The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City

by Eric Avila

When the interstate highway program connected America’s cities, it also divided them, cutting through and destroying countless communities. Affluent and predominantly white residents fought back in a much heralded “freeway revolt,” saving such historic neighborhoods as Greenwich Village and New Orleans’s French Quarter. This book tells of the other revolt, a movement of creative opposition, commemoration, and preservation staged on behalf of the mostly minority urban neighborhoods that lacked the political and economic power to resist the onslaught of highway construction.

Within the context of the larger historical forces of the 1960s and 1970s, Eric Avila maps the creative strategies devised by urban communities to document and protest the damage that highways wrought. The works of Chicanas and other women of color—from the commemorative poetry of Patricia Preciado Martin and Lorna Dee Cervantes to the fiction of Helena Maria Viramontes to the underpass murals of Judy Baca—expose highway construction as not only a racist but also a sexist enterprise. In colorful paintings, East Los Angeles artists such as David Botello, Carlos Almaraz, and Frank Romero satirize, criticize, and aestheticize the structure of the freeway. Local artists paint murals on the concrete piers of a highway interchange in San Diego’s Chicano Park. The Rondo Days Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Black Archives, History, and Research Foundation in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami preserve and celebrate the memories of historic African American communities lost to the freeway.

Bringing such efforts to the fore in the story of the freeway revolt, The Folklore of the Freeway moves beyond a simplistic narrative of victimization. Losers, perhaps, in their fight against the freeway, the diverse communities at the center of the book nonetheless generate powerful cultural forces that shape our understanding of the urban landscape and influence the shifting priorities of contemporary urban policy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Urban Planning, Urban, Race, Academic

248 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are really so many things to like about this book.

First of all, it situates itself firmly in the idea that in the United States, undertaking an examination of any aspect of history requires us to make visible the whiteness dominating American culture. It is necessary to hold that view in order to have anything that looks like a competent understanding.

You cannot dismantle racism if you ignore that from 1959-1963, the heyday of highway-making, Alabama's state highway director was also the leader of his local Klan-adjacent organization, the White Citizens Council.

Or that the Federal Housing Administration codified race as the single biggest determinant of "blight" in a neighborhood at the same time that the federal handbook for selecting highway locations considered "blighted" areas the best place to knock down and run a road over.

Because once you start seeing these types of connection, it turns up everywhere. I found so many of the historical activities in this book connect to present-day discussions.

For instance, this story on how sixth graders in Oakland started getting curious about restrictions on highway travel in theirs and other neighborhoods directly relates to how those highways were originally laid out. So as that story examines why big truck travel and its accompanying air pollution are confined to I-880 and not I-580, this book has the backstory: I-880 ran through and over the historically Black area of West Oakland.

One of my favorite chapters of the book unpacks art as a response to freeway invasion. It's a core tenet of the book that art, theatre, muralism, and dance are vital to a holistic understanding of oppression and resistance.

In particular, the author delves deeply into two strands of art made in response to a contested L.A. freeway. One strand from the Eastside, a predominantly Chicano/a area, and the other from Westside, which is predominantly white. There's a fantastic set of reproductions of the art in question, laid out side by side, to give you an idea of the difference in both privilege and perspective.

(For instance, which of these camps of artists would you expect to have access to a helicopter to use for photo work? And what does a birds-eye view of the freeway vs. a pylon-level view tell you about who's painting?) Eye-opening.

Additionally, a later section looks at the cultural value of muralism in Chicano/a art and politics, that made me think more deeply about this story around the significance of an upswelling of murals featuring La Llorona, an important
figure in Chicano/a mythology.

So many connections to see once you know where to look.

And finally, this book isn't written in High Academic. While the text sometimes strays into abstracts, it remains active, succinct, and readable. I appreciate that effort to extend access.

All in all, a powerful history book, especially if you are or are considering being involved in planning and development. Or if you live in a house, in a city, town or any cluster of buildings that might, one day, find a road running through it.

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avila's look at the highway revolt's less victorious moments and the way those who were unable (due to systematic racism) to successfully fend off the highways came to incorporate them into their art and culture offers useful and unusual perspective, but too often it gets bogged down in academic jargon. I wanted fewer broad, sweeping statements of analysis and more drilling down into the lives and words of the artists and activist he profiles from afar.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

useful

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a local book group whose topic is the freeway system. (I know what you're thinking--a book club about freeways? Is this for urban planners? Don't you have anything better to do???) The book was academic, but I enjoyed its treatment of a topic that I, and I think most other people, expend very little mental energy pondering. Seeing something so pedestrian elevated to something academic and worthy of analysis and deconstruction, was pretty eye-opening. I thought about travel and about our urban landscape in a totally different way, seeing for the first time how freeways create both boundaries and pathways through a landscape that is hidden from view. Seeing the freeways from both above (the gods-eye view of planners) and below (the communities living in the freeways' shadow) sparked a new curiosity about the urban world that surrounds me. It was also fascinating to learn about the history that led to the creating of the freeway system that I now take for granted, and to imagine the pre-freeway world of buggies and street cars. Without question, the most blood boiling, hackles-raising passages of the book concerned the overt racism in the planning and building of freeways; communities were literally obliterated from the face of the earth in a deliberate effort to eliminate "blight" (read: communities of color). That legacy continues to impact the communities that have managed to eek out a living in the shadow of the freeways, using folk art and community festivals to remember and reimagine their neighborhoods.

My main criticism of the book is that I thought it did not go deep enough into the histories and stories of the various communities it treats. I would have liked to know more about what happened to communities impacted by the freeways, and about the ways in which the movements to oppose the freeways were successful and not successful. What is the legacy of freeway opposition movements today? I felt this book would serve as an excellent jumping off point for an American Studies course because of its diverse treatment of subjects including urban planning, social movements, art and art criticism, racism, sexism, and classism (and likely other "isms" that I'm not remembering now).

[Eugenio Negro · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books that you have to give to everyone once you read it, a how-to and, for your more capitalist friends, a why of freeway resistance and removal.
The writing is academic for sure, but he said he was a great researcher, not a great writer. The bibliography, however, is stellar. Have already ordered several books from the library system such as Helena Viramontes. Why am I just finding out about all this stuff??? Thank you Mr Avila!

[Johnny]

Good quick history of freeways in first chapter, then a great history of how freeways work themselves into the actual political and cultural fabric of a city.

[Ellen Moth]

intro; chaps 1-3 for hi568

[Meghan Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this for a final paper I'm writing in grad school. great book, super enlightening. I'm probably going to quote it a lot in the paper. fuck cars, highways destroy cities, tear them all down.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting History that is new to me.

[Mary Rizzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis of the cultural impact of freeway building in urban areas. While urban historians have written a great deal about the citizen battles against freeways in the 1960s and 1970s, fewer have thought about how the communities where freeways were built have incorporated them into their cultural life.

[Andrew Leung · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️