Can a Highway Be Racist?
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2021
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Houston residents and elected officials are trying to stop the largest urban highway project of their lifetimes -- one that would clear out more than 1,000 homes in primarily Black and Latin neighborhoods and, they say, introduce additional flooding and health risks. Now, residents have a powerful new ally in Washington: the Biden administration. The fate of I-45 may tell us something about what 21st-century infrastructure will look like.
Guests: Tomaro Bell, Houston resident and community leader, and Oni Blair, executive director of LINK Houston.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yes, very historic neighborhood. |
| 0:07.0 | Debbie Allen lived on McGregor. |
| 0:11.0 | Beyonce rode a bike. |
| 0:13.0 | They lived on the next street over here. |
| 0:16.0 | The producer of Empire, Attica Locke. |
| 0:20.0 | They lived on Parkwood. So, I mean, it's a very well-talented neighborhood as well. |
| 0:25.6 | I called up to Mara Bell because she knows just about everything there is to know about her neighborhood. |
| 0:34.6 | And quite a bit about her city as well. I've lived in Houston for 40 years. |
| 0:41.2 | I live in Third Ward. |
| 0:43.7 | I live in what's called Riverside Terrace. |
| 0:46.8 | African Americans moved in in the late 50s, early 60s. |
| 0:52.0 | Ebony Magazine and PBS television did a special called This House is Not for Sale in the early 80s because when this neighborhood transitioned Jewish... |
| 1:05.3 | When Tamar moved to Third Ward 40 years ago, it was a couple decades after the neighborhood had been divided by the |
| 1:11.6 | construction of Texas Highway 288. The road wiped out churches, houses, and local businesses. |
| 1:18.4 | It literally split a community into. So in 2017, when the Texas Department of Transportation |
| 1:24.6 | announced plans for the North Houston Highway Improvement Project, |
| 1:29.0 | which would expand Interstate 45 and displace more than 1,000 homes, hundreds of businesses, |
| 1:34.9 | five houses of worship, and two schools in neighborhoods like Houston's Independence Heights. |
| 1:40.1 | Tamara immediately knew. |
| 1:42.1 | It's going to kill history. |
| 1:46.2 | You're talking about historical communities that have been around. The Independent Heights community was built by the freed slaves. And what this |
| 1:52.8 | project would do, I mean, it would leave, I mean, fragments, not remnants, fragments of that |
... |
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