The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Racial Basis for Interstate Highways and Urban Renewal

Introduction

This article analyzes planning and routing of the Interstate Highway System in Montgomery, Alabama, which occurred alongside the civil rights movement after the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The research questions addressed in this article are as follows:

The article argues that one of the core reasons for the location of Interstate Highways was to remove African American voters from Montgomery and disrupt civil rights activities. The article connects Interstate Highway routing to Urban Renewal planning to expose a concerted effort in Montgomery to disrupt African American neighborhoods. The article argues that race loomed larger as an issue in the later years of the highway construction era in Montgomery than in the earlier years, when cost and traffic took precedence, although Interstate Highway planning always involved political choices. The seeds of the shift began with the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and particularly took root after the 1959 election of Governor John Patterson and the appointment of Sam Engelhardt as Director of the Alabama Highway Department (AHD). ¹ The article also argues that by 1960, with the racially volatile political environment after the Bus Boycott, analysis and consideration of route options for the Interstate Highways in Montgomery were constrained by Alabama politicians, such as Engelhardt and Patterson, who were focused on removal of African Americans, particularly registered voters and people associated with civil rights activism.

In 1959, Alabama Governor Patterson, who won with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, replaced the more racially moderate Governor Jim Folsom, while Sam Engelhardt, a politician and plantation owner with connections to the White Citizens Council, a hate group, replaced Herman Nelson, a career highway department employee. ² Patterson ran against George Wallace, an Alabama segregationist politician (and later Governor for four terms), who was then considered the more racially moderate candidate. ³ Patterson was elected attorney general in 1954 and quickly established a reputation as a strict segregationist, banning the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Alabama in 1956. At the same time, Engelhardt, then a state Senator for Macon and Bullock Counties, conceived of a plan to gerrymander the City of Tuskegee to remove most of the African Americans from the city limits, to suppress African American voting in the city. After African Americans in Tuskegee boycotted White-owned businesses in protest, Patterson raided the offices of the Tuskegee Civic Association, the local African American organization that organized the boycott, and sought an injunction to stop the boycott. The gerrymandering was eventually settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case, Gomillion v. Lightfoot. ⁴

In addition to coinciding with the civil rights movement, planning of the Interstate Highways also occurred alongside demographic and political changes in Montgomery. During the first half of the twentieth century, the city grew rapidly, an average of 30 percent per decade, due to its military and government presence and industrial production. In 1910, the African American and White population in the city was roughly equal. As African Americans migrated north as refugees from southern violence, segregation, imprisonment, and use as convict laborers, the White rural population in the South migrated to cities, and White people began to outnumber African Americans in the City. By 1955, the city was 63 percent White and 37 percent African American. ⁵ As the White population increased in the city, most lower and lower-middle-class White residents lived in East Montgomery, while middle- and upper-class residents lived in South Montgomery, creating an economic, social, and political divide among White residents. As early as 1947, lower middle-class political candidates from East Montgomery began to win office against wealthy White politicians, who had been in control of the city since the end of Reconstruction. ⁶ In 1949, the Alabama Legislature contributed to the upset of the political order established by wealthy White politicians by creating a civil service system for city and county employees, replacing the political patronage arrangement whereby mayors “retained complete authority over the jobs of city workers . . . and at election time . . . exacted absolute fealty from them.” ⁷

At the same time, African American voting was also reshaping the political landscape of the city. Registering to vote was a long and difficult process for African Americans. The Alabama Legislature adopted a law in 1945 requiring applicants to be able to read, write, and interpret the Constitution. Although the law was declared unconstitutional in 1949, registering to vote was still a difficult process for African American people. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray recalls,

For the most part . . . whites developed many strategies to keep the registration rolls as lily white as possible. For example, some members of the Board of Registrars would register all the white applicants and then hide. Other registrars would resign before registering African Americans in any significant numbers. ⁸

Nonetheless, the voter registration board did register a very small number of highly qualified and educated candidates, to justify its voter registration decisions to courts. As the ward with the highest incomes and education levels among African Americans, the Alabama State University (ASU) ⁹ area had the highest proportion of African American voters in the city (31%). ¹⁰

Despite many hurdles to African American voting, the number of registered African American voters grew steadily throughout the 1940s and 1950s. By 1950, there were 813 African American voters in the city, and by 1955, there were 1,678 (7.5% of the registered voters). Residential segregation in the city resulted in some voting districts having high proportions of African American voters. Furthermore, the political divide between South and East Montgomery meant that White voters were often narrowly split. This fact was underscored with the 1953 election of City Commissioner Dave Birmingham, who won by a narrow margin with a coalition of African American voters and lower middle-income White voters in East Montgomery, over the candidate favored by the wealthy White residents of South Montgomery. ¹¹ With these changes, White residents began to worry about the possibility of an African American elected official in the city and the erosion of White power and the old racial and class order in Montgomery. Interstate Highways and Urban Renewal in African American neighborhoods offered the potential to break up African American voting districts, and remove African American voters from the city, similar to Engelhardt’s gerrymandering plan for Tuskegee, as an article about Engelhardt in Time magazine in 1957 noted, “In the opinion of Alabama’s racist State Senator Sam Engelhardt, Jr., if you can’t lick ’em, the best thing to do is scatter ’em.” ¹² Interstate Highways and Urban Renewal also allowed Alabama public officials to demolish African American neighborhoods through government programs in which the federal agencies typically went along with the decisions of the state, which contrasted with many other segregation policies where state and local government agencies lost in the federal court system. Montgomery’s racial hierarchy and political geography served as the backdrop for the bold idea of using highways to eliminate African Americans from the voter rolls.

Like many Southern cities, Montgomery was highly segregated through strict laws and customs and violence that African American people encountered when they sought to evade those laws and customs. The 1929 zoning ordinance included two residential zones and one commercial zone. Residential zone A covered most of the White neighborhoods in the city, and Residential zone B covered Capitol Heights, a White city that was incorporated into Montgomery in 1926. ¹³ The African American neighborhoods were not zoned (see Figure 1). There were three major African American sections of the city, and each area had very different socioeconomics. Low-income African Americans lived in North Montgomery, which was interspersed with industrial development. Working-class and low-income African Americans lived in West Montgomery. The neighborhoods near ASU, ¹⁴ southeast of downtown, were home to many African American people affiliated with ASU with much higher incomes. ¹⁵ Connecting the two neighborhoods was a small working-class (mostly White, but to some extent, racially mixed) neighborhood close to downtown. Although all the African American neighborhoods lacked basic public services, West and North Montgomery were much less affluent than the ASU area, as civil rights attorney Fred Gray recalls,

I was born in a shotgun house in the Washington Park section of Montgomery [West Montgomery] . . . with no paved streets, no running water, and no inside sanitary facilities. There were no hospitals for African-American children to be born . . . Religion and the church played a major role in my family life. ¹⁶

Many of the major civil rights leaders in the city were middle-class and lived near ASU, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., although there were also many prominent civil rights activists in West Montgomery.

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Figure 1.

The 1929 Racial Zoning Map of Montgomery, with the routes of the completed Interstate Highways added by the author. The unshaded (unrestricted) neighborhoods were home to African American families. Although some of the boundaries changed slightly between 1929 and the time when the interstates were constructed, the general spatial pattern persisted into the 1960s.

