The east side

Hemisfair ’68 promised to transform San Antonio. The World’s Fair was promoted as an engine of economic development and urban renewal, bringing millions of visitors, international attention, new infrastructure, and investment to the city. But immediately beside the fairgrounds was San Antonio’s East Side, and residents there questioned whether the future being built next door included them.

Civil rights leader and longtime East Side pastor Rev. Claude W. Black Jr. opposed Hemisfair in part because he believed the project offered little economic benefit to the community. Looking back on the fair, Black recalled:

“Even though it [Hemisfair] abutted on the East Side, there was no spillover, jobs, or money. And for that reason we opposed Hemisfair. On top of that, they built Hemisfair with no back door to the East Side. You had to go all the way around Alamo Street to get into Hemisfair. It was a message to us that this is not for the East Side.”

The absence of an entrance facing the East Side was more than an inconvenience. It became a physical expression of a larger exclusion: a major civic project built immediately beside a community while directing its visitors and economic activity elsewhere.

That separation soon became part of the landscape itself. Interstate 37 was constructed along the eastern edge of downtown, immediately behind the Hemisfair grounds, placing a wide highway corridor between downtown and the East Side

What had been a lack of direct access to the fair became a much more permanent division in the city around it.