[ The I-81 project, completed in 1968—and Syracuse remains one
of the most segregated cities in the country, with the highest
concentration of poverty among communities of color, and the highest
rates of lead poisoning in children. This was by design.]
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RACISM BY DESIGN: THE BUILDING OF INTERSTATE 81  
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Jay A. Fernandez
August 10, 2023
ACLU Magazine
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_ The I-81 project, completed in 1968—and Syracuse remains one of
the most segregated cities in the country, with the highest
concentration of poverty among communities of color, and the highest
rates of lead poisoning in children. This was by design. _

Harrison Street was a vibrant commercial district in Syracuse's 15th
Ward., (Photograph by Sheldon Sable Studio/Courtesy of the Onondaga
Historical Association // ACLU Magazine)

 

David Rufus was just a toddler when the bulldozers rolled into the
streets of his Syracuse, New York, neighborhood in 1960. As part of
the country’s interstate highways surge, city officials wanted to
extend I-81 with an elevated viaduct that would cut right through the
15th Ward, where nearly 90 percent of Syracuse’s Black population
lived. Protesting locals were ignored, and the razing of homes,
churches, and businesses resulted in the displacement of more than
1,300 families, including Rufus’s. Over the next 50 years, the 15th
Ward community suffered in every way possible—jobs, housing,
schools, and public health plunged while crime, pollution, and poverty
spiked.

“I’ve lived in this community all my 64 years,” says Rufus,
who’s lost several family members to respiratory illness. “I’ve
seen the move from a very vibrant and interactive community of people
of color to a community that has been shunned and overlooked and
broken down.” The I-81 project was completed in 1968—and Syracuse
remains one of the most segregated cities in the country, with the
highest concentration of poverty among communities of color and one of
the highest rates of lead poisoning in children. The viaduct still
physically separates the poorest and wealthiest communities, and the
city’s Black population has been harmed for generations.

This was by design.

After the mid-century extension of I-81 in Syracuse, more than 1,300
families in the 15th Ward were displaced, and a vibrant Black
community was destroyed.  (ACLU Magazine)
The interstate highway system birthed by the Federal-Aid Highway Act
of 1956 was the largest public works program the country had ever
embarked upon. More than 40,000 miles of highway were planned and
built steadily through the ’60s and ’70s as a driver of economic
progress. As the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, the
highway system became a way to enforce segregation through other,
quite literal, means. So-called slum clearance destroyed
under-resourced but thriving working-class Black neighborhoods while
enhancing the flow of white commutes and tax dollars to the suburbs.
Communities of color were cut off from developing downtown centers,
and not just freeways but also refineries, landfills, and power plants
were dumped in non-white areas labeled “sacrifice communities.”

Now many of these highways are crumbling, and cities are weighing how
to repair, revamp, or remove them. For racial justice advocates, these
looming infrastructure projects are a crucial opportunity to redress
the historical discrimination built into them. The I-81 in Syracuse,
which is failing, has become the highest-profile example of the
potential to undo this damage and create a new model for reconnecting
shattered communities with equitable resources. The ACLU’s New York
affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), has been
advocating for a decade to ensure that this time the community has a
voice in what happens. The NYCLU’s 2020 report, “Building a Better
Future: The Structural Racism Built into I-81, and How to Tear It Down
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been instrumental in pushing the city’s plans in a more just
direction that takes a reparative approach.

A lot is riding on the effort, as wrongheaded plans would simply
reinforce the historical damage or encourage gentrification that
displaces the neighborhood’s residents yet again. No one understands
the stakes better than Rufus, now the NYCLU’s dedicated I-81
community organizer. “If I-81 is a successful project, and it
provides the kind of rebuilding of wealth and community that is so
necessary, it could become a blueprint for the state and for the
country,” he says. “Justice elements like the ACLU and NYCLU have
to make sure that the tools the federal government gives [us] aren’t
used as assault weapons against the neighborhood.”

When most of us think of racial injustice, interstate highway design
isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It is, in fact, a perfect
example of structural racism in action: intentional government policy,
enacted in almost every city in the country, that damaged every aspect
of Black lives—cultural, economic, environmental, educational—for
generations.

“The Monster.” That’s what some residents of Tremé and the 7th
Ward of New Orleans call the Claiborne Expressway, the I-10 overpass
that demolished the neighborhood in 1968. West Baltimore residents
named theirs—State Route 40—the “Road to Nowhere.”
Interstate-20 in Atlanta. I-579 in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. I-94
that bisected the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. I-375
that crushed Black Bottom and Paradise Valley in Detroit. I-95 that
wrecked Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, known then as the “Harlem
of the South.” I-65 and I-85 in Montgomery, Alabama, rerouted
through Centennial Hill, Bel Air, and the Bottoms as retaliation for
civil rights activity (Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph
Abernathy lived there). The examples are endless.

