Poster featuring three maps and explanatory text, published by the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC), the “action-coordinating committee of organizations fighting against freeways and for rapid mass transit.”
ECTC leadership, as listed on the map, included R.H. Booker (chairman), Marion Barry (vice-chairman), Charles I. Cassell, Fred A. Heutte, and Johnie D. Wilson; Mary Alice Brown, Anne Heutte, Angela Rooney, all of the Secretarial Committee; Simon L. Cain (legal counsel), Mrs. Leon Brooks (treasurer), planning consultants 2MJO, Black Advocacy Planners, Louis M. Florenzo (chairman, Speakers Bureau), and publicity director Sammie Abdullah Abbott, who is credited with the White Men’s Roads thru Black Men’s Homes slogan and the poster itself.
There are three maps with various scales.
Top left shows the proposed North Leg of the freeway system in relation to the proposed 3 Sisters Bridge.
The center map shows the path of the proposed 8-lane depressed freeway, stemming from the Potomac River Parkway and the Three Sisters Bridge, and showing how it would connect to the Center Leg.
The largest map, underneath the title, shows in detail specific buildings and communities that would be destroyed by the freeway’s path as it was designed to go along U Street, through Shaw, down to Rhode Island Avenue, and east towards Florida Avenue. Pride, Inc., Horton’s Funeral Home, the Acacia Masonic Temple, the Grimke School, the Cleveland School, Howard Theatre, Wonder Bread Factory, and the Morse School are among the endangered locations.
There are two main text blocks.
Top right:
WARNING! THIS BLACK COMMUNITY’S BUSINESS’ AND HOMES IN PATH OF FREEWAY BULL-DOZERS!
On Aug. 9, 1969, without the required public hearings the City Council by a 6-2 vote joined with cracker Congressman Natcher and Broyhill against D.C. citizens.
Justifying their sell-out vote, Councilmen Hahn, Tucker, Yeldell, J. Moore, Daugherty & Haywood lied in saying the 3-Sisters Bridge would displace only 3 families.
The bitter truth is that the bridge is a link in the 30-mile freeway system which would displace over 25,000 people, mostly Black.
One of the connector roads off the 3-Sisters Bridge is the NORTH LEG of the Inner Loop.
Mid-left and center (including assigned title)
Besides destroying the Black business district and splitting the community by this 8-lane ditch, the DC Highway Dept. in 1966 estimated that the NORTH LEG would
· Destroy 2393 family housing units
· Bulldoze 8376 persons out of homes
· Wipe out 2110 jobs
· Remote 40 acres of taxable land
Institutionalized racism thru Urban Renewal and Freeways destroyed Black communities in SW Washington; Nashville, Tenn.; Seattle, Wash.; Charlestown, W. Va.; Ossinnning N.Y.; Newark, N.J.
IT MUST NOT HAPPEN HERE!
Organize to Defend Your Community from … White Men’s Roads Thru Black Men’s Homes
The poster is part of the J. George Frain papers (MS 0565), which comprises documents produced or compiled by Frain, a Congressional aide and community activist.
As early as 1952 Congress passed the National Capital Transportation Act authorizing studies of possible highway routes. An inner loop Freeway System was proposed in 1955, and by 1956 Congress passed the Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The 1959 "Transportation Plan" included a multiple-lane "Potomac Parkway" through the Georgetown waterfront, a Three Sisters Bridge connecting Virginia to DC, a Northwest Freeway parallel to Wisconsin Avenue, an "Inner Loop" Freeway, an Intermediate Loop Freeway and freeways in several directions from downtown. With control of all appropriations for the District by a Democratic Senator from Kentucky, the D.C. Board of Commissioners, acting as the government of the District, insisted that they had the right to pursue Congressional wishes without public hearings or notifying D.C. citizens.
The Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) was an interracial citizen protest group comprising residents of Washington, DC from neighborhoods across the city. The group was one of many critical influences on the eventual demise of the controversial mid 20th-century freeway plan. While about 10 miles of freeways were indeed built (leading to highways that dump drivers out onto city streets), the civic advocacy of the ECTC, among other activists and civic groups as well as the Ford Administration’s decision to shift locally allocated highway funds to subways, led to demise of the Three Sisters Bridge, the ultimate failure of the freeway plan, and the expansion of the Metro system.
DCPS Cornerstones Curricular Connections
Social Studies
Grade 6 Social Studies - Thinking Like a Geographer
Grade 12 DC History and Government - Project Soapbox
English Language Arts
Grade 2 ELA - Take Action!
Grade 3 ELA - Washington, D.C. It's Right Outside My Door!
Grade 8 ELA - Messages of Social Justice
DCPS Standards
Social Studies
6.1.8: Ask geographic questions and obtain answers from a variety of sources, such as books, atlases, and other written materials; statistical source material; fieldwork and interviews; remote sensing; word processing; and GIS. Reach conclusions and give oral, written, graphic, and cartographic expression to conclusions.
12.DC.10.3: Explain how African American leaders resisted discrimination.
English Language Arts
W.2.8: With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
W.3.8: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.
CCSS.ELA.SL.8.2: Analyze the purpose of information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation.
Common Core Standards
Literacy in History/Social Studies
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.6 Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.8 Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.5 Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.8 Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author's claims.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
CSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.8 Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.
White Men’s Roads thru Black Men’s Homes: Reflecting on DC’s Freeway Fight (90 min)
On November 18, 2020, the DC History Center presented activist Samuel Jordan and journalist Martin Austermuhle in conversation about how civic activism defeated the plan for federal highways through DC.
A related resource page, A Laboratory for Federal Experiments, further explores this and other issues relating to the District's non-state status.
DC History Center Context for Today program, 2020
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the issue of the freeway fight, the Three Sisters Bridge, and related issues.
"The Art of D.C. Politics: Broadsides, Banners, and Bumper Stickers" by Faye P. Haskins
Washington History Vol. 12 No. 2, 2000-2001.
"The City under the Hill," by Steven J. Diner
Washington History Vol. 8 No. 1, 1996
"Unbuilt Washington: The Three Sisters Bridge Georgetowners Wanted," by Don Hawkins
Washington History Vol. 28 No. 1, 2016
"Roberts Bishop Owen, 1926-2016," by Kyla Sommers
Washington History Vol. 28 No. 2, 2016
This 2015 Washingtonian article by Harry Jaffee outlines the impact the demise of the freeway plan had on the District, with a focus on the individuals who fought the proposed plan.
DC Preservation League's DC Historic Sites, Civil Rights Tour: Protest - Reginald Booker, Anti-freeway activist
DC Historic Sites is based on the DC Inventory of Historic Sites, the city’s official list of properties deemed worthy of recognition and protection for their contribution to the cultural heritage of the nation’s capital. DC Historic Sites was developed by the DC Preservation League, Washington's citywide nonprofit advocate solely dedicated to the preservation, protection, and enhancement of the historic resources of our nation's capital.
DC Public Library's People's Archive, Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis Records
The items include correspondence, clippings, government reports, legislative testimony, hearing transcripts, litigation, flyers, posters, maps, picket signs, press releases, and printed matter. Significant topics covered in the records include the fight to stop the construction of the Seven Sisters Bridge, I-66, I-95, the North Central Freeway, and the fight to save 69 government-confiscated homes in Northeast Washington, D.C.