Rails that Divide, Bridges that Connect

Railroad tracks unite.

And they divide.

The rails that spread like kudzu across the vast west following the War Between the States enabled the U.S. to grow faster and farther than anyone would have thought possible a couple decades earlier. The pounding of a golden spike at Promontory, Utah in 1869 was both a literal and symbolic uniting of America. Tracks continued to multiply in the last half of the 19th century, creating arteries and veins that provided the life blood of the towns and industries connected to them.

The railroad also divided. In its earlier years, the division was primarily cultural and political. Many Americans feared and loathed these danger-carrying, noise-screaming, smoke-spewing beasts. Few viewed trains through the rosy lenses of nostalgia as so many of us do today. The strange, newfangled trains and their owners, seen as greedy and rapacious devourers of land and resources, were usually detested.

The rails divided in other ways. They bisected towns and prairies, in many cases dictating where and how commerce would take root and people would settle. Often unintentionally, rail and crosstie became a steel and wood line of demarcation separating prosperity from failure and status from ignominy.

As a child, I remember hearing often that phrase, “the other side,” or “the wrong side” of the tracks,” meaning the poorer, seedier and more dangerous section of town. Sometimes I wondered why the less desirable neighborhoods were always the “other” side from where anyone I knew lived. Most of the time I just accepted it as an immutable fact of life.

Sadly, that other side was usually disproportionately African-American. Even after the end of slavery, blacks in both north and south were robbed of equal housing and job opportunities. In Roanoke and in many other places, minorities lived on the “wrong side” of the tracks.

That’s one more reason all Roanokers should rejoice in the re-opening of the aptly renamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Bridge. It spans rows of tracks and links the Gaineboro area with downtown literally and symbolically.

Does anyone feel more pleasure in that connecting walkway than those whose reminiscences are the heart of the Museum exhibit, African American Heritage on the Norfolk and Western Railway, 1930-1970? When I watch the video and read the signs in that display, I am equally impressed by two things: the level of injustice these N&W workers endured and the courage and dignity with which they served.

I am also struck by how different today’s landscape looks. In recent decades, railroad corporations such as Norfolk Southern have gone to great effort to lay new tracks of opportunity and fairness. For that we should salute them, Dr. King and railroaders like the ones depicted here.

Railroad tracks can divide. They can also unite, especially when people are willing to build bridges.