Richard Shinhoster was fresh off graduating from Savannah State in the late 1960s when he and a friend were sitting around talking about Savannah and its needs.
The city didn’t have a place to purchase a collection of gospel, jazz, and R&B music, Shinhoster said. The two decided to open up a record shop at 510 W. Broad St., now known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Based on Savannah municipal archives, that would have been right around the time the Interstate-16 flyover opened for use. The record shop was only a block or so from the bridge. Before long, the once thriving Black business corridor saw the number of shop fronts close in droves. By the mid-’70s, Shinhoster’s shop was no different and the door was boarded up with wood.
“This flyover is interesting, because we had a thriving business for close to five years,” Shinhoster said, “and at that time, West Broad Street began to change because of the highway system.”
I-16 divided historically Black neighborhoods — Carver Village and Cloverdale among them — on Savannah’s westside. The flyover itself tore right through other neighborhoods such as Frogtown, the city’s railroad hub. That same bridge went on to be named for Shinhoster’s brother, Earl T. Shinhoster, a civil rights activist who had a 31-year career with the NAACP. He was killed in a car accident in 2000.