MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
buildings, none of them historic,
would have to be knocked down,
according to an early state proj-
ect report. The state would offer
families hotel rooms for days
when they are at risk of breathing
bad air. And meetings are being
held throughout the area to in-
corporate community feedback
so the Transportation Depart-
ment can assure residents that
this infrastructure project won’t
be like the last.
One recent afternoon, Bebe
and Lloyd Baines drove to attend
a meeting about I-81 at the city
convention center. A small band
of protesters with “Save I-81!”
signs stood outside.
Most of the protesters were
from the suburbs, worried that
the removal of the highway
would tie them up in traffic and
harm their commutes.
“I find that complaint offen-
sive,” Lloyd Baines said. “Our
community is the one that has
been suffering.”
Inside, there were more than
1,000 people, walking around
large poster boards of traffic
grids. The charts they saw fo-
cused on estimated changes to
commute times from the sub-
urbs. The Baineses didn’t see any
poster boards on the noise, the
environmental hazards, the tax-
es, the trauma. For them, it felt
like other communities’ needs
were again being placed ahead of
their own.
They looked around at the
staff members circling the floor
and surmised why.
“Most of them don’t look like
us,” Lloyd Baines said to his wife.
“Not to say it makes a difference,
but I just would feel that they
would know what we are going
through if they had more of us.”
Mark Frechette, who is over-
seeing the I-81 project, took the
stage. He described the plan to
reroute traffic to a business loop
on the outskirts of the city.
He spoke for about five min-
utes. This meeting, Frechette told
the audience, was just the begin-
ning of a years-long community
process to reimagine the city.
After he spoke, official after offi-
cial reiterated the same message
to the crowd: “This is a once-in-a-
generation opportunity.”
Lloyd Baines looked at Bebe.
Soon, they were on their way
back home and back to their
rocking chairs on the front porch,
with the same question they had
when they left: An opportunity
for whom?
[email protected]families drove the highway out of
town and built up the suburbs. In
the city, homes sank into blight,
roads worsened and a resent-
ment festered among black resi-
dents.
“They destroyed the strength
and power we had,” Pierce-El
said. “They took it all away.”
Toward the end of the Obama
administration, Transportation
Secretary Anthony Foxx initiated
a “design challenge” for commu-
nities to help mitigate the impact
of infrastructure projects on low-
income communities. The pro-
gram was not revived during the
Trump administration, which
has preferred to attempt to boost
investment in low-income neigh-
borhoods through tax breaks in
economically distressed areas it
has labeled “Opportunity Zones.”
As Democratic presidential
candidates respond to the ques-
tions about their thoughts on
reparations, many home in on
segregated communities like the
south side.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete
Buttigieg has called for increas-
ing access to credit in black
communities and increasing
training for black entrepreneurs.
Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and
Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) want to
offer tax credits for low- and
middle-income families that they
say would decrease the racial
wealth gap.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren
(Mass.) and Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) have addressed the impact
of redlining. Former vice presi-
dent Joe Biden has said he is
interested in studying the issue
of giving checks to descendants
of slaves, but supports “tak[ing]
action to deal with the systemic
things that still exist in housing
and insurance and a whole range
of things that make it harder for
African Americans.”
One of those things is the
highway.Effects and influence
The Davis family lost its res-
taurant, but the love of cooking
never left. Davis and his mother
sold dinners from their home
and held barbecues for the chil-
dren around the neighborhood
who had grown used to playing
in the shadows of the highway.
“I used to think it was just
normal living by a highway,” said
Davis, who grew up with asthma.
“But now I think about all its
effects and how it influenced my
family. It needs to come down.”
If the plans proceed, fourin Miami and Wilmington, in
Nashville, Detroit, Buffalo, New
Orleans.
There were protests in these
communities, but the residents
had little political power to stop
the plans. In a segregated world,
it was extraordinarily rare to
have black members on the city
council or the state transporta-
tion boards. And civil rights or-
ganizations were consumed by
the fight for voting rights.
Pierce-El watched the places
he loved start to disappear. Soon,
there wasn’t a Davis’s restaurant,
or Dr. Washington’s office, or Mr.
Betsy’s grocer.
The people he loved started to
leave, too. Many houses had been
replaced with cinder blocks, nuts
and bolts to hoist up the highway.
With fewer housing options,
many found jobs in other red-
lined towns.
Homes and wealth were lost.
Ninety percent of the structures
in the 15th Ward were torn down,
according to documents for the
county’s historic society. Between
400 and 500 businesses were
gone. About 1,200 families were
displaced.
When housing discrimination
became illegal, wealthier whiteinitiative to build the national
highway system, the state
knocked down those houses.
Similar events happened near
Lambert International Airport in
St. Louis, along the Cypress Free-
way in Oakland, along interstatesPierce-El remembered the stories
of people who came home to
notice government officials had
drawn X’s on their houses, mean-
ing they would have to move to
another place. When President
Dwight D. Eisenhower started anWard. It was a predominantly
Jewish neighborhood until
blacks from the South migrated
in the 1900s to seek manufactur-
ing jobs.
Eventually, the neighborhood
changed. Santangelo pulled up a
slide that illustrated why. It
showed a copy of a residential
covenant prohibiting blacks
from moving into a particular
neighborhood, then a common
practice in Syracuse. Similar re-
strictions were placed in deeds
and in guidelines for real estate
agents.
Because there were few op-
tions for African Americans seek-
ing to move out of the 15th Ward,
the neighborhood became over-
whelmingly black as Jewish fami-
lies moved away.
Santangelo pulled up another
slide. This one showed a color-
coded map from 1937 by the
federal Home Owners’ Loan
Corp. The banks put a green dot
on areas considered low risk —
which signaled an easy process to
obtain a loan — and a red dot on
high-risk investments, making it
nearly impossible to gain one. A
large red band ran through the
15th Ward.
Unable to use banks for equity,
families in the 15th Ward saw
their housing stock fall into
blight and disrepair.
When the federal government
started distributing millions for
urban renewal projects, the city
declared the redlined areas
“slums” and began to clear them
out.
“The same neighborhoods
they declared blighted?” one per-
son asked.
“Yes,” Santangelo said.
She looked back at the map.
“Does anyone notice anything
about those redlines?” Santange-
lo asked.
“It looks like the highway,”
someone in the audience said.
“That’s right,” Santangelo re-
plied. “That’s where the high-
ways are.”
As Santangelo ran through the
slides, a 73-year-old neighbor-
hood activist, Charlie Pierce-El,
ran through his childhood. His
was one of those migratory fami-
lies — his parents came from
Georgia. He remembers other
black families planting vegeta-
bles in their gardens and setting
up businesses. They bought gro-
ceries at Mr. Betsy’s and saw Dr.
Washington when they weren’t
feeling well, or ate at Davis’s
restaurant.
In the late 1950s, life got bleak.
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
Looking north toward downtown, Interstate 81 cuts through a predominantly African American
community on the south side of Syracuse, N.Y. Talk of removing the barrier has caused tension.1 MILE1 MIL1MMMMMMIL81690481SyracuseNew YorkNEW YORK690818DowntownSyracuse
Univ.South sideEast sideOnondagaOnondaga
LakeLakeWest sideSyracuse
Percent blackSource: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013-
American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates0% 20% 40% 60% 80%+Section of
Interstate 81
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