Highway Development | Driving While Black

Learn about the impact that the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the subsequent construction of interstate highways had on Black communities and Black travelers in the 1950’s, in this video excerpt from the award-winning documentary, Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America. The Interstate Highway System was a complicated undertaking in terms of its impact on Black neighborhoods. While it provided a safer and preferred means of traveling by automobile since it enabled Black Americans to avoid traveling through multiple small towns that were possibly unwelcoming, the cost was paid in the disenfranchisement and destruction of segregated Black neighborhoods.