Owen Thomas sits inside the University of Louisville’s Archives and Records Center within Ekstrom Library. As workers bustle around the exterior room, his face scrunches up as he recalls the history of African Americans in Louisville. On a long black table, a contrasting white pair of gloves sits on it, waiting to be used to view artifacts.
Thomas starts the story from when African Africans originally came to Louisville as enslaved people from Virginia. This is how the Black population started out, with the exception of a few freed men and women who moved to start a life in Louisville. After the American Civil War ended, many people living in rural areas, including Black people, moved to Louisville by using the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The migration to Louisville was the start of the development of large Black communities and neighborhoods.
Many Black people started clustering together into neighborhoods. The reason for this was jobs. Many started establishing businesses or working in different types of labor for their community or white people. Most white people would not allow Black people to use their businesses, so they had to establish their own in their own neighborhoods or communities. Thomas gave the example of funeral homes as one of the early Black businesses were undertakers. Some other establishments that were constructed were schools, cleaners, tailors, libraries, churches, florists and architectural businesses.
Fraternities and sororities, called benevolent societies, also became prominent. A person wouldn’t even need to attend a college to be in one. For example, the Pythians were a fraternal group of Black men that built a ten-story professional building that is still standing. The building is located on West Chestnut Street.
Sports were also a large part of the community. There weren’t any professional sports, but there were college teams. Thomas gave the example of Simmons University, which had a men’s football team, men’s basketball team, and a women’s basketball team.
Nightclubs also sprung up, allowing for places people could dance and listen to music. Groups of singers and dancers would perform at the National Theatre, which was used by both Black people and white people. Parades, such as Derby Day Parade and a parade before a Thanksgiving football game with Louisville Municipal College, were also big in the Black community.
But there was a problem, a problem which even survives into the present day. It was the huge divide between white and Black neighborhoods. The cause of this was white flight. White people would leave their houses behind and move further out into the suburbs. They moved away for a plethora of reasons, one being because of flooding from the Ohio River before there was a flood wall. Another main reason was that they wanted to move farther away from their Black neighbors and the federal government made housing loans cheaper after the Korean War and World War Two, which were mainly given to white people. All of these factors caused Black and white neighborhoods to become more and more segregated.
As the white people left downtown Louisville behind, the Black population started moving into the buildings that were abandoned. This is why there is a large population of Black people living in old and western Louisville. A common practice of this is seen in churches. Thomas reflected on this, giving the example that if he went down Muhammad Ali Boulevard, Chesman or Jefferson Street, he would find 15 to 20 churches that began as having a white congregation. But, they are now in a predominantly Black area and have a Black congregation. This shows the white flight out of downtown Louisville and the Black people moving into the places left behind.
Another cause of the divide was redlining. Illegally, financial institutions would divide up maps to show the predominantly Black neighborhoods and would deny the people living in these areas from receiving a loan, insurance or other services. This caused a huge divide between Black and white neighborhoods because the Black people were set at a disadvantage. White people were able to upgrade their home much easier and not put as much money into certain aspects of their life.
But due to redlining, Black people did not have this luxury. As their homes grew older, their houses would start to deteriorate, but they didn’t have the money to fix them back up. Except many of them didn’t have the money to find a new house.
Thomas stated, “the thing that is so painful for me is that poor neighborhoods, you don’t live there because you want to. You live there because that’s all there is.” This is why so much of the West End and Downtown Louisville lives in poverty and there are many vacant lots that have boarded up buildings that are no longer used. The people either have to remain in the houses that are rapidly deteriorating or they have to leave, leaving many of these houses vacant and rotting.
Black people are disproportionately poorer than compared to white people, allowing it to become difficult to move, but, not all of Louisville’s Black population remained in the West End or Downtown Louisville. Thomas described that some of the Black people that were able to afford it, moved into the suburbs that are heavily white. But if they “tip the numbers” and too many Black people move into a neighborhood, the pattern that usually follows is white people leave the neighborhood. This is still seen even in the present day.
The city is changing though, offering these people fair access to services. The West Louisville Hospital opened last year along with the Goodwill Opportunity Center.
Thomas ends the story, stating, “Well, this is as I know it and I both raised in it, and lived in it and I have studied it. But that was us then… And I’m identifying myself as us because I know I’m white and bear part of a marker and that I don’t think whites ever fully escaped.”
