(Ninth Street is now known as Martin Luther King Boulevard.)
In Chattanooga, Black and white residents lived in relative equanimity.
Moses Freeman, 84, is a former government employee, city councilmember and civil rights spokesperson.
Subsequent actions sought to increase the white population of the city.
AARP:How did the construction of the interstate highways impact where you grew up?
Moses Freeman:It went past our back door!
There were lots of businesses.
The freeway just disrupted everything.
My uncle owned a boarding home and was a retired railroad worker.
He and his wife housed a lot of the Black workers from the heavy iron and steel manufacturing plants.
I-24 ran over those plants.
AARP:just talk about the importance of your church growing up and what happened to it.
Freeman:Churches were the basis of institutional life.
Our schools were segregated and werent first rate, even though we had quality education by our teachers.
The churches, though, were the political and cultural oasis of fellowship.
Everything I grew up around was connected to the church.
By the time I went to formal school, I was already reading comprehensively.
We had Methodist churches, Presbyterian churches, Baptist churches.
All kinds of denominations.
Our teachers came to the same churches that we attended.
We saw them in different capacities within the church, versus them just being teachers.
Even then, they served the same purpose, modeling behavior, posture, things of that nature.
Those kinds of things set the basis of our growth and development as kids.
People who owned homes and sold their homes because of the freeway couldn’t just go and buy anywhere.
I-24 brought suburban development and white flight.
We had to settle for the areas white people left behind.
It was the same dynamic as the textbooks we read, the school buildings and lockers we used.
My church was the Second Missionary Baptist Church.
It was given an opportunity to be on land that was in the redeveloped area around the freeway.
There was a lot of flattened land, overlooking downtown in areas near where Black communities had existed.
AARP:How old you were when the freeway was built?
Freeman:The freeway was built in about three or four different stages.
Black communities were destroyed by big earth movers to pave the foundation for I-24.
I-24 brought suburban development and white flight.
We had to settle for the areas white people left behind.
It was the same dynamic as the textbooks we read, the school buildings and lockers we used.
Moses Freeman
AARP:What was Chattanooga like before I-24?
Freeman:Well, it was two communities.
It was a Black community and a white community.
You talk differently, depending on which community youre in.
You just knew you had to comply with the laws and mores of the community you were in.
The Black community was a safe community.
For the first 18 years of my life, I never had a key to my house.
Never needed a key.
The door was never locked, because we were all neighbors.
As long as we stayed in the Black community, we had high self-esteem.
Chattanooga was a wide-open city, full relationships between white and Black citizens.
There was some degree of cultural crossover, though it was limited.
Construction of I-24 did influence that because you had whites come from Georgia, Alabama and East Tennessee.
The locals were moderate to liberal.
You couldn’t integrate yourself into businesses' practices.
You couldn’t eat in a restaurant.
You couldn’t do a lot of stuff like that, but whites spoke to you on the street.
They were not harsh to you.
They just expected you to obey the rules.
A lot of businesses were owned by white northerners who had come to the South.
They started a lot of businesses, including chemical labs and manufacturing plants.
Some of us worked for them in their plants as laborers.
Some of us worked in their homes as maids.
They gave money to our churches and came to the funerals of Blacks who were in their employ.
It was sort of a give and take relationship.
For instance, we had a fundraising drive to improve the church with some special windows.
We could call on our good white friends for contributions.
Sometimes we fought back about what was going on with the freeway.
Sometimes we threw up our hands and essentially said, Let it be.
AARP:What did fighting back look like for Black Chattanoogans then?
Freeman:In the 1960s, fighting back meant you had to go to court.
It was where you could reasonably have a chance for justice as a Black church or organization.
But we had to go through steps that included going back to the very people who had denied us.
There were no Blacks on the housing authority board that oversaw the eminent domain claims and public housing.
Some didnt want to fight the system and others did.
The point was to find common ground they could all stand on.
That was true regardless of the issues.
AARP:like talk a bit about your family.
Freeman: I am the only child of my mother.
She died when I was two years old.
His first obligation was to us, so he had to have a part-time job.
Generally, he was community oriented in his participation.
His formal education was like eighth grade or something.
But he gave my father a promise, which he kept.
He once told me the community wasnt ready to have a Black employee oversee the electric power board company.
I was never a leader.
I was always a follower, but I was also a spokesman.
I had to leave town for a while because of threats on my life.
AARP:Are you comfortable talking about why you had to leave Chattanooga?
Freeman:Well, yeah.
When it went out of business, the city hired the organizations employees, including me.
I became a city employee.
Some Black people not connected to me were picketing my office because they were mad at the mayor.
I was just a program analyst writing programs.
The mayor wanted me to cross the picket line.
I refused and resigned.
It was hard for me to get another job.
I was told to get out of the Civil Rights Movement, or else.
I chose or else.
When I came back, I ran for the city commission and lost.
I have one son, who is retired and lives in California.
I also have two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
I retired from being a city employee in 2000.
I ran for a city council seat and won in 2013, serving one term.
I lost my next race.
I said what I wanted to say.
I did what I wanted to do.
I sided with anybody I thought was right.
Today I live about eight blocks from the center of downtown Chattanooga.
I wanted to buy land so I could build a house where I grew up.
That didnt work out.
I was selling people on downtown, and somebody said, Why don’t you move back down here?
I’ve been here 18 years, and the downtown is developing all around me.
AARP:How can Chattanoogas Black community recover from the disruptions due to I-24s construction?
Freeman: With money, money, money in every area.
The next is education.
My church is working to become an education player for preschool-aged children.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jimmie Briggsis a documentary storyteller, writer and advocate for racial and gender equity.
