How Terry Sanford greenlighted the Big Dig

“By 1987 Reagan found his control over Congress slipping….The Democratic majority in the House easily overrode his veto [of what would be the last interstate highway authorization], and the Senate did the same by a single vote.

“A hapless freshman senator from North Carolina [Terry Sanford] , who had opposed the bill because there wasn’t enough pork for his state, switched his vote after a phalanx of senators threatened to kill federal subsidies for tobacco farmers.

“In a curious way, then, those subsidies enabled Boston to transform its landscape with the most expensive interstate highway project in history [to be nicknamed the Big Dig].

— From Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life” by Tom Lewis (2013)

 

There was only so much the Green Book could do

“Through the ’50s and well into the ’60s, African-Americans bought the Green Book [The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide] and other guides. But just being on the highway could be a frightening experience.

“In the summer of 1960, Irene Staple’s parents drove her to Anniston, Ala., to give her a look at their roots and to teach her a lesson in present-day life in the Deep South.

” ‘By the time we got to Raleigh-Durham there was a tension in the air,’ Staples remembered. ‘By the time we got to Alabama I was hysterical.’

“Shell Oil had provided the family with detailed road maps and a list of all the Shell stations along the route. When the family returned to New York, Staple’s father returned his credit card to the company. Shell stations in the South had refused to serve him because he was black.”

— From Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life” by Tom Lewis (2013)