Federal-Aid Highway Act Creates Interstate System, Enables Destruction of Black Urban Neighborhoods

On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System—the largest public works project in American history. While celebrated as an engineering triumph, the $25 billion program (equivalent to over $300 billion today) systematically routed highways through Black neighborhoods, destroying thriving communities while subsidizing white suburban flight and entrenching automotive corporate interests.

The legislation emerged from decades of lobbying by General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, tire companies, and the American Automobile Association. These industries had conspired through National City Lines to buy and dismantle urban streetcar systems across the country. The Highway Act locked in automobile dependency by funding 90% of interstate construction costs through federal fuel taxes while starving public transit of comparable investment.

Urban planners and state highway departments deliberately routed interstates through Black neighborhoods, which offered the “cheapest land” and the least political resistance due to Black citizens’ diminished political power under Jim Crow. In Miami, the I-95 extension destroyed the vibrant Overtown neighborhood, displacing 40,000 residents. In Birmingham, I-59 demolished the Fourth Avenue Business District. In Detroit, the I-375 expressway wiped out Black Bottom, home to the Paradise Valley entertainment district. Similar destruction occurred in cities from Boston to Los Angeles.

The program accelerated “white flight” by making suburban commuting feasible while isolating urban Black communities with walls of concrete. Highways created physical barriers that reinforced residential segregation, divided neighborhoods, increased pollution and health problems in adjacent communities, and destroyed the tax base of urban cores. Federal housing policy worked in tandem: FHA loans subsidized white suburban homeownership while redlining denied credit to Black urban residents.

The Interstate Highway System exemplified how massive public investment could be structured to benefit corporate interests while compounding racial inequality—government-funded infrastructure that enriched petroleum and automotive industries while systematically destroying Black wealth and community.