Ryan Reft is a historian of the Modern U.S. in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. Since 2017, he has worked as senior co-editor of the Urban History Association’s blog, The Metropole.
When the U.S. interstate system was constructed, spurred by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, many highways were purposefully routed through Black, Brown, and poor communities. These neighborhoods were destroyed, isolated from the rest of the city, or left to deteriorate over time.
Edited by Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips de Lucas, and Rebecca Retzlaff, Justice and the Interstates examines the toll that the construction of the U.S.