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35W in Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - AUGUST 2021 - A Shot of Downtown Minneapolis as Seen from the Newly Renovated 24th Avenue Pedestrian Bridge over the Nearly Complete Long-Term I-35W Renovation Project
Each day, up to 127,000 cars hop onto 35W, unaware of what existed underneath that stretch of south Minneapolis before the 1970s. Hennepin History Museum’s new exhibit hopes to change that and spotlight the massive cost of the freeway on poor, primarily Black communities.
Following the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, freeways began barreling through cities across the country. Designed to create quicker commutes from suburbia, the construction of Minneapolis’s 35W displaced and divided entire neighborhoods. In 1960, 80 percent of the Twin Cities’ Black population lived in the areas where I-35W, I-94, and Highway 55 were placed.
Businesses isolated from foot traffic failed. People who settled into homes and communities where they envisioned spending their lives watched those homes get demolished. Homeowners and renters alike received little to no relocation assistance. Who were those displaced residents? Where did they go? How did the highway impact their businesses and community relationships?
Through collected oral histories, archival maps, photographs, and more, Human Toll: A Public History of 35W tries to answer these questions and many others about housing discrimation, community division, and environmental justice.
It also spotlights community resistance against 35W’s construction, and, later, its expansion. “The anger that older south Minneapolis residents who lived through watching their friends and neighbors sell their homes, watching the houses being torn down, those are experiences…that people never forgot,” says Sharon Sayles Belton, community leader, former mayor of Minneapolis, and an interviewee of the project.
South Minneapolis community members teamed up with researchers from the Heritage and Public History program at the University of Minnesota to develop the multifaceted exhibit, which is part of a larger research project conducted over the past few years.
Make a pit stop at the exhibit located just two blocks from 35W and open until October 2022. Museum hours are Thursday and Fridays 10 a.m.–3 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m.–5 p.m. In tandem with the exhibit, HHM will also offer in-person and online events to deepen the understanding of systemic racism in Hennepin County.
The exhibit is free through the end of this year. Note the HHM building is not fully accessible and does require climbing stairs. You can also find essays, videos and more on the research project’s website.
Hennepin History Museum, 2303 3rd Ave. S., Mpls., 612-870-1329, hennepinhistory.org
