Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Center at Clark Atlanta University, says, and I quote- "Transportation in Atlanta has always been mired in race and racism". Allow me to analyze the aforementioned statement with respect to Atlanta and The United States in general and come up with a definitive conclusion as to how valid the statement really is.

The name 'Rosa Parks' will remain indelibly etched in American history. It all began on the 1st of December, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white person. This led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Thus, transportation, something we seem to be so nonchalant about, was a pivotal part of the civl rights movement. This, in my view, is pretty intriguing.

The struggle for equality with respect to public transit systems stretches far back into 1896 when a case over segregated rail cars made it to the U.S Supreme Court case. This case, Plessy v/s Ferguson, brought to light the highly debatable notion of "separate but equal".

Public transit was equated with Black and poor people and with crime and poverty. In Atlanta, the MARTA was seen as a means of travel for the African Americans who were not as affluent as their White counterparts.

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation that funded the interstate highway system. This seemingly inconsequential event, had severe implications on life in the urban areas and in the suburbs.

The highway network enabled the middle-class people who could afford transportation to flee to the suburbs, mostly dominated by white people, from the urban areas, ,mostly dominated by the low income earning African Americans. This augmented the pre-existing segregation and made matters worse. Moreover, the highway project wiped out the settlements of the low-income earning African Americans, who, in turn, were provided little or no compensation for their lost property. They were never given what their houses were actually worth. Instead, as Ora Lee Patterson puts it across, they were given "nickels and dimes" for their property. And to add insult to injury, government officials were ruthless in the manner in which they decapitated neighborhoods.

One such neighborhood which had to bear the brunt of the Government's immorality was Rondo in St. Paul, Minnesota. The image on the left is indicative of the construction work ripping through the neighborhood and the one on the left gives us a picture of what the Rondo looked like after the construction work was over and after the damage had been done. Later, evidence suggested that the Government chose the route for Interstate-94 because it was in the city's low income earning black neighborhood. Thus, this decision was a political rather than an engineering one.

Thus, what I find really baffling is that the Government propagated this segregation and blatantly committed human rights violations. One may argue that the African Americans were brought into the United States as slaves and therefore, should not be level pegging with the native Americans. In my opinion, this is just a baseless argument. Thomas Jefferson once said and I quote, "All men are created equal". Thus, every man has equal rights irrespective of race, religion, color, caste, sex etc.

Thus, I feel I have provided enough substantiation to validate my claim. For long parts of American history, transportation and racial discrimination went hand in hand and some of the actions of the governing bodies simply perpetuated the pitiful plight of the African Americans.

CITATIONS:

1) “Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race, and Inequality.” By Andrea Bernstein and Nancy Solomon. American Radio Works. WNYC, New York. Podcast.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott

3) http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Interstate_94

4) http://events.mnhs.org/Timepieces/SourceDetail.cfm?SourceID=412