Despite the divisions among the different neighborhoods and socioeconomic classes in Montgomery, all the African American residents of the city shared the lived experiences of segregation. In 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott became the catalyzing event that united African Americans in the city. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver’s order to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus, setting off the 381-day boycott of the bus system in Montgomery. The arrest led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring racially segregated seating on buses to be unconstitutional. ¹⁷ Planners for the boycott elected Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as their spokesman because he was relatively unknown at the time, and could unite activists in the various neighborhoods in Montgomery because he had not established an allegiance to either neighborhood. ¹⁸ The boycott is now known as the first large-scale demonstration of the civil rights movement, it helped position Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a national civil rights leader, and brought national attention to the issue of Southern civil rights. It also set the stage for later civil rights battles in Alabama, in which local and state public officials would dig in their heals firmly against integration, without budging until federal court and law enforcement intervention. For Montgomery residents, the boycott was also significant because it brought unity to the residents of the African American neighborhoods in the city. ¹⁹

The unity among the African American neighborhoods that emerged as the Bus Boycott ended in 1956 found a more polarized and violent city because the White power structure of the city was under threat with the success of the boycott. Segregationists intensified shootings of integrated buses, murders, and bombings of African American homes—many of them in the ASU area. On the first anniversary of the Bus Boycott, Engelhardt warned that

buck-eyed preachers who cuss and pray until midnight and drink and fight until daylight . . . are making more enemies among the white people now than any time since Reconstruction days . . . Montgomery is sitting on a potential keg of dynamite. ²⁰

In the wake of the Bus Boycott, segregationists began a “reign of terror,” ²¹ and “the city slipped into a surreal dimension in which only extremist views were publicly voiced among whites, and any hint of deviation from white supremist orthodoxy would incur both active harassment and social ostracism.” ²²

It is in this context that White-supremacist Governor John Patterson was elected, Sam Engelhardt was appointed Director of AHD, and Interstate Highway routing took a more racially motivated turn. During his gubernatorial campaign, Patterson promised both highway building and segregation, as he noted in speeches, “I offer you an administration which will enforce the laws of the state, maintain segregation without violence, and get your money’s worth from every tax dollar.” ²³ Although Patterson and Engelhardt only served one term as governor and highway director, by the time they left in 1963, over 80 percent of the Interstate Highways in the state had been completed or were under construction, and most of the other routes were approved or very close to approval. ²⁴ Many residents believed that the highway routing was directed toward African American voters, as Rev. Ralph Abernathy, one of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s top leaders, told President Kennedy that the routing of I-85 would destroy “one of the best Negro neighborhoods in the South,” ²⁵ and that the residents affected by the route “constitute to a great degree the few Negro voters in this community.” ²⁶ Rev. George Curry, a civil rights activist, claimed that the routing of I-85 was designed to “dislodge this Negro community where many of the leaders of the fight for desegregation in Montgomery reside.” ²⁷

The U.S. Interstate Highway System

The idea of building the Interstate Highway System had a long history of support from engineers, the trucking industry, and motorists, but was complicated by long-running disputes about who would pay for those expensive roads and who would benefit from their construction. ²⁸ By the 1930s, the United States had a small number of limited access roads (also called freeways and superhighways). In 1939, federal and state engineers were already familiar with the design and planning or freeways, and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) ²⁹ recommended a system of interregional highways to Congress and President Roosevelt. ³⁰ By the 1940s, plans were being made for freeways throughout the country, including the Arroyo Seco parkway in Los Angeles, which opened in 1940, and the Congress Street expressway in Chicago in 1944. In 1944, BPR published a report, Interregional Highways, on the need for Interstate Highways, and Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act, authorizing the creation of the Interstate Highway System. However, they did not allocate any funds to the project. ³¹ Modest funding for Interstate Highways was passed by Congress through the Highway Acts of 1952 and 1954. In 1955, BPR released a comprehensive report, General Location of National System of Interstate Highways, outlining the urban locations of a national Interstate Highway System. In 1956, the biggest boost to the system came when President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act and the Highway Revenue Act, which authorized construction of the Interstate Highway System. The funding would come from the gas tax which would feed into a highway trust fund, and states would pay 10 percent of the cost, while the federal government paid 90 percent. ³²

When the initial urban routes of the Interstate Highway System were proposed in 1955, the routes through Montgomery, like most other mid-size cities, bypassed the urbanized area. A spur connector was provided for I-85 into downtown Montgomery (see Figure 2). ³³ In designing the system, highway engineers projected an image of themselves as scientific experts, distancing themselves from politics. Engineers claimed, therefore, that interstate locations were initially decided based on the distribution of the urban and rural population, motor vehicle ownership, service to cities of manufacturing importance, strategic interregional connections, traffic, and defense. ³⁴ In reality, however, politics could not be removed from highway decisions, and the decisions of highway engineers were always and fundamentally political choices. Throughout the 1950s, the technical guise of transportation decisions began to erode, and by 1958, highway engineers were making decisions in conjunction with political leaders. ³⁵ By 1959, Engelhardt, a White-supremacist politician with almost no transportation experience, was appointed director of AHD. Politics had always informed highway location choices, just as politics informed any human activity. In the case of Montgomery’s Interstate routes, local and state political leaders wanted to use those routes to obliterate African American neighborhoods.

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Figure 2.

Initial route proposal for I-85 and I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama. The route bypassed the city because BPR engineers deemed the city too small to warrant an expensive urban expressway. Alabama highway officials were later able to get the highway re-routed through African American neighborhoods in the city.

When the Interstate Highway Program moved from the proposal stage into the planning stage, Alabama, like many other states, sought to get interstates moved more directly into urban areas. State governors and city mayors lobbied their congressional representatives to redirect bypass routes near cities to more direct alignment through cities, and economic development, as opposed to traffic service, became the “premier goal of state highway engineers.” ³⁶ In larger cities, BPR engineers agreed that interstates would serve the urban population better if they were moved directly into cities, thus justifying the higher cost of urban interstates. ³⁷ In smaller and mid-sized cities, such as Montgomery, however, BPR officials sometimes felt that the higher cost of urban interstates was not justified. In Alabama, when AHD officials sought to get the interstates relocated into the urban areas, BPR engineers did not see a need in small and mid-sized cities, ³⁸ and initially rejected proposals to move interstates to urban areas, reasoning that existing state roads could handle traffic from the interstate bypass routes at much less cost than urban expressways. ³⁹

When Interstate Highways were routed through cities, local planning was very important, and state and local transportation officials, who had more knowledge of local land use, environmental issues, economics, and social issues than federal engineers, began to take a lead role in highway routing decisions. BPR, therefore, heavily relied on routing decisions by state departments of transportation. ⁴⁰ While AHD and BPR officials worked as partners and routing disputes were resolved cooperatively, BPR engineers typically deferred to the local technical and political expertise of AHD officials. ⁴¹ At the local level, highway routing often took a more racialized turn, as Biles and Rose note, “at the local and urban level, ideas about race, class, property values, and retail sales informed highway location and design choices from start to finish.” ⁴² In other civil rights battles in Montgomery, such as school, public transportation, park, and jury desegregation, African American activists relied on federal courts to intervene, and eventually White Southerners were forced by the federal court system and federal law enforcement officials to desegregate. However, in the case of Interstate Highways, because BPR typically followed the lead of state highway departments for making routing decisions, primary decisions were made at the state level instead of the federal level, which did not work in favor of African American activists.

