By account of how transportation infrastructure―from highways and roads to sidewalks and buses―became a means of protecting segregation and inequality after the fall of Jim Crow. Shows how officials across the country―not just in the South―turned to transportation infrastructure to keep Americans divided.
For example, a wealthy white neighborhood could be “protected” with a multilane road, with no pedestrian crossings built along its border to make it difficult for people from a lower-income community to visit. Highways could be routed through Black neighborhoods based on their lower property values―a legacy of racial exclusion, and new suburbs could refuse to extend sidewalks from Black communities into white ones.
Presents a sweeping, national account―from Atlanta and Houston to Indianapolis and New York City―of these types of divisions. Finally, the author examines the limits of current Civil Rights laws, which can be used against overtly racist officials, but are less effective in addressing deeper, more enduring, structural challenges. Read more.