Diane Rehm Show – Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx On The Legacy Of The U.S. Highway System

3:36 Rehm: Richard Rothstein, was there anything deliberate about the way these highways were constructed? And where?

Rothstein: Yes, there was. The highways were constructed in this way… The highways are constructed this way as part of an overall Federal program to segregate metropolitan areas. So, it was not only deliberate in the highways, but the highways have to be seen in the context of other Federal policies that were specifically designed to segregate metropolitan areas. 

For example, the federal housing administration – beginning in the New Deal and shortly after World War II – suburbanized the White population specifically. The federal housing Administration gave production loans to mass production builders of suburbs – to get the white population out of cities and into suburban areas. 

African-Americans were prohibited from moving into these areas. And so they became more and more overcrowded in urban areas, not having housing options outside the central city ghettos. 

Once they were overcrowded by these Federal policies, by the prohibition on their moving out into white communities, that then became the excuse for demolishing slums. 

So the slums were created by public policy. Then the housing program – the Bureau of Public Roads – built these highways to demolish, to clear the areas of slums. It was actually quite explicit. 

As you know, much of our legislation is designed by lobbyists and the chief lobbyists behind the Federal Highway Bill in 1956 that designed and created the Interstate Highway System was a fellow named Alfred Johnson, who was the executive director of the American Association of State Highway Officials. And he said later, in reflecting on how he had gotten the Interstate Highway System built, he said that city officials expressed the view in the mid-1950s – I'm recording now, I'm sorry I have to do this, but I'm quoting – he said city officials expressed the view in the mid-1950s that, “the urban interstates would give them a good opportunity to get rid of the local ‘n*ggertown.’”

Rehm: Ugh.

Rothstein: That was a design of the Federal Highway System. 

Rehm: Wow.

Rothstein: So this has to be considered in context of a whole series of federal policies to segregate metropolitan areas.

Diane Rehm Show – Mar 31, 2016 

PRRAC

Critical Race Theory, CRT

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