Join us in advocating for highway land reclamation and the reconstruction of 6th Avenue North.
Repairing historic and ongoing highway harms.
Once called the “Beale Street of Minneapolis,” the old Near-Northside was an integrated Black and Jewish community that was destroyed in 1939 for the construction of Olson Memorial Highway, a low-trafficked highway “to nowhere” that has been polluting the neighborhood ever since.
The past, present, and future of Olson Memorial Highway, or the “highway to nowhere.”
Redlining, racial covenants, and white violence segregated the city.
Black and Jewish residents lived around 6th Avenue because of segregation and the systematic devaluation of their communities. Legal tools allowed bankers and the government to limit Black and Jewish residents from living anywhere but “less desirable” neighborhoods. Racially restrictive deeds, or covenants, prevented the sale of housing to non-white people, including Jews, concentrating minorities in specific neighborhoods.
PRESERVING PUBLIC HISTORY
A Public History of Old 6th Avenue
Our Streets collaborated with the Mapping Prejudice Project and the University of Minnesota Heritage Studies and Public History Program to preserve the neighborhood’s history. Today, it is largely absent from the collective memory of the people who now call North Minneapolis home.
COMMUNITY
Share your story
Did your grandparents live on old 6th Avenue North? Have you struggled to cross the highway? Tell us about your experience living or working near Olson Memorial Highway.
The Near-North community is asking for safety and reparative justice.
“These safety improvements are long overdue. This highway has been a hazard since its construction. The city’s Vision Zero plan promised change, but despite requests from the community and Harrison Neighborhood Association, there’s been no meaningful action on the part of the city to protect our residents from death and serious, life-altering injuries.”
Nichole Buehler
Executive Director
“The idea is envisioning what the streets would look like if it was designed for human beings […] I look at Our Streets and what happened in Harrison and seeing people working together, organizing…That is medicine.”
Marcus Kar
Director of Programs
“Highway removal is a form of racial and environmental justice. The placement of Olson [Memorial] Highway was a deliberate decision and it triggered several decades of continued disinvestment.”
Councilmember Robin Wonsley
City of Minneapolis
“These safety improvements are long overdue. This highway has been a hazard since its construction. The city’s Vision Zero plan promised change, but despite requests from the community and Harrison Neighborhood Association, there’s been no meaningful action on the part of the city to protect our residents from death and serious, life-altering injuries.”
Nichole Buehler
Executive Director
“The idea is envisioning what the streets would look like if it was designed for human beings […] I look at Our Streets and what happened in Harrison and seeing people working together, organizing…That is medicine.”
Marcus Kar
Director of Programs
It’s time to Bring Back 6th Avenue.
Olson Memorial Highway devastated the community when constructed, and continues to harm neighboring residents today.
9 days
On average, every 9 days, a crash that results in injury occurs on Olson Memorial Highway (according to crash data from 2014-2023)
5x
The asthma hospitalization rate along Olson Memorial Highway is 5x the state average
1
One building from 6th Avenue North, Sumner Library, survived the construction of Olson Memorial Highway and ensuing disinvestment and displacement
Learn more about streets for people.
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Community Pressure on MnDOT is a Tangible Path Forward for Twin Cities Boulevard
