When Your Neighbor’s the Highway

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: When Your Neighbor’s the Highway
Podcast: Cannonball with Wesley Morris (The New York Times)
Date: June 9, 2022

In this episode, Wesley Morris explores how the construction of highways has reshaped urban neighborhoods, focusing on Philadelphia’s Vine Street Expressway and its impact on the city’s Chinatown. Through personal reflections, interviews with longtime residents and activists, and on-the-ground observations, the episode interrogates how infrastructure projects often disrupt communities of color, the legacy of those rifts, and what repair or reparations could look like today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Connection and Setting the Stage

• Wesley’s Family and Driving in Philly
  • Wesley reminisces about growing up in Philadelphia, learning about cars from his father and sister Robin, who prefer driving, whereas he prefers to walk.
  • The Vine Street Expressway (I-676), cutting through Philadelphia, particularly Chinatown, becomes a metaphor for the divides infrastructure can create in urban life.
  • Wesley admits, “I wanted Robin to show me the Vine Street Expressway, because I, as a pedestrian, have always been fascinated by the way highways define neighborhoods. They can cut one neighborhood off from the next, and they can reshape whole communities.” (07:03)

2. National Context: Highways and Segregation

• The episode sets the local story within a broader context of the Biden administration’s focus on reconsidering infrastructure projects that have harmed minority communities.
• Wesley points out: “It was a recognition that really struck me, in part because it was the federal government admitting the government policies actually have hurt people. And, you know, by and large, these tend to be poor people. They tend to be Black people, Latinos, nonwhite people generally.” (07:55)

3. Chinatown’s Story & Interview with Cecilia Moy

• Introduction to Cecilia Moy:
  • A 92-year-old community activist, Cecilia has spent more than six decades fighting developments that threaten Chinatown’s integrity.
  • Cecilia recounts how activism found her when, due to eminent domain, her home and others were threatened for demolition.
  • She organized to save the Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church—an anchor for Chinatown.
  • On the community: “Everything that was part of our life happened at Holy Redeemer. That’s why it was so important to us as a community.” (11:04)
  • On speaking out: “Women don’t speak out in Chinatown. Not now they do, but not before, thanks to you.” (13:44 - Cecilia reflects on breaking tradition by leading the fight.)
  • On compromise: “We were willing to sacrifice the idea that a church and school would be separated from the rest of the community… Every day that place exists is worth it.” (14:08)

4. Living with the Expressway: Children and Elders

• Wesley walks with neighborhood kids and daycare workers who navigate the hazardous crossing of the Expressway daily.
  • “Crossing the Vine Street Expressway in Philadelphia is its own kind of health hazard, its own obstacle course, its own workout.” (06:09)
• The group visits Franklin Square Park, where the children have made a memorial for a beloved felled tree, echoing Cecilia’s resistance to unwelcome change:
  • “Standing here in a playground… surrounded by little Cecilias, little future Cecilias being pulled into activism they don’t even know that they’re being pulled into.” (16:44)
• Wesley joins Chinatown elders (many over 80) crossing the expressway for their weekly food bank visit, observing how the neighborhood’s cohesion is split by the highway:
  • “No matter how fast you are, you still are going to have to stop at the median in the middle of Vine Street… the time on your pedestrian signal, it’s just not enough. Try being 80 years old with a shopping cart full of groceries.” (17:41)
• Noting the cultural desert on the far side: “This side of Chinatown feels like a totally different neighborhood. There’s no cultural life the way there is on the other side of the expressway.” (18:55)

5. Erosion of Community & Urban Segregation

• Wesley reflects on his childhood’s oblivion towards Chinatown, and how urban design perpetuates segregation:
  • “It would not have occurred to me to add [Chinatown] to that list of affronted parties, in part because I’d never thought about it as a neighborhood.” (21:10)
  • “You can go a whole life without having somebody who isn’t like you—and I mean basically racially like you—in your life. Because that’s how the cities were set up, segregated.” (22:06)

6. Hidden Histories: Burial Grounds Disrupted

• The Vine Street Expressway’s path paved over the cemetery of the First African Baptist Church, founded in 1809, leading to excavation and relocation of at least 89 graves:
  • “And to disturb, you know, graves, to actually put a highway, I guess people would say if that was not done, we’d be standing in the way of progress. But I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to disturb those who are resting.” — Pastor Terrence Griffith (26:17)
• Wesley wonders about the erased histories under Philadelphia’s developments, including Black and Native Lenape graves.

