For almost two decades in the 1960s and early 1970s, residents of the District of Columbia and adjacent Maryland suburbs came together as never before or since in a broad coalition to defeat plans to build a 38-mile network of destructive freeways through the heart of the city. The highway schemes -- with such names as the North Central Freeway, the Northeast Freeway and the Three Sisters Bridge -- would have rammed through predominantly black neighborhoods including Takoma and Brookland right through the center of Washington, destroying hundreds of homes (mostly those of African Americans) in the process. Black, white, rich, poor and in-between; conservative, liberal and radical; proper Georgetown matrons and scruffy students, antiwar and Black Power advocates often rallied together on the same stage under the banner of the Emergency Committee to End the Transportation Crisis (ECTC). Big firm lawyers donated their time to the cause. With a dynamic poster and slogan of “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes” -- developed by brilliant artist and political organizer Sammie Abbott of Takoma Park, Maryland -- the unlikely coalition combined street protests with legal actions to stop the freeways and clear the way for the Metro system we have today.