Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction
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VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW ________________________________________________________________________ VOLUME 73 OCTOBER 2020 NUMBER 5 ________________________________________________________________________ ARTICLES “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes”*: Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction Deborah N. Archer** Racial and economic segregation in urban communities is often understood as a natural consequence of poor choices by individuals. In reality, racially and economically segregated cities are the result of many factors, * “White men’s roads through black men’s homes” was the mantra of a coalition led by Reginald M. Booker and Sammie Abbott in opposition to highway development in Washington, D.C. See Harry Jaffe, The Insane Highway Plan that Would Have Bulldozed DC’s Most Charming Neighborhoods, WASHINGTONIAN (Oct. 21, 2015), https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/10/21/the- insane-highway-plan-that-would-have-bulldozed-washington-dcs-most-charming-neighborhoods/ [https://perma.cc/6YCR-PKKR] (discussing the campaign to halt the building of highways in Washington, D.C.). ** Associate Professor of Clinical Law and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, New York University School of Law. I thank Rachel Barkow, Richard Buery, Audrey McFarlane, Michael Pinard, Russell Robinson, Sarah Schindler, Tony Thompson, Kele Williams, and Katrina Wyman for helpful comments on earlier drafts. I also appreciate the insights I received from participants of faculty workshops at Brooklyn Law School and the University of Miami School of Law and participants at the 2019 Clinical Law Review Workshop at NYU Law School. I am grateful to Nelson Castano, Anna Applebaum, Michael Milov-Cordoba, and Rachel Sommer for their research assistance and to Sarah Jaramillo for her constant support of my research. Thank you to the wonderful editors of the Vanderbilt Law Review for their very helpful edits. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge support from the Filomen D’Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund, New York University School of Law. 1259 1260 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 73:5:1259 including the nation’s interstate highway system. In states around the country, highway construction displaced Black households and cut the heart and soul out of thriving Black communities as homes, churches, schools, and businesses were destroyed. In other communities, the highway system was a tool of a segregationist agenda, erecting a wall that separated White and Black communities and protected White people from Black migration. In these ways, construction of the interstate highway system contributed to the residential concentration of race and poverty and created physical, economic, and psychological barriers that persist. Today, the interstate highway system is on the verge of transformational change as aging highways around the country are crumbling or insufficient to meet growing demand and must be rebuilt or replaced. The possibility of significant infrastructure development offers an opportunity to redress some of the harm caused by the interstate highway system, to strengthen impacted communities, and to advance racial equity. Still, there is a risk that federal, state, and local highway builders will repeat the sins of the past at the expense of communities of color whose homes, businesses, and community institutions again stand in the path of the bulldozers. Moreover, there is reason to believe that traditional civil rights laws, standing alone, are insufficient to redress the structural and institutional racism that shaped the interstate highway system and continues to threaten communities of color as the highways are rebuilt. This Article is the first in the legal literature to explore in depth the racial equity concerns and opportunities raised by modern highway redevelopment. It also builds on the work of legal scholars who advocate for addressing systemic racial inequality by requiring that policymakers conduct a thorough and comprehensive analysis of how a proposed action, policy, or practice will affect racial and ethnic groups. The Article concludes by proposing a way forward for highway redevelopment projects: requiring jurisdictions to complete comprehensive racial equity impact studies prior to any construction. Racial equity impact studies have been used or proposed in various contexts to reform racialized institutions and structures. This Article argues that highway redevelopment projects should join this growing list. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1261 I. BUILDING THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM AND THE DESTRUCTION AND ISOLATION OF BLACK COMMUNITIES ........................................................ 1273 A. Killing Two Birds with One Stone: The Highway as a Tool for Removal ............................................ 1276 1. Miami, Florida ............................................ 1278 B. The Highway as a Post–Jim Crow Racial Boundary Line ....................................................... 1281 1. Birmingham, Alabama................................ 1281 2020] RACIAL EQUITY & HIGHWAY RECONSTRUCTION 1261 2. Atlanta, Georgia ......................................... 1284 II. THE LASTING IMPACT OF HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT .......... 1286 A. Hyper-Racial Segregation and Concentrated Poverty ............................................. 1286 B. The Destructive and Psychological Impact of Division .............................................................. 1294 III. THE CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND RISKS OF MODERN HIGHWAY REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS............... 1298 IV. THE INADEQUACY OF CURRENT LAWS AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS ................................................ 1304 A. Traditional Civil Rights Laws ............................... 1305 B. Traditional Analytic Framework ........................... 1307 C. Laws Adopted in Response to the Freeway Revolts ..................................................... 1310 D. The National Environmental Policy Act ................ 1314 V. RACIAL EQUITY IMPACT STUDIES....................................... 1321 A. Current Federal, State, and Local Mandates to Study Racial Impact .............................................. 1322 B. Requiring Racial Equity Impact Studies for Highway Redevelopment Projects .......................... 1326 CONCLUSION ................................................................................. 1330 INTRODUCTION The increased mobility ushered in by the rise of the automobile and expansion of the interstate highway system has been a complex issue for Black people. In many ways, automobiles and highways offered a much-needed respite from the daily indignities of living in Jim Crow America. For decades, using public transportation was a daily reminder of the legal and social inferiority of Black people, particularly in the South. Black people were relegated to the back of the bus and required to give up their seats to white people on demand.1 In train stations, Black people were forced to wait in separate waiting areas, with separate bathrooms and drinking fountains.2 In contrast, the 1. See Montgomery Bus Boycott, HIST. (Feb. 3, 2010), https://www.history.com/topics/black- history/montgomery-bus-boycott [https://perma.cc/4Z2N-8MTH] (noting a Montgomery, Alabama city ordinance requiring Black people “to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full”); see also, e.g., Daniel B. Moskowitz, No, I Will Not Move to the Back of the Bus, 52 AM. HIST. 40, 41 (2017) (detailing the story of a Black woman in Virginia who was asked to give up her seat for a white passenger but refused). 2. See Elizabeth Guffey, Knowing Their Space: Signs of Jim Crow in the Segregated South, 28 DESIGNISSUES 41, 52–53 (2012) (detailing the complexities of entering and using the “right” 1262 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 73:5:1259 ability to drive on the interstate highways offered Black people a certain amount of freedom from the oppression they experienced on public transportation. Sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal spoke of the liberating impact of the automobile for Black people, observing that cars were “for Southern Negroes, who c[ould] afford one, a partial emancipation from Jim Crowism.”3 Indeed, the “opportunity to travel ‘incognito’ in a covered car without constantly confronting the significance of their skin color gave southern blacks a taste of the mobility, freedom, and equality that otherwise had not materialized after Reconstruction.”4 At the same time, Black people faced the many dangers of traveling through “white spaces.” Many Black travelers had to bring buckets or portable toilets along with them, sleep in their cars, or drive through the night because they were turned away by motels, restaurants, and service stations.5 Many were caught on dangerous roads, unable to find hotels willing to let them stay.6 As one Washington Post writer recalled about the violence Black people faced on the road, “[s]o many black travelers were just not making it to their facilities in segregated train stations); Thomas J. Sugrue, Driving While Black: The Car and Race Relations in Modern America, AUTOMOBILE AM. LIFE & SOC’Y, http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/ Race/R_Casestudy/R_Casestudy2.htm [https://perma.cc/WZP4-8WK2] (“In the South, black patrons at bus and train stations were cordoned off into separate waiting rooms, with separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, and (when they were provided