In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 “We Must Destroy You to Save You” Baltimore’s Freeway Revolt The city is now so deeply involved with the road, regardless of what it will do to Baltimore, that any change in policy is intolerable to city officials. We cannot abandon our commitment to those whose homes and businesses will be taken, they say. The line of reasoning is familiar. “We must destroy you to save you.” The urban expressway is our domestic Vietnam. —James Dilts, “Changing City—‘We Must Destroy You To . . . ,’” Baltimore Sun, August 4, 1968 I n August 1969, hearings on a proposed highway bypass gathered people from all over metropolitan Baltimore. For three nights, black and white, urban and suburban, working and middle class all voiced their opposition to the city’s highway system. “The threat of the road was acting like a zipper, pulling white and Black together,” one witness said. Another angry woman told state officials , “You did one good thing. You brought black and white together, and this is a beautiful thing.” That Baltimore’s white, black, urban, and suburban communities , riven by protests, riots, and racial clashes, could agree on anything, much less cheer each other on, was a surprise to some observers, including the Baltimore Sun reporter Janelee Keidel, who noted that “witnesses described the hearings as the greatest boon to race relations here in years.”1 At the time, most saw these hearings in the Rosemont neighborhood as just another act in Baltimore’s “transportation Wagnerian opera,” as one city councilwoman called it, a chance for residents to raise the pitchforks and wave their torches, blowing off some steam in their frustration with city government.2 Baltimoreans had been speaking out against official highway plans since the 1940s. As the business, science, and politics of highway construction evolved during the postwar era, civic leaders and politicians presented plans for ever more elaborate and costly ribbons of concrete for the Charm City. But opposition remained occasional and parochial. Citizens and neighborhood groups would speak out only if a section of the new highway affected their business or community. This all changed in 1968 with the formation of the Movement Against Destruction. MAD, as it was known, was a citywide coalition that helped make opposition to highways not only more sophisticated but more 74 Chapter 3 unified. Residents crossed racial, class, and neighborhood boundaries to offer support to help stop new roads. This urban solidarity was on full display at the Rosemont Hearings, as blacks cheered on whites and suburbanites rallied behind city dwellers. The cohesion was short-lived. Shifting plans and compromises divided the coalition, and by the middle of the 1970s, opposition was once again neighborhood-based. The hearings were the high water mark for the Baltimore Freeway Revolt. This chapter focuses on the middle of the 1960s to the early 1970s, when three different mayors, Theodore McKeldin (1963–1967), Thomas D’Alesandro III (1967–1971), and William Schaefer (1971–1987), tried to build Baltimore’s urban highway system. While a number of local groups fought the highway, particular attention will be paid to how African American and working-class Baltimoreans used MAD and a cluster of associated organizations to develop a unique form of urban environmentalism. Baltimore was home to one of the scores of highway fights in postwar America. During the 1950s and 1960s America’s urban leaders sought to remake their cities with massive, multilane expressways, and many residents fought back with sophisticated, and effective , protest efforts. Many of these movements were forms of environmental activism, but they differed in their origins, concerns, and goals. Middle-class suburbanites and wealthier city residents fought roads because they were concerned about long-term effects—such as increased air and noise pollution—or the destruction of local parks and natural areas.3 Minority and working-class urbanites, however, were worried about the immediate impact of the highway construction process. They saw their neighborhoods torn apart, with their homes and businesses replaced by massive concrete and asphalt behemoths. At first glance, this type of protest does not appear to be environmentalism . But this is only if we follow a more traditional, middle-class definition of environmental activism, which focuses on the preservation of resources and amenities, or the elimination of certain types of pollution. Because they discuss activism around recognizable toxins and pollutants—air pollution and lead paint—even the studies of St. Louis and Chicago in this book seem to fit that mold. Baltimore’s highway fight has...

Share