7. Ongoing Struggles and What Is Owed

• Cecilia continues to oppose new projects threatening Chinatown, including a planned commuter train station:
  • “Every 10 years, we have a major impact from a development in Chinatown. By the time you get done addressing one, there’s another one coming every 10 years.” (29:32)
• On reparations and the city’s obligations:
  • “They demolished all that. And people—there’s no place to move. They moved elsewhere. 50 years that lot has been vacant. They owe us to help us replace what we lost. They should give it to us. I think they owe us.” — Cecilia Moy (30:06)

8. Acknowledgement and 'Capping' as Recognition

• Philadelphia’s mayor admits the expressway harmed Chinatown, with ideas proposed like “capping”—decking over the highway with a park or development.
• “The important thing to me, though, is that it’s an acknowledgment from the government that something needs to be done.” (30:37)

9. Monuments, Memory, and Resistance

• Wesley describes how everyday acts—Cecilia correcting her misspelled name on a government letter—symbolize the ongoing fight for dignity and recognition:
  • “That correction is essentially what Cecilia’s work has been about, which is that the government says, this is what we’re doing. And whether it’s the blueprint for the Vine Street Expressway or this commendation from the state, Cecilia’s like, no, it doesn’t have to be this way.” (32:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I mean, we love each other, we’re very close, but we are very different. And one of the ways our difference to me manifests itself is you love to drive and I love to walk.” — Wesley to Robin (02:11)
• “I kind of broke, how should I say, a tradition by speaking out at a town meeting. Women don’t speak out in Chinatown. Not now they do, but not before, thanks to you.” — Cecilia Moy (13:44)
• “You know, there’s such a saying as, nobody told us we were poor.” — Cecilia Moy (12:25)
• “But every day that place exists is worth it.” — Cecilia Moy, on Holy Redeemer Church (14:27)
• “It’s a ceiling on how much the community can grow.” — Wesley on the expressway’s impact (19:45)
• "It would not have occurred to me to add it [Chinatown] to that list of affronted parties, in part because I'd never thought about it as a neighborhood.” — Wesley (21:20)
• “Who’s going to stop them from stopping a SpaceX launch pad from being built where I’m buried?... The city is just gonna city.” — Wesley, on impermanence and progress (28:30)
• “…the government says, this is what we’re doing. And whether it’s the blueprint for the Vine Street Expressway or this commendation from the state, Cecilia’s like, no, it doesn’t have to be this way.” — Wesley (32:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Driving & Family Banter: 00:45–03:00
• Wesley’s Fascination with Urban Highways: 07:03
• Chinatown’s Story & Cecilia Moy Interview: 10:27–15:00
• Walking with Children/Elders in Chinatown: 15:00–19:58
• Urban Segregation & Personal Reflection: 21:10–23:22
• First African Baptist Church Cemetery: 24:31–26:33
• Chinatown’s Experience with 'Progress': 29:08–30:37
• Final Reflections on Memory and Resistance: 32:50–End

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Conclusion

Wesley’s journey through present-day Philadelphia and its past reveals the lasting impact of infrastructure on urban neighborhoods—how highways can sever communities, how resistance can preserve what matters, and why repair goes beyond simply paving over the wounds. The episode’s layered narrative captures both the physical barriers and the unseen, emotional costs of “progress”—while honoring the everyday acts of activism that claim dignity and space for generations past and future.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Robin]

This is Khadijah.

[Wesley Morris]

Why? Why did you call the car Khadijah?

[Robin]

Cause she's a hood rat.

[Wesley Morris]

This is my sister Robin in her car. Hi, Khadijah.

[Robin]

Khadijah.

[Wesley Morris]

Say it with an attitude, Khadijah. My sister is a surgical first assistant in an operating room at a very busy hospital, which means that she spends a lot of time assisting doctors in surgeries and making sure those surgeons don't screw up. Oh, my God, Robin.

[Robin]

Whoa. This is what we do.