The ripple effects of these highway projects were immediate and
far-reaching, the cumulative devastation staggering. No aspect of
neighborhood life and culture went untouched. Healthy food became
scarce. Businesses failed. Job opportunities diminished. The housing
market cratered. Pollution—noise and environmental—spread: rates
of illness, particularly asthma, rose dramatically in those
neighborhoods crammed against (and sometimes under) the freeways and
overpasses.

Articles from the time abound with efforts to stop the projects. But
it was the same story every time: The community was not asked for
input and held no political power. This was adding insult to injury
since many of these majority-Black neighborhoods had sprung up in the
first place because of redlining and Jim Crow segregation. While they
often became vibrant, self-contained enclaves, the fact that they were
under-invested and overcrowded was subsequently used as rationale for
destroying them. One of the most devastating effects has been how
these inequities have reinforced the racial wealth gap.

“These big concrete barriers further concentrated race and poverty,
coupled with redlining, where folks were unfairly denied mortgages or
more affordable lines of credit to invest in their communities,”
says Carlos Moreno, a senior campaign strategist who leads the
ACLU’s Systemic Equality agenda to address America’s legacy of
racism through advocacy and litigation. “The first avenue for wealth
is buying a first home and having it appreciate. Homes in redlined
communities typically do not appreciate, and they are subject to
nefarious slumlords and all sorts of ugly things.”

And it’s still happening. Charleston County, South Carolina, is
considering a $3 billion proposal to expand a West I-526 interchange
that would demolish or move close to 100 mostly Black- and Brown-owned
businesses and homes in neighborhoods of North Charleston. Pressure
from local groups, including the ACLU of South Carolina, forced the
county to revise a separate plan to widen Highway 41 so that it will
do a better job of minimizing the impact on Mount Pleasant’s
historic Phillips Community, one of the last remaining Black
settlement communities in the region.

“These types of projects upset the ecosystem,” says Helen Mrema,
community organizing advocate at the ACLU of South Carolina, one of 12
ACLU affiliates that make up the Southern Collective, an initiative to
increase Black political power and representation in the South.
“They force residents to move and figure out how to tap back into
resources that are now even more difficult to access. It creates a
targeted community that is essentially set up to fail.”

The Central New York chapter of the NYCLU was born in the spring of
1963 as a direct result of the police harassment and arrest of 15th
Ward residents protesting the destruction of their neighborhood for
the I-81 viaduct. And now the community has another chance to
influence the highway’s reconstruction and reimagining.

“What we do is try to empower and reactivate the community,” says
Lanessa Owens-Chaplin, director of the NYCLU’s Racial Justice
Center. “Because they lost that fight. So how can we convince them
that maybe we can win this one? In the ’50s and ’60s, we didn’t
have many protections. Now it’s a different fight.”

In recent years, more people and high-level institutions have
acknowledged the structural racism built into the country’s highway
system. ACLU National Board President Deborah Archer is one of the
leading national scholars on the issue. Her seminal _Vanderbilt Law
Review_ piece, “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes:
Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction,” established
transportation policy as a civil rights issue, and her work has laid
the constitutional and policy framework for remedying these
injustices. Archer has advised Transportation Secretary Pete
Buttigieg, who in April 2021, acknowledged publicly that the “racism
physically built into some of our highways” was a “conscious
choice.” And while grassroots organizers and environmental justice
groups have long been calling attention to the devastating damage
highway planning inflicted on communities of color, the Biden
administration’s inclusion of the issue in the $1.2 trillion
infrastructure plan signed in November has opened the door for more
organizations to take on this type of work. Calling out I-81 and the
Claiborne Expressway in particular, the plan earmarks $1 billion for a
new program called Reconnecting Communities that “will reconnect
neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects
increase opportunity [and] advance racial equity and environmental
justice.”

“The infrastructure plan gives it more bite,” says Owens-Chaplin.
“State governments are not only being held accountable by their
community, now we have the administration calling for this kind of
restorative justice. New York state can be a great example if we can
get them to think outside the scope of just laying slabs of concrete
down and really start thinking about restoring the community.”