In Southern cities, the legacy of African American disfranchisement resulted in tight control of state and local government by White people. ⁴³ In Montgomery, this meant that the concerns of White people, who wanted interstate routes directed through cities generally and African American neighborhoods in particular, became the goal of AHD’s routing decisions, particularly after the racially charged political environment after the Bus Boycott. The Bus Boycott added to the urgency among White people that Interstate Highways be routed through African American neighborhoods. With local Urban Renewal being a major goal of local planners in Montgomery, including the Mayor and City Planning Commission, BPR deferring to state highway departments, and AHD working with local planners, the racial targeting of Urban Renewal and Interstate Highway Programs were connected, as Engelhardt’s chief engineer at AHD R.D. Jordan told a group of Montgomery realtors, “whenever possible . . . the route goes through areas where housing is substandard.” ⁴⁴

While some cities proposed urban expressways through White neighborhoods, focusing on downtown redevelopment and property values, other state and local officials found it politically desirable to avoid White neighborhoods. ⁴⁵ In Montgomery, I-85, located just south of downtown, allowed city officials to avoid the prosperous White neighborhood of Cloverdale, and routing I-65 along the west edge of the city avoided the White neighborhoods on the east side of the city, including Engelhardt’s home. In the South, where African American housing was bound by strict segregation laws, homes for African American people (especially the middle class) were in short supply. When their homes were demolished, many African American families had very few housing options in the city. ⁴⁶ Housing for African Americans was contained in segregated African American neighborhoods, creating a second ghetto in Montgomery. ⁴⁷

At the same time, many White Southern public officials were concerned about increases in African American voting and school integration orders. Interstate Highway construction became a convenient way for White politicians to further disenfranchise African American voters and families. In Montgomery, when the locations of the Interstate Highways were finalized, the City Planning Commission noted that there would be a drop in the African American population in the city. ⁴⁸ A drop in the African American population has an effect on politics in the city, because it would diminish the voting strength of an already disenfranchised group. Disenfranchising African American voters in Montgomery could also avoid a stronger coalition of lower and lower-middle-class White and African American voters, and avoid the potential election of African American candidates. ⁴⁹ However, to avoid the demolition of their neighborhoods, urban residents throughout the country began to work together to stop expressways.

In the early 1950s, urban residents began to fight Interstate Highways in their neighborhoods, in a movement that has been called the freeway revolts. ⁵⁰ In San Francisco, residents opposed a freeway connecting the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, running along the waterfront through Golden Gate Park. ⁵¹ The San Francisco Board of Supervisors withdrew support for any new freeway in 1959, and maintained that position into the 1960s. ⁵² After San Francisco’s successful freeway revolt, others followed, with partial success. Freeway revolts occurred throughout the country, including in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Memphis, Nashville, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other cities. ⁵³ Although activists did stage an unsuccessful freeway revolt over I-85 in Montgomery (see below), anti-freeway activists in Alabama were less successful at getting freeways moved or canceled because they faced public officials who preferred a top-down government structure, were pro-metropolitan growth, and viewed the removal of African American neighborhoods in cities as a good thing in the face of civil rights activism. ⁵⁴ At the same time, government officials were also using the Federal Urban Renewal Program to demolish many African American neighborhoods in cities.

Urban Renewal

Alongside the Interstate Highway Program, the Federal Urban Renewal Program was drastically reshaping communities throughout the United States. ⁵⁵ The Housing Act of 1949 allowed cities to acquire blighted areas and clear them for redevelopment, then sell the land to developers. ⁵⁶ The federal government initially paid 75 percent of the cost of the program. In 1954, the Housing Act provided more incentives to developers in urban areas to undertake urban redevelopment, including federally backed mortgages, and named the program Urban Renewal. ⁵⁷

Like the Interstate Highway Program, the Urban Renewal Program targeted African Americans living in cities. Many urban Renewal areas were located adjacent to Interstate Highways. ⁵⁸ Like citizens who were displaced by Interstate Highway construction, urban residents who were displaced by Urban Renewal found tight housing markets and low-quality housing available to them. In the South, segregation made these problems even more acute for displaced African American families. Rather than leave the city, however, many African American residents stayed in larger enclaves that have been termed the “second ghetto,” and found less affordable housing and more overcrowded conditions. ⁵⁹ As suburban migration drew White urban residents to outlying urban and suburban locations, older neighborhoods transitioned from White to African American as Urban Renewal squeezed housing markets in African American neighborhoods. ⁶⁰

Implementation of Urban Renewal was propelled by local racial politics and removal of African American people and voters from the city. With the racial violence that emerged from the Bus Boycott, and the shift in urban politics in the city away from the old wealthy White power structure, Urban Renewal also became a focus of racial politics in the city into the 1960s. Mayor Earl James, who had earlier won a city commission seat in 1947 with the support of lower-middle income Montgomerians, beating incumbent General Screws, the candidate backed by wealthy Whites, became mayor in 1959, and remained mayor until 1971, throughout the Urban Renewal period. James’s election was a more radical White-supremacist turn in city leadership, similar to the shift to more radical leadership at the state level with the election of Governor Patterson. ⁶¹

Most of Montgomery’s Urban Renewal areas were near Interstate Highways and in African American neighborhoods. ⁶² The 1957 Montgomery Land Use Plan, authored by a local planning consultant, Urban Consultant Associates, and financed by the Montgomery Planning Commission, included an analysis of blighted areas in the city, and identified seven African American neighborhoods and one older White neighborhood as blighted. ⁶³ The report noted that almost every African American person in the city lived in one of the blighted areas, “Seven of the neighborhoods are Negro neighborhoods and in which almost the entire Negro population in the city lives.” ⁶⁴ The land use plan recommended “slum clearance and redevelopment” ⁶⁵ in the blighted areas, noting that two of the blighted areas—North Montgomery and Houston Hill (see below)—were already being demolished using Urban Renewal funds. Therefore, because almost every African American person was living in an area designated as blighted, and the method to remove the blight was land clearance and redevelopment, the plan meant that almost every African American person in Montgomery would be affected by Urban Renewal, and could potentially have their neighborhood demolished.

The 1957 Land Use Plan also noted that the Interstate Highway Program could be used in conjunction with Urban Renewal to remove blight in areas such as the proposed I-85/I-65 interchange (see Figure 3). ⁶⁶ Another important part of the plan that would remove African American neighborhoods from the city was the expansion of the Central Business District (CBD). The plan proposed expanding the CBD to the I-85/I-65 interchange, through the African American five-points neighborhood. ⁶⁷

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Figure 3.

Potential land use configuration that included Urban Renewal of an area designated as blighted and the proposed I-85/I-65 interchange. This proposed plan is different than the plan that was eventually constructed, and in this plan, two important meeting places during the civil rights movement—Holt Street Baptist Church and Mt. Zion AME Church—were proposed for demolition (they would be located under the expressway). The interstate was shifted slightly, and the two churches were saved. The proposed location of the interstate would provide a buffer between the expanded downtown and the African American neighborhood. Civil rights icons Rosa Parks, Lucille Times, and E.D. Nixon lived southeast of this map, and the City of St. Jude, an integrated church and hospital and the last stop on the Selma to Montgomery March, a march for voting rights in 1965, is to the southwest.

In 1965, the City of Montgomery completed a comprehensive assessment of blight in the City. The analysis was a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of crime, traffic, land use, and vaguely defined “blight factors.” ⁶⁸ The plan found that the three main areas of blight in the city were in the African American ASU area (centered on I-85), the working class African American neighborhoods in West Montgomery (centered on I-65), and a small area of blight in the low-income African American neighborhood in North Montgomery (the residential area left after the first Urban Renewal project was completed, see below; see Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Map of neighborhoods designated as blighted in Montgomery in 1965. The map and the analysis were completed after the interstate locations were decided, but before they were constructed, so the planned location of the interstates were included. The boundaries of the areas designated as blighted roughly lined up with the African American neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods 6 and 7 were the African American neighborhoods in West Montgomery that centered on I-65 (see Figures 5–7). Both neighborhoods were designated as badly blighted in the analysis. The median income of the two neighborhoods was among the lowest in the city. ⁶⁹ Many residents of West Montgomery lived in older frame houses, with no indoor water and outhouses instead of indoor bathrooms (see Figure 8), as described by one observer,

When I moved about in the city, in the territory near to St. Jude’s [in West Montgomery], I came onto streets, sometimes alleys, lanes, hill paths. Along these perhaps twenty thousand colored people lived, but no white people . . . . Gravel and clay, mud and dust, never a sidewalk describe these streets. There were neighborhood faucets from which women and children carried . . . water, but city mains and sewers were lacking. The houses along the various ways for the most part were small and poor, generally without paint, frequently mere shacks, though here and there I met with fairly nice cottages. ⁷⁰

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Figure 5.