[Wesley Morris]

All right. But she drives like a person who doesn't think she'll ever end up in a hospital.

[Robin]

So Daddy taught me how to drive in an 18 passenger white van after he came from a track meet with the boys from Roman Catholic High School. And I said, daddy, I want to learn how to drive. And he was like, ugh. And then that's how it all started.

[Wesley Morris]

How old were you?

[Robin]

Like 14 or 15?

[Wesley Morris]

I live in New York City now, but Robin and I grew up in Philadelphia, and she knows that city by car better than anybody I know except my dad, who was a track coach for his entire adult life and is no longer with us. All those driving jeans went straight from him to my sister.

[Robin]

Well, the first time I took a car, it was like, 10.

[Wesley Morris]

But why did you do that and not me?

[Robin]

Because all you wanted to do was read encyclopedias. What was that, the Encyclopedia Britannica?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, we love each other, we're very close, but we are very different. And one of the ways our difference to me, manifests itself as you love to drive and I love to walk.

[Robin]

That is true.

[Wesley Morris]

I did not get my license until I was 32 years old.

[Robin]

Absolutely pathetic. That is sad.

[Wesley Morris]

I have decided to put my fate in her hands because I wanted her to take me on a tour of Philadelphia's very own Vine Street Expressway.

[Robin]

Well, first of all, this is not a tour. This is going to be absolute hell on wheels, because people from Philly know that this expressway way Sucks.

[Wesley Morris]

I wanted Robin to show me the Vine Street Expressway, because I, as a pedestrian, have always been fascinated by the way highways define neighborhoods. They can cut one neighborhood off from the next, and they can reshape whole communities. So then the Biden administration announced this big, splashy infrastructure bill last year. And the part that leapt out to me was this section devoted to thinking about the ways in which all of these highways and expressways and freeways had created problems for people who live alongside them. And the Biden administration had been thinking about what to do to repair those neighborhoods. Essentially, we're talking about a sort of reparations here. And it was a recognition that really struck me in part because it was the federal government admitting the government policies actually have hurt people. And, you know, by and large, these tend to be poor people, they tend to be black people, Latinos, non white people generally. And I don't know what it was like for the people who lived in those neighborhoods to have to deal with this thing being built. I have no idea. Cause I've never thought about it. I've never thought about it. And if the federal government is making reparations, I want to understand exactly what they're for. And I thought, let's go down to Louisiana and point some fingers at how New Orleans did all these people dirty when they built this highway along Claiborne Avenue. Then I thought, we could go to California and look at all the communities that were damaged by that building of, like, so many parts of that highway system. There are more than 100 places in this country you could go to. And I was like, wesley, it's real convenient to run around and point your finger at other people's communities. I think you should actually stop and take a good, hard look at where you grew up. And so it hit me that, yes, I'm a Philadelphian, and I have a memory of being a kid. And there was a big to do about the building of something called the Vine Street Expressway. So today on the show, I want to find out how the Vine Street Expressway changed a neighborhood that I never thought about. And I actually would like to know why I had never bothered to think about this before. I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a culture writer at the New York Times. And this is still processing. I am a pedestrian. The jaywalker in me will cross right now if you give me the option to drive somewhere or to walk. I'm gonna walk. Go get a muffler, sir. But one thing that can really get in my way when I'm walking is a Highway, you could get hit by a tow truck, which is trying to like. It's just you're risking your life to go have some ribs or to see a movie or to get a battery replaced. I'm standing in a cross. Don't honk at me. Which is to say that crossing the Vine Street Expressway in Philadelphia is it's own kind of health hazard, its own obstacle course, its own workout. I walked across this every once in a while when I was a kid and realized that it was not a thing that I enjoyed doing. It was a risk to my safety. I found alternate routes and I just want to try to give you a picture of what this thing looks like. The expressway is below ground. It's basically a trench. And inside the trench are six lanes of traffic way below street level. And all the overpasses are up at street level. And anytime a driver wants to get off the expressway, there are these off ramps that go up the street and they merge with the actual vine street still going at expressway speeds. So to walk across this whole thing, you have to cross two lanes of vine street, still going really fast. You have to deal with the overpass and two more lanes of Vine Street. And there are just two traffic lights. And each one is barely holding back an angry hoard of cars barely holding it back because sometimes those cars will just like nudge forward. That's 10 plus lanes of traffic that cuts, slices, rips through Chinatown. 106,000 vehicles traverse the Vine Street Expressway every day. That's more than one vehicle a second. And those people are commuting, they're making deliveries, they're visiting family, they're getting a cheesesteak, they're going to go find the Rocky statue to take a picture at the art museum. Maybe they're going to a Phillies game. There's a lot of reasons to be on the Vine Street Expressway. You know, all those things, you gotta do em. But as they do this, I kinda wonder, are they thinking about Chinatown? And I guess I am asking this question of myself too, because I as a kid never thought about Chinatown. I didn't think I needed to go to Chinatown because I could get Chinese food at Panda Express, because that was what Chinatown was to me. It was a place to eat, not a place people lived. And I'm not proud of this fact because I didn't know it was completed in 1991. And now as an adult, I just wanted to know if anybody in that community had a say about whether it should be built, what it would mean to build it. And if you ask around Chinatown, one name will keep coming up over and over. Cecilia Moy. Yep. When the government was planning the expressway, she was a leader in the community, and she fought to actually have some say in how the expressway cut through Chinatown. She's 92 years old. Her family moved to Chinatown when she was in elementary school. And this woman has been fighting major developments in the Chinatown area for more than 60 years. Years. I'm talking about before the Vine Street Expressway. Cecilia today lives about a block or so south of the Vine Street Expressway, just around the corner from all the hustle and bustle of Chinatown. In the middle of all this regular urban activity is this little oasis called Cecilia Moyette's House. Cecilia is a fellow short person like myself. She's a fit 92 years old, and she's got a beautiful gray bouffant that has this sheen of lavender to it. She looks like a flower standing in front of a plaque. I immediately notice that around her house are all of these framed certificates and citations and plaques, magazine stories.

