Interstate delves deep into the social history of the United States Interstate highway system's development, and its purposeful, detrimental effects on African American communities across the country. Exploring case studies in Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Baltimore, Montgomery, and New Orleans, the film tells the story of the interstate highway's complex legacy and the ways that the enduring wounds it inflicted have yet to heal.
A decade after World War II ended, President Eisenhower embarked on the most ambitious public works project in the history of humanity by building the Interstate highway system, which would profoundly transform the American economy, creating the conditions for it to become the new global leader. To many people, this 41,000-mile, $51 billion project translated into an ethos of freedom and possibility with tens of thousands of new highways waiting to transport everyday people to the America of their dreams. But to many people in minority communities, the construction of interstate highways meant personal displacement, generational destitution, and communal destruction.
In many cities with established black neighborhoods, regional planners routed the highways directly through them, as residents lacked the established political power of their white counterparts. Thriving black neighborhoods saw a wave of predatory eminent domain followed by bulldozers and concrete trucks ripping apart and permanently dividing their communities. In the Miami neighborhood of Overtown, the area was cut into quarters by the construction of two interstates, leading to a population collapse of 40,000 black residents to about 10,000 in a decade. In the Saint Paul neighborhood of Rondo, a black community that fled the Jim Crow South decades before found themselves displaced from their family homes and businesses. Highway planners cut through the heart of Treme in New Orleans, America's oldest black neighborhood while in Baltimore, the Highway to Nowhere cut a 6-lane scar through the heart of West Baltimore, where Redlining was first codified into law. And in Montgomery, the cradle of the American Civil Rights movement, vengeful highway planners re-routed a benign highway path to cut directly into the homes and businesses of Civil Rights leaders like Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, as well as the churches where organizing efforts were centralized. To this day, the myriad impacts of these infrastructure design decisions continue to reverberate, as the residents who remained saw real estate values plummet, while instances of respiratory illness due to air pollution skyrocketed.
Combining personal narratives, historical insights, and expert commentary, the film sheds light on the stories of resilience amidst displacement. It also explores economics, alternative paths not taken, language used to justify destructive routes, social histories, and ways of building equity through a new generation of civic leadership. A comprehensive analysis of the racial factors and implications of the US highway system, Interstate encourages a deeper understanding of how public infrastructure and design is central to the health and well being of citizens everywhere.
FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "This documentary evolved out of a short film that we produced about the effects of the construction of I95 on Overtown, Miami's historic African American community. While making that short film, our research led us to the realization that this did not just happen in one or two cities, it happened all across the United States. In cities across the country, the construction of the Interstate highway system from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s meant the destruction of black life, culture and wealth.
Countless African Americans were displaced from their homes at a time when segregation and redlining made it almost impossible for them to move to other desirable locations within city limits, forcing them to move to remote locations in the suburbs that were poorly serviced by any sort of public transportation, marooning them in places with few jobs and economic prospects. The highways devoured African American communities from Miami to Minneapolis and Baltimore to Los Angeles.
This story has never been told in such depth in books or films. We hope to shed light on this era of double-edged innovation, where advanced American engineering that led to economic progress for many resulted in economic destruction for others. While affected communities across the nation figure out how to move forward, those affected still wrestle with the fallout."
— Oscar Corral and Haleem Muhsin
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