KAT Permanent Exhibit Displays History of City's Urban Renewal
In December 2020, Knoxville City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for making amends for decades of urban renewal which displaced and harmed the City’s Black communities.
As described by the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “the city, largely through eminent domain, systematically tore down entire blocks of homes, churches and businesses in Black neighborhoods in the 1950s through 1970s for projects like the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum and construction of new routes like James White Parkway and Interstate 40, among others.”
According to the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, urban renewal displaced more than 2,500 families, more than 70% of whom were Black.
Knoxville Station Transit Center rests on land that experienced urban renewal.
In the Center's lobby, Knoxville Area Transit has a permanent exhibit on display that explores what the eastern end of downtown used to look like, prior to the ill-conceived urban renewal practices from the 1950s through the 1970s. KAT's display also features artifacts unearthed during the transit center construction.
Display images are below. Click on the image to view a larger file in PDF format.
KAT Honors Rosa Parks with an Open Seat on Every Bus, Dec. 1, 2023
On Friday, Dec. 1, KAT will pay tribute to Rosa Parks by keeping one seat open on every bus.
The seat will feature a placard recognizing the contribution made by Parks in the fight for racial justice and equality, and how the small act of sitting down on a city bus changed the course of history in the United States.
Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 after refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in defiance of 'Jim Crow' segregation laws.
Her action led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381-day boycott of the city’s transit system by African Americans which led to the Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transportation systems unconstitutional. The boycott helped end segregation of public facilities in the United States.
“Rosa Parks’s seemingly small act of courage in the fight for racial justice had enormous consequences,” says Isaac Thorne, Director of Transit for the City of Knoxville. “We honor that courage and the work of past civil rights leaders, while recognizing the responsibility we all have to continue to advance efforts to achieve racial equity across our city and our nation.”
KAT's 1st African-American Female Driver Had Something to Prove
February 2018
Geraldetta Dozier was walking home one day when she happened to look up as a bus topped the hill on Harriet Tubman Street. To her surprise, a woman was driving.
"I said, 'Wow,' and I walked right over to the bus offices, which at that time were at Jessamine Street and Fifth Avenue," Dozier said. "I was a student, living in the projects, a single mother raising my baby. I needed to make some money.
"I thought: If she can do it, so can I."
Dozier, now 68, made good on her impulsive career choice. She earned her chauffeur's license (now, a Commercial Driver's License), and in May 1976 was hired as the City's first female African-American bus operator in Knoxville.
Dozier came on board and drove for Knoxville Area Transit during a pivotal time in the transit service's history.
Just a decade earlier, the City of Knoxville had gotten itself into the transit business. The private company Knoxville Transit Lines (KTL) in 1967 had been sold to the City, and KTL changed its name to the Knoxville Transit Corp. (KTC). KTC moved to a new facility on Jessamine Street in 1975. That was a year before Dozier was hired.
In 1978, KTC changed its name to K-Trans, and it moved to Magnolia Avenue in 1989. The bus service changed names again in 1995 - becoming Knoxville Area Transit (KAT).
By 2010, KAT was operating out of Knoxville Station, a state-of-the-art LEED-certified transit center on Church Avenue, and last year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) recognized KAT with the 2017 Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award for small transit systems (less than 4 million passenger trips/year).
Back to Dozier's story: It turns out, as she was about to make her livelihood maneuvering a 40-foot bus, she had a little secret.
At the time of her hire, she was hard-pressed for cash and didn't have a car. She walked everywhere.
"I wanted to ride," she says, laughing at the irony of going from being a pedestrian to a professional driver.
Not driving a car often, as it turned out, didn't hinder her effectiveness as a bus operator. Dozier went on in her 26-year career to log more than 2 million miles behind the wheel of a KAT bus.
She once drove in a national bus "roadeo" obstacle course competition in San Diego. She won safe-driving awards at KAT and had just two accidents, neither her fault. (One time, a woman ran a stop sign, and Dozier clipped her bumper, veering her bus hard to avoid T-boning her. "I was actually thanked by that woman," Dozier said.)
Dozier made friends easily at KAT - good friends. She remembers playing cards during breaks between split shifts. And in retirement, she sometimes rides the bus to have a few minutes to catch up if one of her old friends is driving.
"My favorite parts of the job were the people and the driving," she said. "My main route was Dandridge Avenue, and I loved the people. I'd look after them, and they'd look after you. I miss them."
Being the first female African-American driver and only the third woman driver, Dozier said there were the occasional rude or insensitive remarks from passengers. They came rarely, but when they did, they stung.
One time, when she was driving a shuttle to a University of Tennessee football game, a drunk fan directed a racial slur at her. "It shocked me, because it was the first time," she said. But a friendlier response followed: A white female passenger kicked the verbally abusive man off the bus, telling him, "You can't say that to her."
When she got her start as a new driver back in 1976, Dozier admits being a little intimidated at first.
"You'd start out early morning, in the dark, driving this big bus," she said. "I was very scared, but it was something I had to do. I put my scared-ness behind. I wanted to prove a point that, as a black woman, I could do this. I had to prove it to myself."