[Cecilia Moy]

She fights City hall often.

[Wesley Morris]

Great. No, let me. Let's do it right. Cecilia. She fights City Hall. Off it. I'd like to be clear about one thing about Cecilia. She didn't actually choose activism. I'm going to say that activism chose her. And the thing that drove her to activism was the threat to her family.

[Cecilia Moy]

We managed to survive because we had the experience of having a Catholic church and school built in Chinatown. People wanted from all over the city to send their kids to Chinatown to learn Chinese in a Chinese school and to have their children meet other children of the same ethnic background. To us, it was really good because the church had so many activities and actually became a focus for our life. It's where not only we went to school, where we got married, where we buried our dead. Everything that was part of our life happened at Holy Redeemer. That's why it was so important to us as a community.

[Wesley Morris]

Another wonderful thing about Cecilia, for me personally, is that it was like talking to one of my aunts.

[Cecilia Moy]

You want water, too?

[Wesley Morris]

I would love. She just seems like a member of my family. My Aunt Barbara, my dear aunt Jerry, my aunt Emmy, my aunt Carol. I mean, all these people who have these great Philadelphia accents. It was just like sitting there with one of my grandmother's sisters.

[Cecilia Moy]

The thing is, the governor came down to talk about this infrastructure stuff.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, it's not just their Philadelphia accents. She's flinty the way they were. She's a great storyteller the way they were.

[Cecilia Moy]

We couldn't hear them. And I said, oh, this is wonderful.

[Wesley Morris]

It was just a real pleasure to sit there and listen to her tell stories and hear these memories come out the way they do at my own family, where we just sit around and talk about how life was lived.

[Cecilia Moy]

You know, there's such a saying as nobody told us we were poor.

[Wesley Morris]

Mm. Mm.

[Cecilia Moy]

Yeah, I think that's the case.

[Wesley Morris]

What I'm really wondering is when you went from just being a citizen of the community of Chinatown to a person who was fighting for Chinatown's survival.

[Cecilia Moy]

Well, in 1960, I received a notice of taking by eminent domain of my house. My husband was terminally ill, and I had other things on my mind because I had three young children. So I didn't pay any attention because I said, I own this property. How can they take. Got to the point where buildings were being torn down all around me, and now I was the only house left on the hall block.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, you held out then. In the late 1960s, Cecilia saw the plans for the Vine Street Expressway, which was being designed to run straight through the heart of Chinatown, which then would mean that Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church, the center of the whole community, was going to be demolished.

