From Ashes to Asphalt: St. Paul’s Systematic Destruction of Black Neighborhoods
The historic Rondo neighborhood once spanned much of what is now Summit Hill and ran north to University Avenue. By 1950, more than 80% of St. Paul’s African American population lived there, leaving Rondo almost completely independent from the white neighborhoods surrounding it. But as the neighborhood thrived, Minnesota legislators began plans for a new highway system. In 1956, when the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed, St. Paul officials felt the pressure to start building. Concerns voiced by residents and city planners were almost entirely ignored as construction began on what would in 1968 become Interstate 94. Any debate over possible routes centered mostly on the concerns of (white) business owners, in their efforts to boost stagnating sales.
When the route through the historic Rondo neighborhood was finalized, the city demanded that residents sell their homes to the city for dirt-cheap prices — often only a fraction of the actual property value. People that refused to vacate their homes and businesses were met by police with sledgehammers — destroying walls, smashing windows and even tearing apart the plumbing. A lush and vibrant neighborhood was effectively sliced in half, displacing nearly 600 families, 300 businesses and forcing thousands of African-Americans to seek alternative housing in a highly segregated city.
Fifty years later, a community still healing from the wounds inflicted by I-94 faced yet another trauma — the light-rail. In 2010, as planning for the Green Line began, the NAACP and many Rondo businesses and residents filed a lawsuit against the Federal Transit Administration on the grounds that project planners had not adequately assessed the impact that a light-rail would have on minorities and low-income people. “We weren’t at the table at the inception of this project,” said Nathaniel Khaliq, the 2010 leader of the St. Paul NAACP. “Some other folks made the decision about where the project would be located. We started off on the wrong foot.” Sound familiar? That’s because it is. Much like Khaliq feared, the Green Line has caused housing prices to jump sharply, once again forcing many families out of their Frogtown homes. The waiting lists for some low-income housing projects have more than 300 people on them.
The light-rail now runs down University Avenue, only a few blocks away from I-94. Both are constant reminders of the suffering that the Rondo community has faced at the hands of institutional and structural racism. And running perpendicular to I-94 lies another, albeit more subtle reminder — Interstate 35-E.
In the Minnesota House, representative Pat Garofolo (R-Farmington) filed a bill in early February to increase the speed limit on Interstate 35E to 55 miles per hour, a 10 mph increase from the current limit. Affectionately referred to by St. Paul residents as the “starter freeway,” the stretch of 35E that runs from the south metro to downtown St. Paul was completed in 1990 after almost three decades of complaints and lawsuits from those living in the area. In order to finally complete the project, Minnesota lawmakers agreed to lower the speed limit to 45, ostensibly to reduce noise pollution. The stretch of 35E is the only interstate left in the nation with a speed limit lower than 50 miles per hour, and efforts have been made almost yearly to increase the speed limit — with no success.
40 years after the city of St. Paul committed one of the most grotesque acts of systematic racism in its history, the city bent over backwards to meet the demands of people living near I-35. Why? Because they were white, middle-class families. St. Paul agreed to one of the most frivolous speed limit laws in the entire country in efforts to appease residents, where decades earlier they had literally ripped black people’s property to shreds to make room for 94.
In 2017, there remain many vocal supporters of the 45 mph limit, mostly those living along Interstate 35. St. Paul is unlikely to break its tradition of appeasing wealthy white citizens, and so the starter freeway will remain a symbol of white privilege.
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