#UNDERPASS SIGN CODE#

The railroad tracks may have been the divider, but the Lewis Street Underpass was the gateway to the robust African American community in the Tri-Cities during the second half of the 20th Century. Despite lack of community services and economic deprivation that residents spoke out against in the 1970s, a strong sense of pride and community filled East Pasco.

Going through the unmonitored and largely unlit underpass was anxiety-inducing for pedestrians. Only one school, Whittier Elementary, was located on the east side until 1965. While the intersection of Lewis Street and Oregon Avenue became the business center of East Pasco, crossing the tracks was an almost daily necessity. Some places, such as Morning Star Baptist Church and Kurtzman Park, are still important places to the African American community of the Tri-Cities.

#UNDERPASS SIGN CODE#

As such, the only place in the Tri-Cities that Blacks could call home was East Pasco, an overcrowded community that lacked such basic services as sewers, trash collection, paved roads, sidewalks, fire hydrants, or streetlights.Īs White residents fled, “East Pasco” became code for “Black.” African Americans developed their own community that included churches, hotels, shops, restaurants, and other businesses, most of which no longer exist. No Blacks lived in Richland until the late 1940s when hiring practices began to change. There was no organized policy to keep Black workers out of Richland, but DuPont’s hiring practices had the same effect. Initially Blacks were only hired for temporary jobs like construction. However, only those hired for permanent positions were allowed to live in Richland. In Richland, the government-run secret city, Blacks were not explicitly excluded. Kennewick and Pasco excluded Blacks from living in those cities. In keeping with widespread practices of the time, the Hanford Site was a rigorously segregated space in the 1940s, where laws and customs created separate and very unequal job opportunities and living conditions for African Americans and Whites. The railroad tracks divided Pasco, with East Pasco as the proverbial “other side” of the tracks. The underpass allowed cars and pedestrians to travel between the two areas even when long trains rolled on the tracks above. Previously, citizens were forced to walk over the railroad tracks to get between downtown and East Pasco. Later, Black railroad workers were restricted to the same general area, as were the thousands of African American migrants who came to Pasco during and after World War II.ĭesigned by the Northern Pacific Railway, the Lewis Street Underpass was constructed along a main east-west arterial through downtown Pasco in 1937. They arrived when the nearby railroad town of Ainsworth was relocated and renamed Pasco. Around 1890, a small group of Chinese laborers settled east of the railroad tracks.

Underpass sign