[Cecilia Moy]

We said, oh, God, they can't take the church in school. It's the only good thing. It's a diamond in the rough, you know? We had a town meeting. I kind of broke, how should I say, a tradition by speaking out at a town meeting. Women don't speak out in Chinatown. Not now they do, but not before, thanks to you.

[Wesley Morris]

You helped. Yeah. She realized that, no, she could not stop the building of the Vine Street Expressway, but she could come up with some sort of compromise. The expressway would still run through Chinatown, but the church essentially would be spared.

[Cecilia Moy]

We were willing to sacrifice the idea that a church and school would be separated from the rest of the community. We would accept that, even though the kids have to cross this way every day. But we just celebrate the 80th anniversary of the church and school this past year. And I've been asked, you know, all this fighting, is it worth it? I said, every day that place exists is worth it.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know if you caught what Cecilia just said there, but she mentioned that the compromise was worth it. Even though the kids have to cross the expressway every day, that compromise is still being lived out. It's been three decades, and those kids are still crossing that expressway. They're my fellow pedestrians. I was gonna say in training, but I don't think I need to. They're as good at walking as I am.

[Robin]

Hello, Wesley?

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah, I'm just crossing with you guys today to see. So when they get out of school, they get picked up by their daycare workers. And on the day I visited, we all head out to the daycare together, which is on the other side of the expressway. These kids are mostly Asian. Most of them live in Chinatown. They cluster and talk and hang out.

[Robin]

I'm, like, hesitating to cross the streets with the highways attached to them, and I feel like I'm gonna get run over by a car. It's safe because it's next to a church.

[Wesley Morris]

So God is looking out for us.

[Robin]

Yes, God is always looking out for us.

[Wesley Morris]

After we cross the expressway, we stop at this park that's just off Vine Street. It's called Franklin Square Park. And they want me to see their favorite tree.

[Robin]

It's like a gigantic tree over there. And now it's, like, destroyed and gone.

[Wesley Morris]

It's this dead thing that's in the middle of this park. And they built a little memorial for it. They built this mound. They gathered a bunch of sticks. They took the sticks, and they put them in the mound. And the sticks are like little headstones. And the kids can see that there are other trees coming down in the park, too. And the reason for all this change in construction and destruction is that there is a commuter train station coming. And Cecilia is fighting that, too, because here is yet another unwelcome incursion into Chinatown. The kids might not know all the details, but they know something's up. Still.

[Cecilia Moy]

You need to know the importance of trees sometimes.

[Wesley Morris]

No, I agree. I was just really moved by this memorial that they built.

[Robin]

So me and Hezekiah had the idea of regrowing the trees. Have a tree seed brings a seed, and I have.

[Wesley Morris]

No, I was standing here in a playground, in a park, surrounded by little Cecilias, little future Cecilias being pulled into activism they don't even know that they're being pulled into. But their anger about what had happened to their tree is not all that dissimilar from how Cecilia felt when the city encroached upon her house and her kids. Later in the week, I stopped by an apartment building for seniors in Chinatown, and I wanted to see how they live with this vine street compromise. These elders live in the thick of the neighborhood. It's just around the corner from Cecilia's house, actually. There's a hair salon and a restaurant, and a couple of doors down, more restaurants and a tea shop across the street. And when I Walk up to meet them. Everybody's gathered outside the building. Because every Friday they walk across the expressway to a food bank that's next to Holy Redeemer Church. Oh, boy. I mean, they're fast. They are. I mean, I'm a pretty aggressive hardcore pedestrian. I mean, these people are my match. 80 years old, 75 years old, 90 years old, just out walking me. And they've got these shopping carts, you know, not like your classic metal cage shopping cart. It's like a vinyl bag that's on a track with wheels, basically. And you pull it. There's about a dozen of us just, you know, trudging toward the food bank. It's about maybe two blocks. But no matter how fast you are, you still are going to have to stop at the median in the middle of Vine Street. I mean, are we all even going to be able to make it? 12 seconds. They're not going to make it. Those people behind. We're not all going to make it. Because the time on your pedestrian signal, it's just not enough. Try being 80 years old with a shopping cart full of groceries. Try being 80 years old with a walker. But once you get across the expressway, you notice that this side of Chinatown feels like a totally different neighborhood. There's no cultural life the way there is on the other side of the expressway. It's a little bit industrial. It just doesn't feel. Feel like Chinatown. And one of the only explanations for why it doesn't feel like Chinatown up there is because of the expressway. Once you're at the food bank, it's. It's kind of a beautiful scene. You turn around and you look down vine street, and that vine goes all the way to the end of the block. I have to say, this is not a particularly ideal place to stand. You're standing alongside vine street and the expressway and right next to an active parking lot. But these people come every week, and so some of them have actually turned this into a kind of community center experience where they stand around and chat and catch up. I mean, she's got a system. She's got her walker and some bags attached to the walker the way my grandmother did. So the food comes out. Okay, we're about to open, I guess. Oh, look. And this really amazing thing happens where they start trading items. You know, I don't want this thing. I'd rather have this thing you make.

