Want to know more about how Interstate Highways had an impact on the Civil Rights Movement? Take a look at this article by Rebecca Retzlaff

Please enjoy the following article from the Journal of Urban Affairs, available online.

Interstate highways and the civil rights movement: The case of I-85 and the Oak Park neighborhood in Montgomery, Alabama, by Rebecca Retzlaff

Abstract:

On June 29, 1956, while the bus boycott was taking place in Montgomery, Alabama, President Eisenhower signed legislation to create the Interstate Highway System. Alabama Highway Director Sam Engelhardt, a White supremacist, located Interstate 85 through the only middle-class neighborhood that was available for African Americans in Montgomery, home to civil rights leaders Ralph Abernathy and George Curry, and next to Alabama State University, a historically Black university that was the center of civil rights activity in Montgomery. The article argues that the decision to locate I-85 sought to displace the leaders of the civil rights movement and middle-class African American registered voters.