Neighborhood 6 blight analysis map, showing the future location of I-65 along the eastern edge. The City of St. Jude, an integrated hospital that had an important role in the Selma to Montgomery March, is on this map, and is not designated as blighted.

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Figure 6.

Neighborhood 7 blight analysis map, showing the future location of I-65 along the western edge. Civil rights activists Lucille Times, Charlie Times, E.D. Nixon, and Rosa Parks lived in the area of this map, although their homes were not designated as blighted. Holt Street Baptist Church, where meetings for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were held, and Mt. Zion AME Church, where the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and Rev. Martin Luther King was elected leader of the group, are also on the map.

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Figure 7.

Location map for the Montgomery neighborhood analysis. Neighborhoods 6, 7, 10, and 2 (Figures 4, 8, 6, and 7, respectively, in this article) are outlined by the author to show the neighborhoods that were designated as blighted.

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Figure 8.

Photograph from a Montgomery Housing Authority report documenting conditions of blighted housing in West Montgomery. The outhouses and small wood frame homes in the background were typical of West Montgomery.

The report listed the “blight factors” ⁷¹ for neighborhood 6 as “poor construction of structures, overcrowding of structures on lots, low income families, unpaved or poorly maintained streets, noise from the railroad . . . ” ⁷² The “blight factors” ⁷³ for neighborhood seven were “houses are crowded on small lots, there are too many persons per household, old, poorly constructed and designed dwellings. Many of the minor streets are in very bad condition.” ⁷⁴ Despite the neighborhood analysis noting that public streets were in poor condition, the 1962 public improvements program (a part of the comprehensive plan) did not list them on the streets budgeted for improvement. ⁷⁵

The neighborhood analysis recommended a land use plan to eliminate blight in each neighborhood. In neighborhood 6, demolition was recommended, “clearance and redevelopment will be needed to clear the badly blighted areas.” ⁷⁶ The land use plan for neighborhood 7 was explicit that I-65 would remove African American homes that had been designated as blighted,

Approximately one-fourth of the negro families in Montgomery live in this neighborhood . . . the junction of the two interstates will cause a large loss of houses in this neighborhood. In fact about one-third of the houses will have to be torn down . . . there will be a decrease in population of about 4,000 persons by 1980. ⁷⁷

Neighborhood 10, centering on Oak Park and the planned I-85, was designated as blighted (see \Figure 9). While the homes in the neighborhood were generally larger and in better condition than the homes in West Montgomery (particularly those near ASU), there were also many unpainted wood homes, with a mix of indoor plumbing and outhouses. The north part of the area had already been demolished under the Houston Hill Urban Renewal project (see below), and the report noted that there was no blight in that neighborhood and the public housing next to it. South of Houston Hill was designated as blighted, however, centering on the African American commercial area of High Street, the report noted,

. . . the area south of high street extending to the Oak Park area is almost completely blighted. Some of the blocks surrounding Alabama State College are only slightly blighted but the area east of the college is deteriorating rapidly. ⁷⁸

The land use plan for neighborhood 10 called for land clearance (which later became the ASU Urban Renewal project, see below), clearance by the construction of I-85, and new industrial development. ⁷⁹

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Figure 9.

Neighborhood 10 blight analysis map. The north part of the map (clear of blight) had already been demolished by the Houston Hill Urban Renewal project and a large public housing development. The neighborhood centering on Oak Park and ASU (in the lower left part of the map), designated as blighted and badly blighted, was a center of civil rights activity in Montgomery. Civil rights activists who lived in this area included Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Georgia Theresa Gilmore (and her Club from Nowhere), Johnnie Rebecca Carr, Dr. Richard Harris, Rufus Lewis, and Rev. Martin Luther King’s former home (he had already moved to Atlanta; all of their homes were designed as blighted except Georgia Gilmore’s home, which was slightly blighted, and Rufus Lewis’s home, which was clear of blight). The Ben Moore Hotel, an important meeting place for civil rights activists, is also located in this area (designated as slightly blighted).

Neighborhood 2, located between neighborhoods 10 and 7, was also designated as blighted (see Figure 10). The analysis noted that the condition of African American homes were worse than White homes in the area, “many of the dwellings are old and in poor condition, especially in areas where Negro families are living.” ⁸⁰ The land use plan called for the demolition of buildings through the construction of I-85 and adding light industrial development. ⁸¹

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Figure 10.

Neighborhood 2 blight analysis. This neighborhood was more racially mixed than the other blighted areas, and the analysis noted that more African American homes than White homes were blighted.

Implementing Urban Renewal in Montgomery followed the 1957 Land Use Plan and the 1965 Neighborhood Analysis, and was advanced by White business leaders and local elected officials. The first two projects—North Montgomery and Houston Hill—were already underway in 1954 and 1956, respectively, before the two plans were completed in 1957 and 1965. North Montgomery was located across the Alabama River from I-65, north of downtown. The project was championed by Montgomery Mayor Gayle (who preceded Mayor James), also a segregationist, and managed by Brigadier General Harwood C. Bowman, a celebrated World War II (WWII) veteran, and Charles Rogers, Director of the Montgomery Public Housing Authority. ⁸² The project demolished about 300 homes of African American families on 51 acres. ⁸³ The area had industrial uses intermixed with low-income housing, and the redevelopment plan demolished the housing to build more industrial development. It was expected to drastically increase the tax value of the land. ⁸⁴ The second project, Houston Hill, was located just behind the Alabama Capitol building and adjacent to the First White House of the Confederacy. Because the site was near downtown and the Crampton Bowl, a municipal auditorium, it was valuable, one report noted, “the project’s boundaries encompass some of the most potentially valuable land in the city.” ⁸⁵ After the land was cleared, it was even more valuable, “one of the most significant aspects of the redevelopment program is the project assessment value of the property compared to its past value.” ⁸⁶ The sixty-six-acre project displaced 275 families, all but twenty-four of them were African American. After the homes were demolished, White businessmen presented the Mayor with a petition signed by 600 people, requesting that the area be zoned for commercial or industrial use, out of fear that “the races might become mixed in that area.” ⁸⁷ New housing was built in place of the older, African American private housing, plus a school, community center, a parking lot for the nearby auditorium, and a clinic. ⁸⁸

Another Urban Renewal area was located near ASU and the proposed I-85, on forty acres of land, in the segregated African American neighborhood. ⁸⁹ The project began in 1964 and was supported by U.S. Senators John J. Sparkman and J. Lister Hill, Alabama Governor George Wallace, and Montgomery Mayor James, and organized by Montgomery Urban Redevelopment Agency Director Elizabeth Wright. One-third of the funding came from the Montgomery City Commission, and a part of the land for a new public school was purchased by the Montgomery School Board. ⁹⁰ The plan, which was not fully implemented, proposed demolishing part of the buildings between the ASU campus and across I-85 adjacent to ASU. Instead of proposing to completely clear the land, the proposal would demolish specified buildings within the area that the city deemed blighted, including many homes. ⁹¹ Approximately 150 homes were included in the plan, with more than half of them demolished. ⁹² Because the houses that were demolished when I-85 was constructed (see below) were some of the better quality homes in the neighborhood, the remaining homes were lower quality and targeted for Urban Renewal under the plan,

many of the better residences in the vicinity of Alabama State were taken by the interstate. By renewing a large block of land and clearing out the substandard housing, the neighborhood should become more pleasant and attractive . . . ⁹³

