![]() 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 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. For racial justice advocates, these looming infrastructure projects are a crucial opportunity to redress the historical discrimination built into them. Now many of these highways are crumbling, and cities are weighing how to repair, revamp, or remove them. 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.” 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. As the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, the highway system became a way to enforce segregation through other, quite literal, means. More than 40,000 miles of highway were planned and built steadily through the ’60s and ’70s as a driver of economic progress. 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. The viaduct still physically separates the poorest and wealthiest communities, and the city’s Black population has been harmed for generations. “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. “I’ve lived in this community all my 64 years,” says Rufus, who’s lost several family members to respiratory illness. 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. 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. 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. David Rufus was just a toddler when the bulldozers rolled into the streets of his Syracuse, New York, neighborhood in 1960. ![]()
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