“It was a political drive-by shooting.” That is how Jessy McCrary described the effect of a new expressway on his town in the early 1960s. “Overtown was killed, without any concern from those with political powers at the time.” Later in the same documentary, Divided Highways, an engineer who helped build interstates admits, “I’d be upset if I had to move because of a freeway.” Then he shrugs, and adds, “Some people have to suffer; that’s the way it is sometimes.” The fact that McCrary is Black and the engineer is white is no coincidence. Divided Highways is a remarkable (and sometimes entertaining) look at the history of this nation’s mid-century highway-building frenzy. The smart engineers and road designers constructing a post-war society “could do no wrong,” and were given a free hand to build what the film calls the biggest infrastructure project in human history: the U.S. interstate system.