The Western Hills Urban Renewal area was designated for clearance in 1968. Western Hills was a working-class African American neighborhood just west of I-65, which was demolished with Urban Renewal funds. ⁹⁴ It was part of a larger Urban Renewal plan that spanned 1,000 acres of the area west of I-65—almost the entire African American community on the west side of Montgomery. ⁹⁵ The full Urban Renewal plan was never implemented, but the city did complete demolition of one section, which was home to 1,600 families, all but twelve of them were African American. ⁹⁶

The Court Square Downtown Urban Renewal project was the only one in the city that focused on rehabilitation and conservation instead of demolition, and the only one that did not significantly affect African Americans. The project had powerful champions in Congress, with Alabama Senators John J. Sparkman and J. Lister Hill working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to secure funding for the project. The City of Montgomery, led by Mayor James, provided one-third of the funding for the project. ⁹⁷ While the original plan included many African American residential properties that were proposed for demolition, it was eventually scaled back to include a smaller area of mostly commercial buildings. ⁹⁸ Instead of demolishing many of the commercial buildings, it provided incentives for rehabilitation, such as low-interest loans. ⁹⁹

Urban Renewal in Montgomery, therefore, followed a pattern similar to many other cities. Throughout the country, Urban Renewal was used to target African American neighborhoods, remove vaguely defined blight, and reshape land uses near downtown. It also was led by White-supremacist government officials, who had largely gained political power after the racially volatile political environment after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Urban Renewal was combined with Interstate Highway routing to provide a comprehensive redevelopment strategy at African American’s expense, mostly funded by the federal government. ¹⁰⁰

Interstate Highway Planning in Montgomery

Highway engineers considered four coordinates during the planning phase of I-65 through Montgomery—all of them through the western part of the city. ¹⁰¹ Constraining the potential locations of the highway to West Montgomery from the beginning articulated AHD’s racially motivated desire to run the highway through African American neighborhoods, avoiding the White neighborhoods of East Montgomery. Alternative coordinate A (also referred to as the peninsula route)—the route that was eventually chosen—entered Montgomery parallel to US-31, a major throughway. It then shifted to the east, cutting through the same densely developed working-class African American neighborhood that was designated as blighted by the Urban Renewal plan. About four blocks west of downtown the expressway crosses the Alabama River and exits the city through the middle of the undeveloped Alabama River peninsula (see Figures 11 and 12). The main proponents of this route were AHD, including Engelhardt and Patterson, elected leaders in Montgomery, and White downtown Montgomery business owners, because it would run close to downtown without going through it and would demolish a substantial portion of the West Montgomery African American neighborhoods. BPR was initially opposed to this route because it would require expensive bridge work and embankment protections over the Alabama River, and was more expensive than the other options.

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Figure 11.

Map of the four initial route choices for I-65 through Montgomery. The solid green line is the fourth route choice that was rejected early on, which ran west of the densely developed African American parts of West Montgomery through a sparsely developed area. The red line with even wide dashes is route B. Route B and the fourth route choice connect with a small wide dashed line and enter the Alabama River Peninsula along the same line. These two routes are also the same in the south side of the map, with a red solid line. The gray east–west line with uneven dashes is I-85, which today stops at I-65, but was extended on this map to the proposed route C (the bypass route), which is shown in a narrow dashed blue line in southwest corner (connecting with I-85 just off the map). Note that this is the best available archival map.

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Figure 12.

Map of two proposed routes for I-65 that were eventually rejected. The solid red line is route B (the downtown route), which was rejected because it was too close to downtown. The green dashed line is route C and the I-85 extension to route C, which was the bypass route preferred by BPR but rejected by AHD. The blue shaded area is downtown Montgomery.

Alternative coordinate B (also referred to as the downtown route) followed the same route into Montgomery and through West Montgomery as route A, but as it gets close to the Alabama River, it veers to the east and runs along the side of the Alabama River, close to downtown, and then curves along the eastern shore of the Alabama River. Neither AHD, BPR, nor local business leaders favored this route, because it would demolish downtown businesses and industrial buildings north of downtown, and cut off downtown from the river. Because this route did not have any advocates, it was quickly dismissed as a serious option.

Alternative coordinate C (also referred to as the bypass route) was the least disruptive to the city. A few miles south of Montgomery it shifts to the west of routes A and B, and bypasses the city near Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base. I-85 is extended to bisect I-65 southwest of the Air Force base. The route was the farthest from the city, the shortest, on mostly undeveloped land, and would be the least expensive to build (see Figures 10–13). ¹⁰² This route was favored by BPR because it was the least expensive, the size and growth of Montgomery did not warrant an expensive urban expressway, and because of proximity to the military base. AHD, White business owners, and City of Montgomery elected officials opposed this route because it did not run close enough to downtown, it did not advance any of their plans for Urban Renewal, and it did not run through the African American neighborhood of West Montgomery.

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Figure 13.

Map showing route A for I-65, which was eventually selected, the dashed line running north–south. Route C is the uneven dashed line running north–south on the west side of the map. The fourth route option was not shown on the map.

The fourth alternative coordinate (called route No. 2) was rejected early on, and did not have any prominent advocates. That route was similar to route A, but when it passed through the West Montgomery African American neighborhoods, it veered about ten blocks to the west toward the less developed edge of the neighborhood, avoiding the most serious impact to the community. It then curved back to the east and passed through the Alabama River peninsula, along route A (see Figure 13). The initial cost estimates from AHD (which BPR eventually disagreed with), indicated that it would cost $1,000,000 less than route A. ¹⁰³ Although no evidence was uncovered that details why this route was rejected, the presumed reasons are that it did not advance any of the racially motivated plans for Urban Renewal and it left the African American neighborhood of West Montgomery largely in-tact. It is also clear that dismissal of this route was initiated by AHD—not BPR—and coincided with the election of Governor Patterson and the racially motivated turn in highway planning. ¹⁰⁴

Soon after the four alternative coordinates were developed, but before they were seriously studied, Governor Patterson took office and Sam Engelhardt became the Highway Director. Within two weeks of taking office, Governor Patterson called the legislature into special session to accelerate highway building in the state, and proposed a new $60 million revenue-bond issue that would provide matching funds for federal highway grants. Patterson wanted to be able to use road construction funds as leverage for legislators to support his other initiatives, including increased funding for education. After the legislature unanimously approved the bond issue, within one month of taking office, Patterson and Engelhardt had secured the bond funding that would fully fund the highway program. The funds could also be used by Patterson to build highways in individual Legislator’s home districts, in exchange for supporting Patterson’s other legislative initiatives. ¹⁰⁵

Patterson’s desire to accelerate the highway program in Alabama led to more serious study of the four route options. Within a year of Patterson taking office, AHD sent an initial analysis of the route choices to BPR, concluding that route A was the best route. Although the choice of route A involved multiple studies and analysis, the choice was essentially the political expression of AHD, led by Engelhardt, which would do the most damage to the African American neighborhood in West Montgomery, bring the most praise from the White supremacists who had elected Patterson, and come close to downtown, as favored by White downtown businessmen. BPR, however, was skeptical of AHD’s cost estimates and whether their conclusions were supported by enough evidence. BPR engineers noted in an internal memo to BPR Regional Director Rex Anderson that they had concerns about the cost estimates, benefits, and hydrology conditions of route A, and that AHD underestimated the severity of the environmental issues. ¹⁰⁶

Also at issue was the fact that there was a major military, federal, and state government presence in Montgomery, which were not dependent on the CBD. Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base (the home of Air University), was located between the proposed bypass route and the peninsula route of I-65. ¹⁰⁷ Maxwell’s Gunter Annex was located in the northwest part of the city. BPR engineer B.A. Scott noted that traffic from the Air Force base, other federal government activities, and some state government activities were not dependent on the CBD, and thus an expressway route through downtown might not be needed to serve them. ¹⁰⁸ Furthermore, a bypass expressway that was closer to Maxwell-Gunter might be more effective at serving the Air Force Base. ¹⁰⁹

