Atlanta Through the Archives

Interstate 20 Constructed to Delineate Black and White Atlanta

Summary

Interstate 20, the east-west corridor that connects with I-75 and I-85 in Atlanta’s center, was deliberately plotted along a winding route in the late 1950s to serve, in the words of Mayor Bill Hartsfield, as “the boundary between the white and Negro communities” on the west side of town (Kruse, NYT). The construction resulted in the displacement of thousands of Black families and coupled with the increasing white flight to northern suburbs, these trends had become a local joke coined as “The City Too Busy Moving to Hate.”

SOURCES:

Kruse, Kevin. What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot. August 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.html