[Robin]

Qua.

[Wesley Morris]

And a squash. Oh, there's a squash. Something about this experience for me, crossing the expressway with the elders and hanging out with them while they waited for traded, packed up. What is that? Lots of veggie and yam. I could see with my own two eyes what it would mean to have your neighborhood split in half by a piece of infrastructure. But it's more than that. The existence of this highway also means that only one part of Chinatown has the culture and the vibrancy. So this expressway isn't just a barrier for pedestrians, it's a ceiling on how much the community can grow. That's just a for example of the way that not just Philadelphia, but maybe especially Philadelphia historically has tended to handle problems involving poor people, black people, Chinatown. I just said Chinatown is part of poor people and black people. But I'm gonna be honest with you, it would not have occurred to me to add it to that list of affronted parties, in part because I'd never thought about it as a neighborhood. Actually, in Philadelphia, like a lot of American cities, you don't really have to see people who aren't like you because the neighborhoods are segregated to kind of be that way. You can go a whole life without having somebody who isn't like you. And I mean basically racially like you in your life. Because that's how the cities were set up, segregated. And the Vine Street Expressway plays into that. The thing has dropped so far down below street level into the earth, all those drivers can just drive right past and not even think about the fact that the neighborhood they're driving through never really wanted them there in the first place. I think that's the funny thing about what I was doing as a kid, walking into Philadelphia, bypassing that expressway to get a pizza and a comic book and maybe see a movie. I never thought about the lives that were moved out of the way to get any of that stuff. I just wanted what I wanted and I wanted it when I needed it. And to be fair to my 11 and 12 year old self, I needed to be an adult to really think about it. But once you take a second to just look to your left or look to your right or God forbid, look up from your congested, depressed expressway, there's an opportunity there to think about what you're actually driving through or past or beyond. It's your headline to unpack. It's your one story to follow week by week. It's your wordle to work through. It's your team to track. It's your 36 hours to explore. It's your marinade to master. It's your opinion to figure out. It's your mattress to upgrade. It's your day to Know what else you need to know today?

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

The New York Times. It's your world to understand. Find out [e-mail] YourWorld.

[Wesley Morris]

It'S funny. I went home to Philadelphia to learn about how the Vine Street Expressway had basically changed daily life in Chinatown. But one day, my producer, Elissa Dudley, was doing some research, and one of the people she was talking to just kind of tossed off and said, you heard about all the bodies they dug up, right? And I were like, wait, what bodies? Ugh. But as it turns out, this expressway has disturbed other communities, and that history is deep. Pastor Griffith, can you walk us to where the 10th Street Cemetery used to be?

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, we can do that.

[Wesley Morris]

So when plans were being finalized to build the Vine Street Expressway, one of the things they had to plan for was digging up, up graves. The expressway goes right over the place where the cemetery of a church used to be.

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

Yeah, that area is always crowded.

[Wesley Morris]

Terrence Griffith is now the pastor of that same church, First African Baptist Church. Originally, he's from Grenada. That is not a Philadelphia accent. And he was a politician there. But in 2001, he became the pastor at First African. And he told me that. That the church dates back to the early 1800s.

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

I can imagine the horse and the buggy.

