ipl-logo

Federal Highway Act Sociology

771 Words4 Pages

Zac Chambers
July 14th, 2016
Sociology 230
Final Project Rough Draft

Federal Highway Act of 1956 and Black Poverty
This paper will analyze the extent to which the unforeseen consequences of the 1956 Federal Highway act negatively affected minority groups in the United States Citizens, specifically black neighborhoods. Since the construction of the highways took 35 years, the focus of this report will begin with the passing of the Highway act and last until the highway’s completion (1991) in order to include the full effects of negligent planning. This paper will discuss the displacement of citizens from their homes inside the United States, and attempt to examine the remnants of redlining in the U.S.
The Federal Highway Act of 1956 was passed …show more content…

The parties that passed these acts had the best intentions in mind, and intended to improve life in America. And on the larger scale, these acts were leaps forward, and shaped America into the country that it is today. Sweeping generalizations aside, however, there are several cases in which the Federal Highway Act actually ruined people’s lives, rather than improving them.
These Federal Highways, while brilliant in theory, were poorly planned. They were based off of the German Autobahns which Eisenhower had seen during World War Two, and were streamlined to optimize transportation time to all parts of America. Many of these highways were not planned out completely, and were simply drawn on the map where they would go, not realizing what was already there until construction had begun …show more content…

In Miami, an exchange of Interstate 95 took up 40 blocks of residential businesses and destroyed 10,000 homes and businesses (Blas). This is exactly what the Adequate Housing Act had guaranteed would not happen. The homes that were not directly destroyed by the highway decreased in value, as the constant noise and lights of the highway kept residents up at night (Blas). Many people had their front lawns seized by the government, with little to no compensation (Blas). One novelist, Homer Bigart, stated that the highways had “sent great rivers of concrete creeping like lava through residential neighborhoods and commercial areas, dislocating families, schools, churches, and

Show More
Related

Gentrification All Bad Justin Davidson Analysis

1841 Words | 8 Pages

On a normal scale, measuring the association between two subjects, one would assume gentrification and school segregation are not related in any sense. In fact, most would argue that school segregation ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education. This assumption would be incorrect. Deep within the American society lies a new kind of segregation that is neither talked about nor dealt with. Segregation is a result of gentrification—the buying and renovation of houses in deteriorated neighborhoods by upper-income families or individuals—thus, improving property values but often displacing low-income families.

Read More

The 1619 Project And Its Impact On American History And Society

714 Words | 3 Pages

The initiative challenges the idea of American exceptionalism by critically reviewing the economic, political, and cultural mechanisms that have sustained racial disparity. It reveals the ongoing consequences of colonialism and racial oppression, such as discriminatory policies, wealth inequality, and systematic racism, by emphasizing the experiences and viewpoints of oppressed communities. The 1619 Project seeks to challenge the prevalent historical narrative and open a discussion about colonialism's continued effects on modern-day America. According to one of the project's articles by Matthew Desmond, continuing residential segregation and unequal access to opportunities are the effect of racial discrimination in housing regulations, showing how colonialism and racial injustice still have an impact. The 1619 Project also questions the idea of American development as a linear path, focusing instead on the cycle of history and the deep foundations of inequity.

Read More

African-Americans Affected By The Great Migration

100 Words | 1 Pages

The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.

Read More

Police Brutality Annotated Bibliography Summary

1391 Words | 6 Pages

Annotated Bibliography Books Dudley, William, et al., editors. Police Brutality. D.L. Bender, 1991. • Police Brutality gives information on how police brutality is a widespread issue in the United States and explains different controversies and cases that relate to police brutality. • The editors of this book include activists and nonfiction authors who provide reliable information on what happened during different incidences of police brutality and the viewpoints and controversies that come with it.

Read More

How Did The Interstate Highway System Change America

407 Words | 2 Pages

The Interstate Highway System, authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, was a massive infrastructure project that aimed to connect cities and towns across the United States. The system consisted of over 41,000 miles of highways, and it fundamentally changed the way Americans traveled and lived. In this essay, we will explore how the Interstate Highway System transformed America in four key areas: transportation, commerce, suburbanization, and tourism. One of the most significant ways that the Interstate Highway System changed America was by revolutionizing transportation. Before the system was built, traveling long distances by car was slow and treacherous, with many roads in disrepair or unpaved.

Read More

Broader Ribbons Across The Land Essay

1073 Words | 5 Pages

Matthew Nuanez 11/15/2015 HIST151 Paper 2 The passage of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highway Act in 1956 is acknowledged by some historians as a highly significant piece of legislation passed by United States congress. The act created an abundance of jobs and changed the scene in America by leading to the growth of suburbs, a decline in inner cities, and a rise to new business (Snyder).

Read More

Summary Of The Condemnation Of Blackness

650 Words | 3 Pages

Professor Khalil Girban Muhammad gave an understanding of the separate and combined influences that African Americans and Whites had in making of present day urban America. Muhammad’s lecture was awakening, informative and true, he was extremely objective and analytical in his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the other hand, when given the same education and opportunities, there are no differences between black and white achievements and positive contributions to society.