BPR engineer B.A. Scott wrote to BPR Regional Director Rex Anderson and noted that downtown Montgomery was not expected to experience the growth that would necessitate an urban route through the city. Scott wrote that the engineers felt that the traffic estimates assigned to the downtown route were too high, “we question the traffic assignments to the C.B.D. based on past observations of Montgomery’s growth . . . ” ¹¹⁰ In past years, Scott added, physicians, attorneys, and insurance agents had relocated to outlying areas to secure improved parking, he wrote,

doctors and lawyers for sometime [sic] have been migrating, not by normal expansion of the C.B.D., but by jumping fringe areas into many small centers. Insurance companies are fast following to the suburbs for parking relief. Lack of parking space downtown has caused two very large smaller suburban shopping centers to spring up and prosper. ¹¹¹

Scott concluded that the route bypassing Montgomery was preferable because it was a mid-size city and was not growing very fast,

It appears to this office that the expenditure of some 12 million dollars or more . . . to carry FAI 65 [I-65] through the city rather than on a bypass is hardly justified. It is also questionable as to whether such a location is in the best interest of a city of this size. Certainly the traffic needs can be met with at grade improvements. ¹¹²

Engelhardt remained committed to route A because that route advanced his racially motivated plans to demolish African American neighborhoods. Despite the obvious engineering problems of building a bridge over the Alabama River peninsula, AHD engineers responded to Scott’s and Anderson’s criticism of the AHD analysis and their route choice defiantly, Engelhardt’s chief engineer at AHD wrote,

we would also like to advise that in the event our request for the route through Montgomery is not approved we shall vigorously urge reconsideration and approval of the route through Montgomery since it is our opinion that the facts in the case warrant such routing. ¹¹³

Scott asked Engelhardt to hire an engineering consultant to prepare more analysis of the route options for I-65. ¹¹⁴ However, AHD only included routes A, B, and C in the analysis, the fourth option—the route passing through West Montgomery but avoiding the densest African American neighborhood—was not analyzed (see Figure 14). ¹¹⁵ Engelhardt and AHD, therefore, constrained the analysis to fit the racially motivated route option by leaving out the route that avoided the African American neighborhood but still went close to downtown Montgomery. BPR engineers questioned in an internal memo why AHD left the fourth route (then called route 2) out of the analysis, “that line . . . would apparently serve substantially more traffic than [the peninsula route] at an additional cost of only $1,000,000, and [we] wonder why [that] line was ruled out.” ¹¹⁶ The removal of the fourth option came just five months after the inauguration of Governor Patterson, and points to a more racially motivated turn in highway routing after the Bus Boycott. Engelhardt controlled the scope of the analysis that Anderson requested and included only a limited set of options. Engelhardt, who was a White supremacist himself and shared the views of the voters who elected Patterson, was anxious to make the highway program a centerpiece accomplishment of the new administration and route them through African American neighborhoods, because it would appease the White-supremacist voters who elected Patterson in the wake of the Bus Boycott. Therefore, he wanted BPR to approve the peninsula route without further analysis, according to an internal BPR memo from Anderson to Scott,

We advised Mr. Engelhardt that we did not consider there was available sufficient information to support a choice of Line 2 [the peninsula route] over Line 1 [the bypass route], and suggested that a preliminary engineering project be programed and authorized for the purpose of determining the best location for this interstate route. . . . Mr. Engelhardt expressed mild disappointment at what appeared to him to be further delay. ¹¹⁷

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Figure 14.

Three alternate locations for I-65 through Montgomery. Route C was the bypass route that was preferred by BPR but rejected by AHD because they wanted it located close to downtown. Route B was rejected by BPR, even though it accomplished the goal of going through the city, but went through more sparsely developed land in West Montgomery. Route A was the route that was eventually built, even though BPR had serious concerns about the impact on the Alabama River Peninsula (the middle of the bend in the Alabama River just north of downtown), which is a wetland.

After the analyses were complete, AHD maintained that route A was the preferable route, and insisted that only detailed cost estimates should be prepared for that route. Anderson pushed for more analysis and wanted cost estimates for both the peninsula and bypass routes. Although common practice was to prepare comprehensive cost estimates for just one route, they agreed to prepare them for both routes. AHD maintained its instance on route A, as Anderson wrote,

it was the State’s contention that this alternative location [route A] was the only location which well served the traffic of the interstate route. Both your office [division BPR office in Montgomery] and this office [BPR regional office in Atlanta] were of the opinion that the estimate should be made along Alternate Line C because this was the least costly alternate lines being considered on this section of Interstate 65. ¹¹⁸

AHD executed an agreement with a consultant to prepare cost estimates for route A first and then added estimates for route C later, upon the instance of BPR. ¹¹⁹

Scott told Engelhardt that BPR was skeptical of the estimates offered by AHD and the consultant, ¹²⁰ and continued to prefer the bypass route, noting, “on the basis of interstate travel and solvency of investment, we believe the Line C [the bypass route] to be most desirable.” ¹²¹ However, after several months of negotiation, BPR reluctantly agreed to pursue the peninsula route, despite the fact that it was more expensive and had significant environmental concerns, Scott noted,

Construction of Line A [the peninsula route] in lieu of Line C [the bypass route] will represent an additional expenditure of . . . $2,600,000 . . . this increase in cost and federal aid funds is fully justified by the superior traffic service to be rendered by Line A. While Line C has definitely superior hydraulic conditions at the crossing of the Alabama River . . . it is not recommended that Line A be approved as the approximate location for this section of Interstate Route 65. ¹²²

After the conclusion of the major studies, and BPR’s recommendation of the bypass route, members of the all-White Montgomery Downtown Business Association adopted a resolution recommending the peninsula route. The business association sent copies of the resolution to BPR administrator Rex Whitton, all of Alabama’s senators and representatives, Engelhardt, and Mayor James of Montgomery, who was then championing racially motivated Urban Renewal plans in the city that included the proposed interstate through West Montgomery and who had also been elected after the racialized turn in urban politics after the Bus Boycott. ¹²³ The Downtown Business Association argued that route A was less expensive than route C, it provided more direct access to downtown Montgomery and the Capitol, and would increase tax revenue for the city. The resolution noted that the association had a membership of more than 360 business owners and property owners, who would work with AHD to assure that route A was chosen and implemented.

A public hearing was held on November 21, 1961, to discuss the route options for I-65, with about 600 people in attendance, a significant number for the time. ¹²⁴ By then, only the peninsula route and the bypass route were presented to the public. ¹²⁵ While the transcript of that hearing is not available, letters and newspaper accounts of the meeting suggest that many of the people in attendance favored route C, as one letter notes, “it seemed to some of us that this was a ‘cut and dried’ affair and that the hearing was a joke on all of us who opposed the Route ‘A’. . . . The majority present were for Route ‘C.’” ¹²⁶ At the hearing, residents questioned the financial estimates that said that Route A would only cost $5,000,000 more than route C, as one person wrote,

. . . Route A would have several miles of fill 30′0″ high to reach the river and all in a flood area, move 2400 families on city owned property, build overpasses for city streets, etc. This against [route C] building on thinly populated land that now has one bridge over the river to be used, will move 900 families and Route “A” will only cost $5,000,000 more than Route “C”? . . . I cannot see the State and Federal Governments building a highway contrary to all “good judgement” and reason, solely to benefit a Highway Department head and a few other individuals. ¹²⁷

Other attendees of the meeting questioned the impact of the expressway on a separate planned river development project that would make the Alabama River navigable. Residents were concerned that the navigation project would flood the peninsula and the interstate. ¹²⁸ BPR did not require state highway departments to respond to criticism at public hearings—it only required that a public hearing be held. ¹²⁹ To that end, AHD chief engineer R.D. Jordan did not reconsider AHD’s preferences for the peninsula route, he noted, “none of the comments received in the hearing were considered as sound economic reasons not already studied . . . ” ¹³⁰

