Kirkersville Bypass
Here in Pataskala, Ohio, we live in what used to be “out in the country”. Even when I arrived in 1978 though, the country-side was “receding”. There were already suburban-type developments, and while the school still had a chapter of the “FFA” (Future Farmers of America) it would only last a few more years. Today, what used to be thousands of acres of farmland are “distribution centers”, Amazon “fulfillment centers”, and other industrial complexes. In fact, when a combine harvester goes down Broad Street, folks now stop and try to figure out what it is.
One left over of this era of expansion is what our community jokingly calls “the Kirkersville bypass”. Kirkersville is a village on the eastern edge of the local school district, one of hundreds perched on the sides of the National Road – US 40. The hotels and restaurants in Kirkersville were left high and dry when traffic moved from US 40 about two miles south to Interstate 70. Even the Kirkersville Ice Cream shop, Kirk Cone, finally closed, though the Post Office still survives.
But, once upon a time in the early sixties, Kirkersville was an “end” of I-70. It was easy to build interstate highways through the farm fields, but as construction approached urban areas it took a lot more effort, time, and dislocation. So Kirkersville was the “spot” where I-70 was merged over to the older National Road. From there it was a “local” highway: Kirkersville, Etna, Reynoldsburg, Whitehall, Bexley, and finally the City of Columbus. When I-70 eventually “went through” Columbus, the merge was left high and dry, a four-lane bypass connecting US 40 to little State Route 158, avoiding “downtown Kirkersville”. Two of the lanes were closed, the rest remains the “Kirkersville Bypass”.
Urban Renewal
It was in the late sixties and early seventies. The programs were called “urban renewal” and “improved city access”, and they were implemented in many (mostly) urban areas in the United States. Here in Columbus, Ohio; they built I-70 right through the southside of downtown, splitting neighborhoods with ten lanes of interstate highway (Hanford Village). Not surprising, the neighborhoods that were paved over were poor, and mostly minority. The beautiful “ribbons of concrete” replaced old houses, businesses, churches and schools. They destroyed communities.
It’s wasn’t just in the sixties and seventies. Whole neighborhoods are still vanishing: what two decades ago was Mohawk Middle School and Africentric High School is now part of the ever-expanding “Nationwide” Children’s Hospital complex here in Columbus, covering more than a mile on the south wall of downtown I-70.
To the city leaders it was a “no-brainer”, especially after the urban unrest of the 1960’s. Tear down the old, build the new. Move the poorer neighborhoods farther from the city-center, and make downtown “safer”. And even when the neighborhoods remained, many were “gentrified”. The old homes were re-built, old warehouses made into “loft” apartments, and the cost of housing went up so much that the original occupants couldn’t afford to stay. In Columbus it’s now the areas surrounding downtown: German Village, Italian Village, “Old Town East” and the Children’s Hospital complex. The city’s near west side is now under “development” as well.
A New Holiday
It all “looks” great. We can drive on Broad Steet in Old Town and marvel at the turn of the century homes. There are expensive new apartment complexes in Italian Village, within walking distance of downtown. Downtown Columbus is “revitalized”, a place where people can live as well as work. But at what cost? Where did the folks who lived there “before” go?
Yesterday was Juneteenth, the new national holiday celebrating the end of slavery as an institution in the United States. But we should remember that Juneteenth itself is a holiday based in deception. While the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January of 1863, and the Civil War ended in April of 1865, it wasn’t until June that the Black communities around Galveston, Texas find out that they were now emancipated. It wasn’t that the governing white folks didn’t know, they just refused to acknowledge or tell their enslaved people.
A Long Way To Go
Juneteenth didn’t end discrimination. Neither did the Thirteenth, Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, or even the 1964 Civil Rights Act almost one hundred years later. Today we have many who say that “it’s all even now”, and that America shouldn’t worry about discrimination. Here’s some statistics to think about. 70 out of 100,000 Black mothers die in childbirth today, compared to 27 White mothers. Black people make up 35% of imprisoned Americans, though they are only 13% of the population. Black household income average is $45,300; White households average $68,785.
And when it comes to building new highways, factories, hospitals; it’s still easier to pave over a poor community than a wealthy one. America calls that progress, but it’s also the destruction of someone’s home, community, and livelihood. We’re still doing that today, in the 21st Century. There’s no such thing as “all even” now. We have a long way to go for that.
