A Brief History of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways

Pink Houses by Mellencamp starts with eminent domain

Well there's a black man with a black cat
Livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks he's got it so good…

I think white people, especially farmers, suffered greater losses due to the Interstate Highway system.

OldWiseGuy said:

I think white people, especially farmers, suffered greater losses due to the Interstate Highway system.

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Based on what evidence?

GreekOrthodox said:

Based on what evidence?

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Based on millions of acres of farm land and other property taken through eminent domain and compensated for at the lowest market prices at the time. These lands if retained by their owners would represent considerable wealth today, wealth that is unrecoverable. Also to be considered is the additional operational costs to these landowners as a result of lands being either taken, divided, or rendered unprofitable or unusable by the intrusion of highways.

OldWiseGuy said:

Based on millions of acres of farm land and other property taken through eminent domain and compensated for at the lowest market prices at the time. These lands if retained by their owners would represent considerable wealth today, wealth that is unrecoverable. Also to be considered is the additional operational costs to these landowners as a result of lands being either taken, divided, or rendered unprofitable or unusable by the intrusion of highways.

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Most of the people on my dad's side of the family were farmers, ranchers, and otherwise working class.

He tells a story of one uncle who had his farm literally cut in half by a highway project, which also saw his farm house and one of his barns destroyed to make room for the road.

Not only did he have to build a new farmhouse and new barn, he also had to put up fencing on both sides of the highway to keep his animals in and away from the road.

...Fencing that the construction company responsible for building that length of road would constantly drive their vehicles over so that they could park on his farmland.

After weeks of lost crops due to damage (every time he'd try to plant something they'd run it back over) and other out-of-pocket expenses from having to try and replace the fence each time it was destroyed, he finally convinced a sheriff's deputy to come out and personally inspect the damage. Sure enough, several vehicles were parked on his property, with the fence knocked down again and a "private property" sign trampled under the treads of the vehicles.

The deputy ruled that as the vehicles were illegally parked on his property he had liberty to do with them as he pleased, so he covered them all in diesel, informed the construction company that he would be burning off his field, and that anything on that field at a designated time would be incinerated as well.

The head of the construction company responded by trying to physically intimidate said uncle into letting them have the vehicles back, and the person only backed off when he realized that uncle had a loaded shotgun and that the deputy had no qualms about allowing uncle to shoot the man for trespassing.

The construction company was forced to not only pay a very large sum of money to cover the damages but also modify the construction plan of the road so that uncle had a tunnel underneath that he could use to drive his vehicles and animals through between his sections of farmland.

Everyone involved, including uncle, was white.

So yeah, it wasn't always race so much as "These dumb idiots are too stupid to know what's being taken from them and too cowardly to do anything".

Where I grew up, we had a cross county highway that wiped out a number of lower class neighborhoods. However, when it came to the old white establishment, it ended. It is the 17th wealthiest zip code in the United States. So its not race, but cold hard cash.

SummerMadness said:

A Brief History of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways

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Take a look at US Highway 190 as it runs through my part of Central Texas.

The stretch of 190 that runs Lampasas -> Kempner -> Copperas Cove -> Fort Hood -> Killeen -> Harker Heights -> Nolanville -> Belton is the main through way for this area, merging into other roadways in Lampasas and Belton while still being considered separate from them (it's complicated).

When 190 was first run through Copperas Cove, it was just a two-lane highway. This allowed for a buffer zone between the road itself and the mix of businesses and homes that sprang up along it. As time went on, however, the road had to be widened to handle additional traffic. In the western half of town it's two lanes each way plus a center median, while in the eastern half it's three lanes each way plus a center median.

This meant that the highway was now abutting the actual boundaries of the businesses and properties, but with more traffic coming through town this was no longer enough. So, the decision was made to set up a northern bypass (which would run from the eastern edge of town to North Farm-To-Market Road 116, which connects Copperas Cove to Gatesville via Pidcoke) and a southern bypass (which would run around the entire southern part of town).

This southern bypass is... an absolute disaster. For starters, when it was discovered that the bypass would have to cross Farm-To-Market Road 2657 (which connects Cove to Burnett), the decision was made that instead of integrating the bypass into FM 2657, the entire intersection of 190 and 2657 would be altered instead. The original intersection had 2657 meeting 190 at a proper T intersection, with 190 continuing onward. Now, the bypass would be what fed into the part of 190 going westward, while the portion of 190 that ran through town would be fed into the top part of 2657.

As if that wasn't bad enough, putting the bypass through required the demolition of a church and a one-time industrial site, both of which were on South FM 116. Furthermore, even with the demolition of these two sites, the road would still have to cut through two hills and span a small gap over a small valley owned by a local farmer.

Oh, and the bypass... is only a single lane of traffic each way, with no median. So heavy trucks that have oversized loads must still go directly through the middle of town and navigate the messed-up intersection where 190 and everything else connects on the western side of town.

When the US government decided to do the "Forts to Ports" system to make it easier for military bases to get their people and equipment to harbors, the plan was for the length of 190 from Lampasas to Belton to be re-designated as Interstate 14 while also retaining the old US 190 moniker.

...Except the plan for I-14 has the bypass as part of the route, which is a major no-no as the bypass doesn't meet the minimum standards to be rated as an interstate while the portion that runs through down does. So I-14 doesn't actually run through Cove, Kempner, or Lampasas, and cannot until such time as the bypass is widened... which will involve cutting even more out of the hills (including the decorative retaining walls) and tearing the bridge down because its design is such it can't be widened.

It's a disaster of epic proportions, and our taxpayer dollars are being spent to fix it.

