This article focuses on the spatialized and emotional memories of community members in Rondo, the historic Black neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. He described how Rondo was “a close-knit, self-sufficient Black community with hundreds of Black businesses” in the’50s and’60s that is now “all gone” after Rondo was sliced through to create a major freeway “for the commuters of the Twin Cities.” He added, “The highway keeps getting called a ‘victory for progress.’ Well, it wasn’t!”. On a quiet windy evening in Minnesota, Melvin Giles, a Black elder, land-connector, and peace activist from Rondo, Saint Paul, spoke to me as we drove in his car from Plymouth toward Saint Paul.
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