About two weeks after the public hearing in 1961, BPR changed course and approved the racially motivated peninsula route advanced by Engelhardt and AHD engineers, despite the preferences of national and regional BPR engineers for the bypass route. ¹³¹ It was common for BPR to defer to the routing preferences of state highway departments throughout the 1950s and 1960s, providing support for local Urban Renewal plans, as Rose and Mohl note, although the federal government financed highways, state road officials recommended the routes,

The federal government provided most of the funding for Interstate highway construction, but state highway departments working with local officials selected the actual Interstate routes. The consequence of state and local route selection was that urban expressways could be used specifically to carry out local racial, housing, and residential segregation agendas. ¹³²

After BPR’s approval of the route through West Montgomery, Alabama highway engineers began construction of I-65, demolishing much of the African American neighborhood in West Montgomery and cutting off what was left of the neighborhood from the rest of the city, located on the other side of the interstate. At the same time, Alabama highway engineers were still working on finalizing the route for I-85 south of downtown, through the African American neighborhood centering on ASU.

I-85 is routed through Montgomery roughly through the center from east to west. Until the early 1960s, East Montgomery was only sparsely developed east of Ann Street, where the interstate enters urban development and cuts through about ten blocks of White neighborhoods. Running the interstate through White neighborhoods was unavoidable, because White households occupied the city’s east side. However, the position of I-85 only disturbed about ten city blocks of White homes, whereas running the interstate just a few blocks north would have disturbed fifteen blocks of White homes, and running it a few blocks south would have set the course for White homes that occupied the entire southeastern part of the city, mostly home to wealthy White residents (See Figure 15). ¹³³ After I-85 passed the White neighborhoods in East Montgomery, it entered the segregated African American neighborhoods south of downtown, centering on Oak Park and ASU. Before it continues west and connects with I-65, the highway runs through a small older neighborhood that was designated as blighted. Therefore, the proposed (and implemented) route of I-85 into Montgomery did the least amount of damage to White homes, and the most amount of damage to African American homes, while still going close to downtown. The route also passed through the neighborhoods that were designated as blighted in the Urban Renewal plan, and were home to civil rights activists that Engelhardt and Patterson had many confrontations with.

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Figure 15.

The 1950 map showing the race of homes in East Montgomery. The author modified the map to show the approximate location of I-85. White homes can be seen throughout the entire eastern and southern section of the map, with African American homes clustered near Oak Park and Alabama State University. The route of I-85 enters the city on a route where the White homes do not extend as far to the east as the northern part of the city, thus minimizing the damage to the White homes.

Only one route through the White neighborhoods in East Montgomery was proposed (the same route that eventually was built), but AHD engineers proposed two routes through the African American neighborhoods, in an area that included the homes of many civil rights activists (see Figures 16 and 17). In addition, African American activists proposed an additional two routes as alternatives to the routes proposed by AHD engineers. The first route proposed by AHD engineers (called the north route), north of Oak Park, was initially favored by both BPR and AHD, although AHD eventually withdrew their support of this route in favor of the south route. The north route was less expensive than the south route because it would require the demolition of lower-priced homes. However, by 1960, with the arrival of Engelhardt and Patterson, and the racially motivated turn in highway planning, AHD noted that a hill on the north side of the park did not allow much room for an interchange at Hall Street (which was never constructed), and rejected the north route.

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Figure 16.

Map of the south route of I-85. This is roughly the route that was eventually built, but the Hall Street Exit was not constructed. Ralph and Junita Abernathy’s home is just under the Hall Street exit ramp, and Rev. George Curry’s home is under the expressway. ASU is just south of the expressway.

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Figure 17.

Map of the north route of I-85. The route was initially favored by BPR and AHD, but AHD later rejected the route in favor of the south route, through more affluent African American homes that were adjacent to ASU.

The second route (called the south route), went south of Oak Park adjacent to ASU. AHD and Engelhardt preferred the south route, which was more expensive, went through some homes of prominent civil rights activists, and passed close to ASU. ¹³⁴ In 1960, an engineering consultant hired by AHD recommended this route, noting that it was the most feasible and economical to build. ¹³⁵ Even though it was shorter, the south route was about $500,000 more expensive to construct than the north route because of higher property acquisition costs near ASU. ¹³⁶ However, the consultant report only studied the route south of Oak Park because AHD only asked for an analysis of that route option, thus constraining the analysis of the various options. ¹³⁷ By 1960, with racially motivated political environment after the Bus Boycott, the choice to only analyze the route south of Oak Park was focused on removal of African Americans, particularly registered voters and people associated with civil rights activism.

The third route (referred to as the route through Oak Park) was through the City of Montgomery’s largest park—Oak Park—which was closed because of a desegregation order. In 1958, civil rights activists in the neighborhoods around ASU petitioned the City of Montgomery Parks and Recreation Board to desegregate Oak Park, which was a segregated Whites-only park. After the activists filed a lawsuit in federal district court that sought to force the city to desegregate the city parks, elected officials, including Mayor Gayle, responded by closing all the parks in the city, to avoid court-ordered desegregation. The parks remained closed until 1965, when the city voluntarily reopened half of the parks in the city, including Oak Park. ¹³⁸ The main proponent of that route was a group of African American homeowners on both sides of the park, who opposed routing the Interstate through their neighborhoods. This route was rejected as a serious option early on, although it was the most inexpensive option that ran close to downtown. The route avoided demolition of many private homes because the park was vacant and owned by the City of Montgomery. Furthermore, because the park was closed, the City of Montgomery sought to sell the park for other uses. ¹³⁹

I-85 was planned after the route of I-65 had been largely decided, and by then, many state highway departments were encountering fierce resistance to proposed interstate routes from urban residents and activists. Activists near the ASU area, with experience in social activism from their role in the Bus Boycott, lunch counter sit-ins, and other civil rights activities, began a freeway revolt to stop the routing south of Oak Park, and presented a petition to AHD and BPR, requesting reconsideration of the route. ¹⁴⁰ The petition proposed a fourth route (called the bypass route) that bypassed downtown Montgomery and was to be constructed on mostly vacant land but closer to the wealthy White neighborhoods of south and southeast Montgomery. The bypass route was only advanced by the activists and was never considered as a serious option by BPR or AHD. ¹⁴¹ After the petition was denied by AHD, individual property owners and civil rights activists contacted politicians in Washington, D.C., to oppose the routing. ¹⁴² Rev. Ralph Abernathy wrote to President Kennedy to ask that the highway be moved, ¹⁴³ Rev. George Curry filed a complaint with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, ¹⁴⁴ and other activists contacted Eleanor Roosevelt and California Congressman James Roosevelt. ¹⁴⁵

After it became clear to the activists that their proposed bypass route was not going to be considered by AHD or BPR, the activists then recommended the route through Oak Park (see the discussion above), pointing out that the route through Oak Park would drastically reduce the number of homes that would be demolished, and would lessen the effect of the Interstate on eleven city streets. ¹⁴⁶ Like the bypass route that was proposed by the activists, AHD never seriously considered the route through Oak Park as an option, and no clear reason was given for not considering it. Neither the bypass route nor the route through Oak Park advanced the racially motivated highway routing plans because both minimized demolition of African American homes.

