- Highway
- Segregation
- 1960s–1991
- City of Atlanta
- General area only
The I-485 and Stone Mountain tollway fight
In the 1960s the state cleared more than 500 homes on the east side for two freeways that were never built, I-485 and a link to the Stone Mountain freeway, including the Copenhill neighborhood where the Carter Center now stands.
The record
The State Highway Department (GDOT from 1972) bought land for I-485, planned to run from the Downtown Connector through Inman Park and Morningside to I-85, and for an east-west route to the Stone Mountain freeway; the two were to meet at an interchange on the hill where the Copenhill neighborhood was razed. More than 500 homes were demolished, according to the Freedom Park and Parkway history; Atlanta Magazine puts the toll at about 600 homes, businesses and churches. Morningside residents organized against the road in 1965 and sued around 1970. Late in 1972 Governor Jimmy Carter accepted a study commission's recommendation against the Stone Mountain freeway, and I-485 was withdrawn from the interstate system, a withdrawal the Federal Highway Administration accepted in 1975. In the 1980s the state revived part of the route as the 'Presidential Parkway' to serve Carter's planned presidential library, with his support, and neighborhood groups organized as CAUTION fought it in court until a mediated 1991 settlement among the city, GDOT and CAUTION produced today's surface-level Freedom Parkway and Freedom Park, about 210 acres. The Connector and I-20, routed through Black neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s, had been built; none of the sources used here attributes the I-485 route itself to race.
Today: Freedom Park, the John Lewis Freedom Parkway and the Carter Center.
Where on the map: The cross-shaped Freedom Park right-of-way from Boulevard east to Candler Park and from Ponce de Leon Ave south to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station.