[Wesley Morris]

The church was founded in 1809, and the building was at 10th and Vine street, including the cemetery. And the church was an active part of this community.

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

Our first Africans started the first savings and loans for blacks in the city, the first mortgage company for blacks.

[Wesley Morris]

The. And to look at where the cemetery once was, Pastor Griffith took me to an overpass where we looked down at six lanes of traffic.

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

Well, you have gridlock here, you have gridlock there. It's as though when people get to this point, everything stands still. It's so crazy now and so busy. I guess our ancestors would not have anticipated that it will become like this eventually.

[Wesley Morris]

The city grew up around the church, and the city grew over the church, like, paved over it. And in 1990, the church's cemetery was excavated, and they found 89 bodies.

[Pastor Terrence Griffith]

And to disturb, you know, graves, to actually put a highway, I guess people would say if that was not done, we'd be standing in the way of progress. But I don't think it's ever a good idea to disturb those who are arresting.

[Wesley Morris]

We don't know the names of any of the 89 people who were buried and then excavated at 10th and Vine. So this just leads me to wonder what else is under that expressway? I mean, if we're talking about 89 dead black people. How many Lenape ancestors are under there? Because what we now call Philadelphia, in parts of New Jersey, the stewards of that land were the people of the Lenape nation. How many of them are under there? The people who used to be buried in the 10th Street Cemetery, they were relocated to a place called Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, which is basically a suburb about 10 miles outside of Philadelphia. And Eden was actually created in part for this very purpose for black people who had been moved because of public works projects like the Vine Street Expressway. Now, some of my family is also in that cemetery. My Aunt Emmy is buried in that cemetery. My grandmother's sister, my grandmother's brother Jean, and his wife. Aunt Jerry, dear. Aunt Jerry. You know, who's to say what happens in 10, 15, 100 years from now? Maybe the city's going to want to dig up Eden to connect Collingdale to Philadelphia. And who would be there to stop them from digging it up? I then started to think about what was going to happen. When I'm gone, I'm dead a hundred years. And the people who knew me when I was here, they're gone, too. My nephew Christopher and my niece Raven, and my niece Camille. My sister's long gone. My godson Ollie. You know, they might not be here either. Who's going to stop them from stopping a SpaceX launch pad from being built where I'm buried? This is just a long, mildly morbid way of saying there's always going to be more development because progress demands it. The city is just gone city. And nobody in Chinatown knows it better than Cecilia Moyette because she, despite being, quote, retired, unquote, is fighting this commuter train station that's supposed to be reopening right on the edge of Chinatown.

[Cecilia Moy]

But we don't have any choice. It's there. The city approved it. We had a meeting, they did a presentation. We gave them our concerns. Guess what? Nothing happened. So I fell recently and I couldn't make meetings.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know what retirement looks like for you because the city is just gonna keep going. It keeps trying to fight you. Yeah, right.

[Cecilia Moy]

Every 10 years, we have a major impact from a development in Chinatown. By the time you get done addressing one, there's another one coming every 10 years.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm wondering if you think the city owes you something.

[Cecilia Moy]

I do. The reason is, when they started this urban renewal project and it became a community rail tunnel, there was an illegal taking, so they took all of that block of 8th Street. Did you see a great Big parking lot.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Cecilia Moy]

8Th and.

[Wesley Morris]

Yep.

[Cecilia Moy]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

Right on the corner. On the corner of 8th and vine in the vine street side. Okay.

[Cecilia Moy]

Small parking lot, but there were businesses there, and Chinese families lived on the second and third floor. Well, they demolished all that. And people. There's no place to move. They moved elsewhere. 50 years that lot has been vacant. They owe us to help us replace what we lost. They should give it to us. I think they owe us.

