Who Tore Up the Tracks? · Episode 18 of 24 · 21 min
Four Hundred Seventy-Five Thousand Doors: What a Family Was Owed
Everyone quotes 475,000 households displaced by highways, a figure from one undocumented graphic in a 2017 federal report. The episode uses harder figures the government published at the time, then asks what a family was owed when the road came: for six years nothing, for twelve no home. Nashville and St. Paul are the worked cases.
Who's who
- George HerroldSt. Paul planning engineer who proposed routing freeways beside the railroad tracks
- Floyd MasseyLeader of the Rondo-St. Anthony Improvement Association
- Timothy HowardLeader of the Rondo-St. Anthony Improvement Association
- Avon N. Williams Jr.Attorney for North Nashville plaintiffs against the I-40 route
- Jack Greenberg+1 more episodeNAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer in the Nashville case
- Potter Stewart+1 more episodeJustice who stayed construction in December 1967
- Harold LoveNashville councilman who testified about the 1957 hearing
Where it happens
- Rondo, St. Paul, Minnesota+1 more episodeNeighborhood cut by the freeway; leaders learned of it in 1953
- North Nashville, TennesseeRoute of I-40 through a Black community
Timeline
- 1947St. Paul City Council approves the route through Rondo
- June 1955Nashville route through North Nashville substituted in under three weeks
- June 1956Federal-Aid Highway Act signed with no relocation provision
- October 1962First federal highway relocation provision, with payments optional for states
- 1968First federal rehousing assurance; Nashville litigation fails
- January 1971Uniform Relocation Act signed; binding on all states from July 1972
Still debated
The 475,000 figure counts all federal-aid highways, not interstates only, and the Department of Transportation published no methodology. Whether Black Nashvillians attended the 1957 hearing is disputed, and St. Paul's loss figures range from 433 to 650 homes.
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