Section III: The Interstates: Making Choices

PREVIEWING ACTIVITIES:

This section presents information about:
-The expanded role of the federal government
-How road building became a national goal
-Launching the largest public works project in history
-Reshaping the landscape: how the Interstates affected towns and cities
-How land values and racial politics determined the path of highways
-The physical and social costs of the Interstates, e.g., Overtown, Florida

Discussion Questions:
-Can the Interstates be considered America's greatest contribution to 20th century civilization?
-How do the Interstates reflect the spirit of the Eisenhower era?
-What doubts emerged as this major engineering project advanced across the landscape?
-How did the Interstates create a new, racial Mason Dixon line?
-In what way was the Interstate a destroyer of communities?

Suggested Activities:
Ask students to consider what logistical problems come with building the Interstates around and through communities. What do they think were the monetary costs of such a major public works project?

Have students list the ways in which they think the Interstates changed the way people drive. Do people alter their driving styles depending upon the type of road they travel?

Discuss how construction of the Interstates altered the environment. What happened to America's rural landscape? What is the price of progress?

Make students aware of how highways "invaded the cities" and caused the
disappearance of "whole neighborhoods." How does the example of
Overtown illustrate what happened to Black communities in the 1950s and 60s?
Assign students additional reading on the topic of urban renewal.

POSTVIEWING ACTIVITIES:
List representative speed limits taken from the Statistical Historical Statistics of
- the US, an Almanac, or The Guhness Book of Records. Discuss when and why limits were imposed. Where are the highest limits? Are there speed limits in other countries? Focus on how the federal government used the speed limits to set national policy on oil conservation or regulate the drinking age through the disbursement of highway funds. Read Article I, Section 8, clause 3 (the commerce clause) and clause 18 (the elastic clause) to explain how the federal
government expanded its power.

Ask students what they think _________McCrary means when he calls what happened in Overtown, Miami a "political drive by shooting." Discuss how the racial and/or ethnic character of communities was destroyed by highway construction. What did James Baldwin mean when he observed that urban renewal was another name for "Negro removal"?

Using a current map of your community, have teams of students site a route for a new divided highway through your city or township. Through what neighborhoods will the highway pass? How will the land be acquired? At what cost? Introduce the notion of "eminent domain." Have teams share their plans. Discuss how their plans will alter the nature of the community. Were these questions raised when the Interstates were built?

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES:
Using maps, graphs, guides provided by the local Chamber of Commerce, the local Rotary, or library assign groups of students to research their community's growth in the 1950s and 1960s. Each group can focus on one phase of growth, e.g., population shifts, roads, schools, businesses, housing construction in different neighborhoods. Present findings in a class discussion and/or photo essay.

Invite a town official or member of a Department of Transportation regional office to speak about urban renewal, highway planning, and public transportation in your community. Ask the speaker to address the recent history of transportation in your community and what is planned for the future.

Assign students to research other examples of community destruction mentioned in the film, e.g., St. Petersburg, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee, St. Paul, Minnesota. Students might access the Internet for information Share findings and debate whether the film was correct in its conclusion that people had no say in what the government did to their communities.