[Wesley Morris]

That's one parking lot. That's all she wants. I mean, that's not literally all Cecilia wants, but I think it's a token of what is owed. Now, the mayor has acknowledged that the Vine Street Expressway has been a problem for Chinatown. And one way they've talked about solving that problem is by introducing something called capping. That would essentially be a cover that they put on the expressway, and that would basically turn it into a tunnel, and there's a whole lot capping can't do. Right. The important thing to me, though, is that it's an acknowledgement from the government that something needs to be done. I left Cecilia's place that day, and I just walked. And then I remembered something about my childhood. After my parents divorced in the early 1980s, my father moved from our place in Philadelphia to New Jersey. And there were lots of weeks where it was his weekend to come and get us, and he didn't do it. I would sit in the window and wait, and then I would go tag Robin, and she would sit in the window and wait. Then eventually he would call and tell my mother that, you know, he couldn't make it. Unfortunately, he was very sad about it, but sometimes the reason he couldn't make it was because of traffic. And walking back from Cecilia's, I thought, huh, you know what would have made it easier maybe for him to come get us? The Vine Street Expressway. It's true. It wasn't Bill yet. I mean, most weekends he came through, but sometimes he didn't. And sometimes traffic was the reason. My father loved to drive, and he was a highways guy. He liked them. And I feel like for a lot of people, highways are these giant monuments to freedom in this country. And a lot of what I was seeing and talking about in Philadelphia were monuments and commemoration and markers. I mean, there was the marker on the graves of the people who were moved to make way for the expressway. There was the memorial the kids made for the tree. But there's this one other marker that I couldn't stop thinking about as I was leaving Cecilia's house, too. And that's the letter that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation wrote to her upon her retirement. The tenor of the letter is that Cecilia has been a pain in the government's neck, which means that she was really doing her job. But then at the top left of this letter, I noticed that there's a strikethrough that's made with a pen. The letter's typed out, but there's a strikethrough that a pen made and written in ink is the proper spelling of Cecilia's name. They spelled her name wrong, and she'd gone in ink and corrected it herself. It's one of the filliest things I've ever seen. There is so much pride and determination in that gesture. Not just the crossing it out, but the displaying of it prominently in her home. That correction is essentially what Cecilia's work has been about, which is that the government says, this is what we're doing. And whether it's the blueprint for the Vine Street Expressway or this commendation from the state, Cecilia's like, no, it doesn't have to be this way. And that, to me, is the other filiast thing about this letter. So much of what makes Philadelphia Philadelphia is that some people got together and said, you know what? It doesn't have to be this way. Whether we're talking about the signing of the Declaration of independence in 1776 or the people fighting in 2022 to protect Chinatown, what it really comes down to is that people were angry enough, determined enough, visionary enough to pick up a pen. That's our show. If you want to see photos of the Vine Street Expressway, Chinatown, and all the people I met making this episode, you can visit NYT or you can click the link in the show notes. We couldn't have made this episode without the help of a lot of folks in Philadelphia, and we just wanted to thank them. We're indebted, of course, to the one and only Cecilia Moyep and Pastor Terrence Griffith. But we also wanted to thank John Chin and Bill Z and Rosaline Yang and Eddie Wong, the residents of On Lockhouse. Eileen Flannery, Ha Nguyen, Mark Zellman, Mary Yee, Sarah Yung, Cara Wong, Raymond Chin, Shirley Moy, Tom Betts, Douglas Mooney, Steven Matro and Jeremy Montgomery. We'd also like to give a special thanks to our colleagues who helped us out with this episode. Michael Kimmelman, Denise Liu and Nadia Popovich. Still Processing as Always, is produced by Elissa Dudley and Hans Buteau. It's edited by Sarah Sarris and Sacha Weiss and Wendy Doerr. With fact checking by Andrea Lopez Cruzado photography for this episode by Aaron Richter. The show's mixed by Marion Lozano and recorded by Maddie Masiello. Mihima Chablani and DEZ Ibiqua do our digital production. Our photo editor is Ezla Attar. June oh does our visual editing. Our program manager is Jeffrey Miranda. And our theme music is By Kindness. It's called World Restart from the album Otherness. And I'll be back with another episode next week. It'll be a very special one. Stay tuned and stay tuned for this.

[Robin]

His billboard says I'm John Morgan. So? In Philadelphia, we use the word John for everything it could be. Look at that joint. Oh, look at that joint. She's sexy. Give me a piece of that John. His billboard said I'm John Morgan. What the hell?

[Wesley Morris]

He spelled it J, A, W, N. I got it. My hat. I don't need any legal services, but I'm calling him anyway.

[Robin]

He is straight hood and probably just as Irish as he can be. That was funny.