If you can choose to drive or walk, Wesley Morris, a Times critic and co-host of “Still Processing,” always chooses to walk. He grew up in Philadelphia, but he resisted getting his driver’s license until he was 32 years old.
The $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Biden last November allocated $ 1 billion to reconnect the highway-divided neighborhood.
In the mid-20th century, highways were built to modernize local transportation and meet the demands of postwar progress. However, these megaroad projects often expelled more than a million people nationwide, most of them black. Increased dependence on cars; and has caused decades of environmental harm.
Wesley was struck by the Biden administration’s initiative. This is partly due to the federal government’s recognition that the mid-century infrastructure policy has hurt the community. It made him think about the highways that could be dealt with by this bill. It was built in 1991 in his hometown of Vine Street Expressway.
As a kid, Wesley sometimes crossed the Vine Street Expressway. And he remembered that there was “what to do” when it was built. But he never wondered how the construction affected the neighborhood of Chinatown that it opened up. What happened to all the people who lived there? How has their life and their community changed? And why did Wesley take so long to ask herself these questions? Wesley went back to his hometown and tried to find out.
[You can listen to this episode of “Still Processing” above, or on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.]
After the highway, two very different Chinatowns
Philadelphia’s Chinatown is as vibrant as Chinatowns around the world. As you roam, you’ll find tea shops, delivery vans, restaurants, and markets that your neighborhood relies on. You can see it at least in some of the towns south of the VineStreet Expressway.
To the north of the highway are the Chinese Catholic Church and Schools of the Holy Redeemer, a social welfare center for the community, and some sub-market housing. Many Chinatown residents use these services, but they need to cross the freeway to reach them. This part of the neighborhood feels more industrial and less lively. This is evidence of the changes that VineStreet Expressway has forced the community to do.
When asked about the history of Vine Street Expressway, the following names come up: CeciliaMoy Yep, also known as “Godmother in Chinatown.. Cecilia, 92, has been fighting the major developments of Chinatown for over 60 years before the Vine Street Expressway was planned.
Cecilia has lived in Chinatown since she was in elementary school. And as far as she remembers Holy Redeemer Catholic Church and School “People wanted to send children from all over the city to Chinatown, learn Chinese at a Chinese school, and meet other children of the same ethnic background,” Cecilia said. I am saying.
“It’s not only where we went to school, but also where we got married and buried the dead,” Cecilia continued. “Everything that was part of our lives happened in the Holy Redeemer.”
The original plan for the Vine Street Expressway had to go straight through Chinatown and demolish the church. However, in the late 1960s, Cecilia was instrumental in the fight to maintain it. “We held a town meeting, but I broke the tradition by speaking.” Women don’t speak out in Chinatown. Now it’s, but it wasn’t before. was.”
“Cecilia is grumpy. She has a big spark of personality. But there is something about the frivolity that implies strength and determination.”
— Wesley Morris
Efforts to protect the Holy Redeemer of Cecilia ended with a compromise. The highway divided Chinatown into two, with the Redeemer on the north and the rest of the community on the south. Today, many students have to cross the freeway every day to go to school.
Wesley recently joined a group of children crossing the freeway to receive day care. One of the children said, “I feel like I’m hit by a car.” Another child replied, “It’s safe because it’s next to the church.” He continued, “God is always looking for us.”
Difficult crossroads for the elderly
Every Friday, more than 100 seniors in the neighborhood need to cross the freeway to the food bank. Crane Community Center, Next to the Church of the Holy Redeemer. Wesley joined their group living in the on-rock house, an apartment for the elderly, when they made the crossroads last Friday.
Eddie Wong, home manager at On Lok House, described the walk as a real game of Frogger. And he had a point — if Frogger was played by an 80-year-old man with a shopping cart. He emphasized the literal barriers that highways created among the elders in Chinatown and the need to go to food banks.
Upon arriving on the other side of the freeway, Wesley observed, “it feels like a completely different neighborhood.” There is a line of people waiting for food between the highway and the parking lot. “I was able to see with my own eyes what it meant to divide your neighborhood in half by part of the infrastructure,” Wesley said. However, waiting in line has become an important, if any, community experience. Friends catch up with each other and keep the spot along the shopping cart. When food is distributed, children exchange their favorite things, such as exchanging lunch boxes.
“Have you heard about all the bodies they dug?”
The Vine Street Expressway not only disrupted life in Chinatown, but also disturbed the peace of the dead, especially those buried in the cemetery of the first African Baptist church founded in 1809.
The plan to build a highway required digging a tomb from the churchyard and building a highway directly above it.
Overall, 89 bodies were excavated to give way to the highway, and then Eden Cemetery The Eden Cemetery was established in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, to house the remains of a black man whose tomb was moved for public works.
“Interfering with the tombs to actually lay the highway-I think people would say that if that weren’t done, we would be in the way of progress.”
— Rev. Griffith
Wesley met Terence Griffith, a Grenada-born minister of the church since 2001. “Our ancestors wouldn’t have expected this to happen,” said Rev. Griffith. Elevated roads overlooking where the graveyard used to be — now replaced by six-lane traffic jams.
Opportunity to find out
Wesley met many people as he explored new areas of his hometown. And he witnessed first-hand how a single infrastructure can shape the city’s experience. “You can live your life without someone like you. That is, there is no racially person like you in your life. That is when the city was founded. Because it’s a way. It’s been separated. “
He noticed that the Vine Street Expressway was part of this separation. “Things are dropped to Earth well below the level of the street. All those drivers can drive just past and the neighborhood they are driving really wants them there in the first place. I can’t even think of the fact that I wasn’t there. “
“But if you take a moment to look left, look right, or look up from the crowded, depressed highway that God forbids, you have the opportunity to think about what you’re actually driving,” Wesley said. I continued. Pass through or past or beyond. “