Pete Buttigieg explains ‘historic’ tie between transportation and civil rights

In a speech this weekend, the Secretary of Transportation drew a link between the importance of transportation and infrastructure and the fight for civil rights in the United States.

The United States Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, spoke to a crowd on Sunday at the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee commemorating the Bloody Sunday attack on Black civil rights protesters at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

During his address, Buttigieg explained how reliable bridges, roads, and public transportation have played an important part in the fight for civil rights. 

“Now some are asking what transportation could possibly have to do with racial justice,” Buttigieg said. “Some have been asking that very pointedly. So it’s all the more fitting that we’re here at this bridge, this piece of infrastructure that became a battleground in the struggle for equal rights; this place that reminds us how transportation and civil rights have always, always been related.”

Buttigieg went on to point to the wagons and ferries used in the Underground Railroad, and the bus in which Rosa Parks made her famous stand.