Oh, and it gets even worse yet.

Because the portion of 190 through Copperas Cove is no longer designated as a main highway but rather a "business" highway, the city council convinced the state to grant them the money to tear up the median on the eastern half of town and replace it with planters.

The openings they propose for traffic to filter through are so narrow that you won't even be able to get a fire engine or semi truck through them, and by forcing all traffic in the city to use these narrow openings they've almost guaranteed that the number of head-on collisions is going to skyrocket. But even when certified heavy vehicle operators warned them of this, they refused to listen.

So yeah... this community is about to get torn apart - and people likely killed - because of modern-day urban planners who don't know what they're doing and won't listen to the public.

Never underestimate the part played by human stupidity in all of this.

Ironhold said:

Take a look at US Highway 190 as it runs through my part of Central Texas.

The stretch of 190 that runs Lampasas -> Kempner -> Copperas Cove -> Fort Hood -> Killeen -> Harker Heights -> Nolanville -> Belton is the main through way for this area, merging into other roadways in Lampasas and Belton while still being considered separate from them (it's complicated).

When 190 was first run through Copperas Cove, it was just a two-lane highway. This allowed for a buffer zone between the road itself and the mix of businesses and homes that sprang up along it. As time went on, however, the road had to be widened to handle additional traffic. In the western half of town it's two lanes each way plus a center median, while in the eastern half it's three lanes each way plus a center median.

This meant that the highway was now abutting the actual boundaries of the businesses and properties, but with more traffic coming through town this was no longer enough. So, the decision was made to set up a northern bypass (which would run from the eastern edge of town to North Farm-To-Market Road 116, which connects Copperas Cove to Gatesville via Pidcoke) and a southern bypass (which would run around the entire southern part of town).

This southern bypass is... an absolute disaster. For starters, when it was discovered that the bypass would have to cross Farm-To-Market Road 2657 (which connects Cove to Burnett), the decision was made that instead of integrating the bypass into FM 2657, the entire intersection of 190 and 2657 would be altered instead. The original intersection had 2657 meeting 190 at a proper T intersection, with 190 continuing onward. Now, the bypass would be what fed into the part of 190 going westward, while the portion of 190 that ran through town would be fed into the top part of 2657.

As if that wasn't bad enough, putting the bypass through required the demolition of a church and a one-time industrial site, both of which were on South FM 116. Furthermore, even with the demolition of these two sites, the road would still have to cut through two hills and span a small gap over a small valley owned by a local farmer.

Oh, and the bypass... is only a single lane of traffic each way, with no median. So heavy trucks that have oversized loads must still go directly through the middle of town and navigate the messed-up intersection where 190 and everything else connects on the western side of town.

When the US government decided to do the "Forts to Ports" system to make it easier for military bases to get their people and equipment to harbors, the plan was for the length of 190 from Lampasas to Belton to be re-designated as Interstate 14 while also retaining the old US 190 moniker.

...Except the plan for I-14 has the bypass as part of the route, which is a major no-no as the bypass doesn't meet the minimum standards to be rated as an interstate while the portion that runs through down does. So I-14 doesn't actually run through Cove, Kempner, or Lampasas, and cannot until such time as the bypass is widened... which will involve cutting even more out of the hills (including the decorative retaining walls) and tearing the bridge down because its design is such it can't be widened.

It's a disaster of epic proportions, and our taxpayer dollars are being spent to fix it.

Oh, and it gets even worse yet.

Because the portion of 190 through Copperas Cove is no longer designated as a main highway but rather a "business" highway, the city council convinced the state to grant them the money to tear up the median on the eastern half of town and replace it with planters.

The openings they propose for traffic to filter through are so narrow that you won't even be able to get a fire engine or semi truck through them, and by forcing all traffic in the city to use these narrow openings they've almost guaranteed that the number of head-on collisions is going to skyrocket. But even when certified heavy vehicle operators warned them of this, they refused to listen.

So yeah... this community is about to get torn apart - and people likely killed - because of modern-day urban planners who don't know what they're doing and won't listen to the public.

Never underestimate the part played by human stupidity in all of this.

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Thanks for this story. Are you able to detect any racism in this debacle?

OldWiseGuy said:

Thanks for this story. Are you able to detect any racism in this debacle?

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Racism? No.

Absolute foolishness? All over the place.

Hence the old saying of "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

OldWiseGuy said:

I think white people, especially farmers, suffered greater losses due to the Interstate Highway system.

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I didn’t know it was a competition.

SummerMadness said:

A Brief History of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways

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Which part is the racism?

SummerMadness said:

The popular refrain when discussing American racism is to now claim that white people suffered too, thus it can't be racism. It doesn't matter if the predominant target were black and brown communities, find or create an anecdote, which will erase all the evidence. The other option is to find a lone black voice that says otherwise and say you only believe them because the masses are probably lying.

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Not at all. I was directing my comments at the losses incurred, not racism. If blacks are to receive reparation or compensation for damages or loss so should everyone else.

SummerMadness said:

The other option is to find a lone black voice that says otherwise and say you only believe them because the masses are probably lying.

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I see....

Which black person gets to speak for all the others? Why would we ignore what a black person says simply because they're disagreeing with another black person?

Wouldn't this all be easier (and far more truthful) if we just had everyone speak for themselves and not assume things about them based upon race?

SummerMadness said:

A Brief History of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways

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Okay, highways are racist. What is the solution? Tear them all down?

Pommer said:

I didn’t know it was a competition.

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The Oppression Olympics, the games where everyone comes out a loser.