Jamaica Plain - Neighborhood Activism; The 1970s and Beyond

Neighborhood Activism; The 1970s and Beyond

Jamaica Plain has a rich and diverse history of neighborhood activism. In the early 1970s plans to extend I-95 from Canton north into downtown Boston, threatened to bring I-95 through the center of Jamaica Plain essentially dividing the community in half. Many elements of the community together with residents of Roxbury and Hyde Park, rallied to stop the building of the highway. Eventually community pressure forced then-Governor Francis W. Sargent to halt the interstate project, but by that time many houses and commercial buildings had already been demolished, leaving a livid scar, a virtual no man's land straight through the center of the community.