The NYCLU, which had dedicated additional resources and staff to the
I-81 project in 2018, incorporated voluminous feedback from the
community to outline a vision for the revitalization project that this
time honors the people’s needs. It urged the New York State
Department of Transportation to transfer any developable land to a
community land trust controlled by the residents, maintain meaningful
economic and environmental safeguards for those living along the
viaduct during and after construction, and take a reparative approach
that works to close the wealth gap and reconnect fragmented parts of
the community.

Additionally, along with coalition partners CNY Solidarity Coalition
and Urban Jobs Task Force, the NYCLU has pressured NYSDOT and local
trade unions to commit to racial equity in hiring so that local
community workers benefit from the thousands of construction jobs
created by the I-81 project. Meanwhile, Rufus helps residents
understand their rights and contribute their voices to the process,
liaising with the DOT, the Board of Education, the mayor’s office,
and the Syracuse Common Council. “Three years ago,” says
Owens-Chaplin, “DOT wasn’t talking about equity or restorative
justice or how can we repair the community. Today, they are talking
about it. So there is progress.”

The draft environmental impact statement NYSDOT released in July
included key changes to the preferred community-grid version of the
I-81 revamp. Air-quality monitoring systems will now be placed around
houses nearest the construction. And, of key importance, a land use
working group will be created so that local leaders and residents have
a prominent voice in making sure the 10 to12 acres freed up by the
viaduct’s removal are used in a way that benefits the existing
community, whether through local business development, affordable
housing, or usable green spaces.
Last September, a group largely composed of white suburban residents
known as “Renew 81 For All” filed a legal challenge against
NYSDOT, attempting to halt the development of this preferred
community-grid option and advocating for a larger highway instead.
NYCLU filed an amicus brief against the group’s challenge, and the
case is currently up for appeal in the state’s 4th department.
“The biggest point of the effort is holding the government
accountable,” says Owens-Chaplin. “That’s what the big fight is
here in Syracuse. It’s easy for them now, 60 years later, to
recognize the damage they’ve done, but they’re still not doing
what they need to do to restore the community.”

The generational setbacks of these highway decisions still resonate
today, compounding over time to exacerbate the racial wealth gap and
withhold the American dream from too many communities of color.
Closing this gap is a major goal of the ACLU’s Systemic Equality
campaign, since comprehensive reparations are the only way to repair
the historic inequality driven by racist policies, a lack of job
opportunities, and depressed home ownership.

“Redressing harm could take the form of providing proper housing,
investing in communities through grants for businesses, or passing
baby bonds legislation to give folks assets,” says Moreno.
“Because when we’re talking about closing the racial wealth gap,
we’re not necessarily talking about income. What we’re really
talking about is wealth. The main focus with systemic equality is to
find an innovative set of tools or programs that provide immediate
material relief for Black communities living in poverty.”

The potential for transformation is national in scope: Right now,
nearly 30 cities have plans in the works to repair crumbling urban
highways. They could prioritize reparative justice by taking cues from
the NYCLU’s I-81 proposal: protect future land use so that residents
of the affected community have preference in any development; create a
community restoration fund to eliminate environmental hazards and
compensate those whose health and wealth have been negatively
impacted; devote revenue generated from community development to
increase school funding in an equitable manner that redresses
long-standing underfunding; and provide hotel vouchers, market-rate
buyouts, rent subsidies, and/or temporary relocation assistance to
those households most likely to be impacted by construction, along
with automatic right of return when the construction ends.

The NYCLU’s campaign on the I-81 viaduct is crucial to establishing
a template for how these projects can actively address systemic
injustice and knit these communities back together. The bottom line is
for careful planning to ensure that “people who have lived their
lives in the neighborhood are able to stay, engage equitably in the
rejuvenation of the community, and begin to build wealth.”

“It’s important for the ACLU to be taking on these issues because
it really is an issue of civil rights and racial justice,” says
Owens-Chaplin. “We need to make sure that everyone has power over
government decision-making and make sure everyone’s rights are
preserved and protected.”

“This is an opportunity for the country to get it right this
time,” says Rufus. “When they designed I-81, they just drew it
with a black pen. They didn’t stop to take the time to see if that
black line ran over a person’s house or a person’s head—or a
person’s heart.”

_[JAY A. FERNANDEZ is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in
The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Lithub, Los
Angeles, Time Out New York, Life, ELLE, and The Hollywood Reporter.]_

_This article originally appeared in the ACLU magazine
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issue. The article has been updated to include litigation developments
that occurred following its publication in the magazine._

* Racism
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* Structural Racism
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* African Americans
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* urban cities
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* Black Americans
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* poverty
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* communities of color
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* lead poisoning
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* children
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* Syracuse
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* crime
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* environmental racism
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* urban renewal
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* Highways
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