Read up on redlining and where the US installed its highways in cities in the 50/60/70s.
In almost every case, they cut right down the middle of a black neighborhood, a neighborhood that people had been forced into living in due to redlining. This of course destroyed the neighborhood, and made any adjacent homes and buisnesses highly undesirable, gutting black and minority wealth again and again and forcing those residents to live next to road/noise pollution.
Leading off by acknowledging that this may be a modern day case of the same practice is why they added a “black woman” to the headline.
I personally read this as a case of nimbyism, as most of their complaints aren’t based on likely issues, but i can understand the distrust the community has for this kind of project.