Hey, what's up? It's Gustavo Ariano. In celebration of Juneteenth, this week, we're running some of our favorite episodes about the Black experience. Today, we've got one from this past January, which I think will especially resonate while you're stuck in those summer traffic jams. I'm joined by my colleague, Housing and Affordability Reporter Liam Dillon, while he dives into the historical and continuing impact of the 10 freeway on black communities and Santa Monica.

Enjoy.

Highways and freeways connect us and get us to where we need to go, traffic notwithstanding, of course.

But all that concrete came at a heavy human cost.

Entire communities were separated and displaced. most of them, black and brown.

That's what happened in Santa Monica, California during the 1950s.

City officials evicted families to build the end of the 10 freeway.

But now, in an act of civic penance, city officials are trying to bring some of those families back.

I'm Gustavariano. You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times. It's Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022.

Today, we'll talk about Santa Monica's attempt to redress a historical wrong.

It comes at a time where municipalities across the United States are reckoning with the racist actions from the past.

And we'll also talk to a woman whose family was one of many black households that Santa Monica wants to make right by now.

L.A. Times reporter Liam Dillon covers housing affordability and neighborhood change across

California.

Liam, welcome to the Times.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I know highway construction was long hailed as this important achievement to open up the

United States to all Americans, but you get a project that explored how all these interstates and tollways and freeways and highways and byways involved a lot of destructions

of communities, especially communities of color. Yeah, that's right. I mean, when you put the

interstate highway system in and it's now 45,000 miles of roadway, they had to go somewhere. And

oftentimes when planners put them through cities,

they put them through particularly black neighborhoods across the country. Just some kind of key stats here.

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