Read More

Race Discrimination In Baltimore Essay

446 Words | 2 Pages

After recent protests in Baltimore, Badger (2016) explores the nature of policies set in the early 1900’s that have shaped the city of Baltimore, and that continue to have an effect on their quality of life. Actions such as redlining and urban renewal have perpetuated poverty and segregation in the same neighborhoods today as 75 year ago. This article calls attention to the effect of system-wide race discrimination in Baltimore, and how policies create a cyclical link between race and disadvantage in communities. Racial disparities across many subsystems have created a system of race discrimination in which it’s emergent effects implant uber discrimination into our culture and institutions (Reskin, 2012). Reskin (2012) explains how emergent discrimination intensifies disparities within each subsystem and creates systems of race discrimination.

Read More

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth Analysis

1172 Words | 5 Pages

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary that explores public housing in Saint Louis, Missouri, in particular the history of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex. Pruitt-Igoe was a public housing project billed as the perfect solution in the early 1950s, to solve the problems of slums in Saint Louis and to bring people back into a city that had seen a population decline from previous years. Saint Louis was an ageing city desperate to regain their postwar prominence as a bustling city, but faced many challenges pertaining to the racial makeup of the segregated city and the loss of many jobs to suburban areas. Many whites had begun to participate in what is now referred to as “white flight”, or the migration of middle class whites to

Read More

North Carolina Twentieth Century Analysis

481 Words | 2 Pages

North Carolina began the twentieth century in similar circumstances to the last century: economically, educationally and socially behind much of the rest of the country. Economically, the old bastions of textiles, light manufacturing and farming were still providing low wages for much of the workforce, precluding the state from making expensive ventures to innovate. Educationally, many children worked, making education difficult particularly in rural areas. Thanks to a heavily partisan political situation, there were a lot of restrictive rules affecting African American people in the early years of the twentieth century. To see how these factors change, a random selection of three decades was chosen.

Read More

The Pros And Cons Of Reparations To African Americans

888 Words | 4 Pages

Jiovanni Lopez Toni Fannin English 122-5504 27 April 2023 Will Reparations be Enough The question of whether or not the United States government should pay some form of reparations to African Americans is a complicated problem, with strong arguments on both sides. Including arguments from Steven Dubner which he mentioned in “The Pros and Cons of Reparations” podcast. “On one hand, many argue that the United States government has systematically created barriers for African Americans, such as redlining, which denied them access to home ownership and the ability to create generational wealth. As a result, many Black Americans have been unable to accumulate wealth for generations, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and inequality.”

Read More

Robert Moses's Positive Effects On Society

571 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the course of history, Robert Moses, a renowned city planner, impacted America through his innovative ideas regarding transportation and infrastructures. In comparison to other engineers Moses possessed some unorthodox methods and styles. Between the 20s until the 60s, Moses’s work made various positive and negative effects on society. Some positive effects include: creating jobs and connecting different cities and areas. Regardless of Moses’s positive effects, some negative effects include: the loss of people’s homes through eviction and Moses’s refusal to build mass transit systems.

Read More

Black Men Stereotypes

1714 Words | 7 Pages

One way in which this fear is implemented is by increasing the inequality between races. Urban planning, in particular, has played a large role in this as it has historically advantaged some people while putting others at a disadvantage. From gentrification and racial disparities in law enforcement to practices such as blockbusting and redlining, it is apparent that policies and decisions made by city planners were not designed to benefit everyone equally. Particularly the Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Both of these policies displaced residents through the use of eminent domain and condemnation laws (Budds, “How Urban Design Perpetuates Racial Inequality – And What We Can Do About It”).

Read More

Civil Rights In The Late 19th And Early 20th Century

279 Words | 2 Pages

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large portion of Americans were restricted from civil and political rights. In American government in Black and White (Second ed.), Paula D. McClain and Steven C. Tauber and Vanna Gonzales’s power point slides, the politics of race and ethnicity is described by explaining the history of discrimination and civil rights progress for selective groups. Civil rights were retracted from African Americans and Asian Americans due to group designation, forms of inequality, and segregation. These restrictions were combatted by reforms such as the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc. Although civil and political

Read More

Essay On Housing Discrimination

1517 Words | 7 Pages

Public Policy on Housing Discrimination Executive Summary Housing discrimination and segregation have long been present in the American society (Lamb and Wilk). The ideals of public housing and home buying have always been intertwined with the social and political transformation of America, especially in terms of segregation and inequality of capital and race (Wyly, Ponder and Nettking). Nevertheless, the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and in Baltimore due to alleged police misconduct resulting to deaths of black men brought light on the impoverished conditions in urban counties in America (Lemons). This brings questions to the effectiveness of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in devising more fair-housing facilities (Jost).

Read More

More about Federal Highway Act Sociology

Related Topics

Open Document