Despite pressure from civil rights activists and some politicians from Washington, D.C., AHD maintained its insistence on the south route, even though Engelhardt had by then retired and Governor Patterson had been replaced by Governor George Wallace. AHD officials held a second public hearing to discuss the south route, which they considered certain, although it had not been officially approved by BPR. The purpose of the public hearing was to present the final plan for the south route to the public. ¹⁴⁷ Consistent with the idea of constraining the route options from the beginning, only the south route was presented at the public hearing. Despite ongoing protest from the residents of the affected neighborhood, BPR approved the plan for the south route shortly after the public hearing. The decision ignored the two routes that were proposed by the citizen activists, which would have done less damage to homes (both White and African American). The only other route considered by AHD—the north route—was rejected and not presented at the public hearing. The south route, which was chosen and eventually implemented, accomplished AHD’s goal of running the interstates close to downtown, and did the most damage to the middle-class African American neighborhood near ASU, potentially removing African American voters from the city, a politically and racially motivated agenda advanced by Patterson and Engelhardt, after the racially radical turn in urban politics after the Bus Boycott. It also aided the Urban Renewal plans for the ASU area that were driven by the City of Montgomery and Mayor James, who was elected mayor after the same post-boycott radical turn in urban politics.

Assessment and Conclusion

AHD constrained the analysis of potential locations of the Interstate Highways through Montgomery from the beginning based on their racially motivated agenda for routing the highways through African American neighborhoods. For I-85, AHD and BPR only considered two routes through Oak Park, even though citizen activists presented them with two other options that would do less damage to the African American neighborhoods—a bypass route and a route through Oak Park. In the case of I-65 through West Montgomery, only two potential routes were seriously considered. Importantly, AHD left out the route which accomplished the goal of being located in the city to accommodate local traffic, while avoiding much of the densely developed African American neighborhoods.

All the route choices for I-65 also went through West Montgomery, the African American part of the city. East Montgomery was populated largely by White people, while West Montgomery was the historically working-class African American area of the city. None of the route options for I-65 were through the White neighborhoods in East Montgomery. I-85 was routed through about ten blocks of White homes (along with a small older White residential neighborhood in central Montgomery that was designated as blighted), which was unavoidable if the interstate was to be built inside the city. The route for I-65 through West Montgomery contradicts AHD’s continued insistence to BPR that the highways must be close to the growth areas of the city. East Montgomery is the area where most of the suburbanization and growth was occurring around Montgomery (a trend that continues today). Therefore, while AHD officials stated that they wanted Interstate Highways constructed where the traffic was highest, they did not consider a single route for I-65 in the area of the city with the most growth because East Montgomery was home to White families. BPR and AHD made racially motivated political decisions from the beginning by not considering a single route through the White East Montgomery urban area or suburbs.

Transportation routing was never an apolitical exercise. As the interstates were routed through cities and AHD got involved, highway routing took a more racial focus when the Bus Boycott ended and more racially extreme political administrations controlled city and state politics at the end of the 1950s. After the shift, AHD pressured BPR to run the interstates through the areas that coincided with the Urban Renewal plans for the city. BPR’s insistence on bypass routes and less expensive urban alternatives slowly eroded as AHD maintained its instance on their racially motivated route choices. ¹⁴⁸

Memos from BPR staff suggest that they were uneasy with AHD’s route choices. BPR staff was also skeptical of AHD’s cost estimates, trip generation rates, environmental impact, and engineering studies. Their checking of AHD analyses identified significant errors. Nonetheless, in the end, they deferred to the political and racially motivated routing decisions of AHD in both of the interstate routes through Montgomery. It was common throughout the highway building era for BPR to defer to state highway departments.

Powerful political actors were also involved in routing decisions. In the case of I-65, Alabama Senators J. Lister Hill and John J. Sparkman personally forwarded the Downtown Business Association resolution urging the approval of the peninsula route to the BPR administrator. Both senators asked BPR to keep them advised on the routing decisions. ¹⁴⁹ In the case of I-85, civil rights activists enlisted the help of allies in Washington, D.C., although that effort was ultimately unsuccessful because those allies deferred to BPR, which deferred to AHD. In that case, AHD officials also enlisted the help of politicians to avoid having the interstate re-routed and to assure that BPR engineers continued to defer to the routing preferences of AHD.

The racially charged political environment at the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, underscored by the election of Governor John Patterson in 1959, who defeated George Wallace, the candidate considered to be more racially moderate (although still a White supremacist), signaled a more racial basis for planning decisions, including local Urban Renewal plans and Interstate Highway routing decisions. Although the administration of Patterson only lasted one term, the effects changed Alabama politics for many years to come, as Permaloff and Grafton note, “the attitudes they implanted into the electorate, and the government structures they created . . . continued as a major force in state policy-making . . . ” ¹⁵⁰ After the Bus Boycott and Governor Patterson’s election, Interstate Highway routing, which had always been political decisions, took a more racially motivated turn.

AHD and local city officials in Montgomery directed the Interstate Highways to areas that would reinforce local plans for Urban Renewal. In 1960, Engelhardt’s chief engineer R.D. Jordan, in a speech to the Montgomery Real Estate Board, noted that the expressways would be constructed in blighted areas, saying, “the highway department selects a route that would disturb as little improved property as possible. Whenever possible . . . the route goes through areas where housing is substandard.” ¹⁵¹ Therefore, the priority of AHD was to run expressways through blighted areas, and nearly every African American neighborhood in Montgomery had been designated as blighted, it follows that AHD was targeting African American people in interstate location decisions.

There is also evidence to suggest that federal government officials had suspicions that the decision to locate I-85 south of Oak Park was racially motivated. The activists who opposed the interstate routing believed that the route south of Oak Park was intended to go through civil rights activists’ homes. When they told Washington, D.C., politicians about their concerns, the issue was taken seriously enough to garner several meetings with top federal government officials. However, eventually these government officials deferred to BPR, who in turn deferred to AHD.

The other iconic events in Montgomery during the civil rights movement had a significant degree of federal court intervention on the side of the African American activists, which differs starkly from Interstate Highways and Urban Renewal. The Bus Boycott ended after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal court decision that segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. ¹⁵² Similarly, freedom rides, school integration, jury integration, airport integration, and park integration in Montgomery all occurred in spite of fierce resistance from local and state public officials in Alabama, through the federal court and federal law enforcement systems. Notably, no such federal intervention occurred over expressway routing in Montgomery, aside from some high-level meetings over I-85, in which public officials ultimately deferred to BPR, and BPR generally went along with the routing decisions of AHD. Perhaps the lack of federal intervention on the part of BPR is the reason why many of the same citizen activists who staged the successful Bus Boycott and who were successful at integrating many other areas of the Jim Crow south, were unsuccessful at stopping expressways through their neighborhoods.

While the expressways were being built in Montgomery, the city’s demographics were drastically changing. As school integration orders were passed down through the federal courts in Montgomery, White people fled to the eastern suburbs. The portion of White people living in Montgomery has been declining for decades. In 2010, 57 percent of Montgomery residents were African American and 37 percent were White. The poverty rate for African American people was four times higher than that of White people in 2010. Overall, Montgomery lost population from 2010-2015, while the suburbs gained population. The suburb that gained the most population was Pike Road—just east of Montgomery. ¹⁵³ The move toward East Montgomery continues today—in 2010, the only census tracts that had increases in population were in East and Southeast Montgomery. The census tracts that were formerly segregated African American neighborhoods have all lost population—five of the census tracts near the center of the city lost over 30 percent of their population from 2000 to 2010. Montgomery is still deeply segregated. African Americans comprised 70 percent or more of the population in twenty-three of the fifty-four census tracts in the city, while Whites comprised more than 80 percent of the population in five census tracts. ¹⁵⁴

Today, there is little physical evidence of the once-thriving African American neighborhoods that were demolished by the Interstates and Urban Renewal in Montgomery. However, the construction of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018 has sought to begin to heal the history of racial injustice in the city. The memorial sits on a six-acre site just northeast of the intersection of I-85 and I-65, in an area formerly labeled as blighted, on a hill overlooking downtown. It provides a sacred and contemplative space to reflect on the history of racial injustice in Montgomery.