By the Nineteen Forties, the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Adams was turning into a thriving, racially integrated community.

Black residents had been transferring in, thanks partly to an early authorized victory towards the covenants that had restricted homeownership to white households. One of many residents concerned within the case was Hattie McDaniel, the “Gone with the Wind” actor recognized for throwing events at her West Adams home that drew stars like Depend Basie, Duke Ellington, Clark Gable and Lena Horne. Finally, the neighborhood got here to be often called Sugar Hill, a tribute to the Harlem neighborhood of the identical identify.

However within the Fifties, the residents of Los Angeles’s Sugar Hill started to listen to alarming news: Metropolis planners had been fascinated by constructing a freeway by way of the neighborhood. Native civil rights leaders pleaded with officers to decide on a special route, with out success. Quickly, the Santa Monica Freeway — what would grow to be the westernmost stretch of Interstate 10 — would destroy the outdated Sugar Hill.

Comparable tales occurred a whole lot of occasions throughout the nation within the Fifties and ’60s. Even because the nation’s new freeway system was fueling the lengthy post-World Struggle II financial growth, it was doing so on the expense of downtown communities. These neighborhoods had been disproportionately Black, and plenty of have by no means recovered. There was a saying on the time: “white men’s roads through Black men’s homes.”

As my colleague Nadja Popovich writes:

White People more and more fled cities altogether, following newly constructed roads to the rising suburbs. However Black residents had been largely barred from doing the identical. Authorities insurance policies denied them entry to federally backed mortgages and personal discrimination narrowed the choices additional.

In impact, that left many Black residents dwelling alongside the highways’ paths.

As we speak, there’s a motion to reverse the injury, as this Times multimedia reporting project — by Nadja, Josh Williams and Denise Lu — describes.

Rochester, N.Y., is eradicating a downtown freeway constructed within the Fifties and making an attempt to sew a neighborhood again collectively. Syracuse, N.Y.; Detroit; and New Haven, Conn., have dedicated to changing stretches of freeway with walkable neighborhoods. Residents in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Oakland and Seattle are asking metropolis officers to do the identical.

To help these efforts, President Biden’s infrastructure proposal contains $20 billion that might assist reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways. His transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has referred to as the difficulty a prime precedence for the division.

The way forward for the nation’s freeway system is about rather more than these neighborhoods, too. It would additionally have an effect on public well being and local weather change. And the talk is going on at an enchanting second: Most of the midcentury highways are reaching the tip of their life span, and attitudes towards transportation are shifting.

The auto stays the dominant means that People transfer round, and that won’t change anytime quickly. Mass transit isn’t a practical possibility in much less populated locations. However it’s reasonable in cities, and extra metropolis residents and planners are beginning to query whether or not they need main highways operating by way of their neighborhoods.

One telling statistic comes from Michael Sivak of Sivak Applied Research: After many years of uninterrupted will increase, the variety of miles pushed annually by the typical American peaked in 2004.

“As just lately as a decade in the past,” stated Peter Norton, a College of Virginia historian, “each transportation drawback was an issue to be solved with new roads.” That’s not at all times the case anymore.

On the identical subject, Noah Smith of Bloomberg Opinion writes: “It’s troublesome to overstate the injury that we did to our cities by placing large highways proper by way of the center of neighborhoods. But San Francisco has shown that highways may be taken out and relocated. We will repair what we broke.”

After Colonial Pipeline, how can the U.S. forestall the subsequent ransomware assault?

Centralize defenses. The federal government ought to assist shield corporations that management important infrastructure, Sean Joyce, a former F.B.I. official, argues in The Washington Publish.

Enhance “safety hygiene.” Easier steps, like multifactor authentication, can forestall many intrusions, The Verge’s Justine Calma explains.

Ban cryptocurrency, which has been a boon to extortionist hackers, Lee Reiners argues in The Wall Road Journal. “All of it has received to go,” Enterprise Insider’s Linette Lopez writes.

The ghost of Exit 8: Fairly than give up his land, a Vermont farmer burned himself and his farm. His legend lives on.

Fashionable Love: A lifetime of a mother’s love in a single cardboard field.

A Occasions basic: How New Yawkers tawk.

Lives Lived: Kay Tobin Lahusen and her longtime accomplice had been on the forefront of the gay-rights motion, serving to set up protests effectively earlier than the Stonewall rebellion. Lahusen died at 91.

The N.B.A. playoffs have begun, and the video games can be an enormous a part of Memorial Day weekend for many people. Listed below are some main story traces:

Followers are again. Final yr, the playoffs passed off inside empty gyms at Walt Disney World. This yr, vaccinated followers are packing arenas and bringing vitality again to the video games. (And a few are misbehaving.) It’s an indication that the nation is “sloughing off, nonetheless tentatively, the uncooked ache of the final yr,” Kurt Streeter writes in The Times.

New York is again. New York and Atlanta are basketball-mad cities whose groups have struggled for many of the twenty first century. Now the Knicks and the Hawks — each with thrilling younger gamers — are tied at one sport apiece in a first-round collection. And the Knicks aren’t even New York’s greatest crew: The star-filled Brooklyn Nets are.

Is LeBron again? The Los Angeles Lakers are the defending champions, however their stars — LeBron James and Anthony Davis — had been harm for a lot of this season. The crew is the No. 7 seed (out of eight) within the Western Convention — a place from which no team has won a title.

Belief the method. The Philadelphia 76ers angered many followers by intentionally assembling a nasty crew for a number of seasons, which allowed them to draft prime school gamers. The strategy got here to be often called “the method,” and now it’s paying off. Led by Joel Embiid — a dominant heart with a pointy wit — the 76ers are the highest seed within the Japanese Convention.

The subsequent stars. Away from the large coastal markets, younger stars have thrived this season, and a number of may outline these playoffs. They embrace Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns, Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets, Ja Morant of the Memphis Grizzlies and Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks.

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was painful. Right here is immediately’s puzzle — or you possibly can play online.

Right here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Lose one’s hair (4 letters).

For those who’re within the temper to play extra, discover all our games here.

Thanks for spending a part of your morning with The Occasions. The Morning can be off for the vacation on Monday. See you Tuesday. — David

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