West Baltimore’s so-called “Highway to Nowhere” — aka Route 40 — showcases the impact of the national highway system on predominantly Black urban communities in a new documentary film.

“Interstate,” which features interviews with Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, screens Friday afternoon at Pikes Studio Cinema on Reisterstown Road in Pikesville as part of the Baltimore International Black Film Festival (tickets available here).

Ahead of the screening, The Banner spoke with directors Haleem Muhsin and Oscar Corral about expanding a short film set in Florida to tell a national story, and the connection between highway construction and the Civil Rights Movement.

Portions of the interview have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: “Interstate” grew from a short film about the legacy of one highway in Florida to a project with national focus — why did you widen the film’s scope?

Muhsin: We had gotten this opportunity to focus on this story of the interstate highway, specifically I-95 and 395 in South Florida, and ultimately how it decimated the community in the city of Overtown, which is considered a historic African American hub. It was literally the Harlem of the South, as it was called back in the day, where it was thriving with Black-owned businesses — doctors, lawyers, bankers, people in real estate. With the construction of the interstate highway system, it ultimately split that city right down the middle.

Corral: After the screening for that short film in Miami, as we expanded our research, we realized the interstate highway system was designed to cut through Black neighborhoods in almost every major city in the United States. That discovery was an eye-opening one for us. That led us to make it a national film and tie together stories from five different urban areas that were severely impacted by the construction of interstate highways, including Baltimore.

Q: What sort of research did you dig up in Baltimore? What did you find that surprised you?

Corral: Baltimore was one of the rare cases where the highway system was put through a Black community … but it never connected to the main highway because of resistance in the white community. We read historical documents, we interviewed some locals who told us more about it, and we read some articles that had been written by the local media about the highway. Also some of the documentation for the Reconnecting bill that happened in Congress about four years ago, and in that bill the Highway to Nowhere is cited as one of the motivations and reasons for providing funding to reconnect minority communities.

Muhsin: We took a huge, deep dive into the archive libraries that are there in Baltimore to find photos or any types of video clips that allowed us to see what was and where we currently are now. It was quite interesting to see because there was a lot in that community on the west side of Baltimore. People were really able to fend for themselves and make a living. And I remember it was Minister Glenn Smith who told us a lot of those jobs were lost. And also those who had the knowledge and the power to get lawyers and source the right individuals to put in place to protest against the highway — primarily the whiter areas, they were able to stop the highway from coming into their neighborhoods, but on the west side of Baltimore that wasn’t the case … because those individuals did not have those same resources to defend themselves.

Q: What do you want viewers to take away from this film?

Muhsin: We’re talking about highways and that can be very daunting and dull at times, but the way we made this film rich and full was starting with the individuals and letting their stories propel the narrative. Yes, the highway was an industry and engineering marvel that made transportation seamless, but at the same time it came at a cost of Americans, specifically African Americans, and a lot of them never recovered.

Corral: This [film] draws a direct correlation between the Civil Rights Movement and the National Highway Act and how those two progressed on parallel timelines and parallel tracks and were both working in contradiction to one another. The Civil Rights Movement gave the Black community more voting rights and civil rights, whereas the highway act systematically dismantled Black wealth throughout the country at the same time. We want people to know these were decisions, that these were not just benign highways placed somewhere. They were placed there by people intentionally.

Q: What sense did you get from communities — in Baltimore and beyond — about what they want to see happen with these highways and how to transform their footprint?

Corral: That varies. It depends what community you’re dealing with. For example, in New Orleans, people want the highway taken down … for the boulevard that was there to be restored and the highway traffic to be rerouted either to other highways or to other parts of the city. But you go to a place like Rondo in Minneapolis, and what they want to do is build a land bridge over the highway because, like the Highway to Nowhere, it’s a recessed highway. So they want to put a cap on it and build on that cap, make shops and homes on that cap, not dismantle the highway but sort of cover it. Every city has its own unique solution to the problem.

Note: In the closing days of the administration of President Joe Biden, Baltimore was awarded an $85.5 million federal grant for the first phase of construction to reimagine the highway’s footprint. What the Baltimore City Department of Transportation builds with that money — a roughly one-block highway “cap” as currently proposed — could change. The city-led West Baltimore United effort, funded by an earlier and smaller Reconnecting Communities grant, began organizing community stakeholders around ideas for the construction project last year but has not met since May. What’s not clear is whether the grant could become a target for rescission by the Trump administration, which has pulled funding for other equity-related programs.