broaden the lens
to include disparities in the crim-
inal justice system, access to
education and even infrastruc-
ture.
The spine of America — its
railroads, runways and highways
— was often literally built on top
of black neighborhoods. Many of
those communities had been seg-
regated as a result of redlining
and blighted because of a lack of
credit. In the 1950s, they were
destroyed in the name of urban
renewal.
More than a half-century later,
some of those runways and high-
ways are crumbling beyond re-
pair. In Syracuse, residents are
trying to leverage officials’ desire
to do something about their old
road into an opportunity to re-
pair ills of the past.
“We’re saying that neighbor-
hood that you destroyed was in
fact the slums because you made
it that way,” said Lanessa Chap-
lin, a lawyer and organizer with
the American Civil Liberties
Union. “So now you have to fix it.”
If the reparations debate in
this country continues to move
beyond handing out checks, the
ensuing debate over I-81 presag-
es a bevy of challenges that await.
South side residents who sup-
port the decision to take down
the highway say simply removing
a slab of concrete wouldn’t be
enough to undo the damage.
In a community accustomed to
being on the losing end of the
government’s ambitions, resi-
dents fretted that the city’s plan
might leave them worse off.
“What going to happen to us?”
Bebe Baines, 62, asked her hus-
band, Lloyd, as they sat on their
front porch across the street from
the highway.
The Baines family has lived on
SYRACUSE FROM A
Residents try to connect road action with the repair of past ills
PHOTOS BY JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
ABOVE: Youngsters shoot hoops in July at Wilson Park, near the spot where Interstate 81 slices through the Pioneer Homes public
housing complex on the south side of Syracuse, N.Y. BELOW: Willa Hatcher wipes grime from the walls of her apartment near the
highway. Bebe Baines and her husband, Lloyd, right, sit on their front porch, also close to I-81, with neighbor David Abdul Sabur.teenagers play basketball steps
from I-81’s underbelly. Neighbors
complain drug dealers some-
times lurk in the shadows. There
are empty roads, some pharma-cies and fast-food restaurants,
and homes that bear the dust and
grime from highway exhaust.
The rate of asthma hospitaliza-
tions for children are alreadytwice as high in the city as they
are in the suburbs.
New York officials say they are
early in the process but have
vowed to address the concerns of
the south side. They say tearing
down the section of road that
divides the community will help
everyone in the city by removing
an unsightly barrier and reduc-
ing crashes.
Lloyd Baines, 65, was worried,
too. On the other side of the
highway, developers were build-
ing luxury houses for college
students and putting up glisten-
ing hospital buildings. He’s ner-
vous his neighborhood could be
the real estate market’s next
frontier if the barrier gets re-
moved.
“If this place gentrifies, those
developers are going to charge
whatever they want and raise all
my property taxes,” he said. “If
they cared about us, they would
freeze our taxes to keep things
fair.”
“Maybe they should just buy us
out,” said Bebe Baines, who has
chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease. “Compensate us for ev-
erything and then we don’t have
to breathe in this bad air any-
more. I don’t want to sound
grabby, but I just want to make
sure we are healthy.”
Behind her, cars zoomed. She
looked at her husband and asked:
“Have you ever noticed how cities
always have a south side?”Always a divide
If not a “south side,” then a
“west side” or a “neighborhood
across the tracks” — phrases that
are less about geography and
more of a euphemism for a
demographic divide.
The divide is particularly stark
in Syracuse, which has some of
the highest concentrations of
blacks and Hispanics living in
poverty in the country, according
to Sally Santangelo, executive
director of the nonprofit legal
group CNY Fair Housing.
“When I give presentations in
the suburbs, everyone is sur-
prised at the statistic,” Santange-
lo said. “When I give it in the
actual city, no one is surprised.”
One recent evening, Santange-
lo gave a presentation about the
south side’s history at a local
library. Before the highway, the
area was known as the 15th