TULSA, Okla. — The Biden Administration is open to removing the northern leg of downtown Tulsa’s Inner Dispersal Loop, but it will not unilaterally mandate the city to tear it down.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told FOX23 discussions are happening and proposals are being accepted at the federal level to remove the northern leg of the IDL (Interstate 244), which has been seen by some as a racial dividing line in the city.
“We are open to change,” Buttigieg said. “But we are not going to force this upon the community if they don’t want it.”
Buttigieg toured Greenwood, learned about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre, and saw the highway cutting through the historically black part of downtown for himself when he was in Tulsa last August.
“We want to be an open ear that listens to the proposals from the community seeking change, and we want to help facilitate what they want for their community. We aren’t just going to make this decision from Washington,” Buttigieg told FOX23.
Buttigieg said there are numerous things that can be done in Tulsa, and similar projects have happened before in communities with similar concerns.
Historically, Tulsa has been divided along racial lines by the train tracks that cut through downtown, but once construction of the IDL was completed in the 1970s, the highway turned into a modern day version of the train tracks that continued to divide the city.
The highway also cut the historically black neighborhood of Greenwood in half on land that holds a lot of local history and even scars of racial violence.
President Biden himself visited Greenwood early in his presidency to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
“This wasn’t a riot. This was a massacre,” Biden said in Tulsa when speaking about the events that occurred in 1921.
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