Segregation, Why Should I Care?

I was talking to one of my friends about my latest blog post and he said something interesting to me. "Why should I care about Western Louisville?" He liked what I wrote, and he understood where I was coming from. He just didn't see why he should care. So, I thought I would explain why he should care, or at least take an interest.

I can some up why you should care in one word. Demographics. If you care at all about this city then you should care about where the demographics and what they mean. In the not to distant future there will be more Black and Brown folks than White folks. The vast majority of kids under 13 are either Black or Brown. That's even true in Jefferson County. Did you know the US is the 5th largest spanish speaking nation in the world?

The city can't keep ignoring the neighborhoods in which the vast majority of these populations live. Why? Because they are the future of the city. The future of the country. If things don't change then more and more young Black and Brown will do like most of friends have already done. Move.

Almost every black kid I knew growing up has either moved to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. Most of them to Atlanta. They moved because they wanted to be around other young black professionals. Something that you really don't see a lot of in Louisville.

I know a lot of young white kids move as well. We need to keep all of our young, bright, and talented professionals. The only problem is that the pool of young white talented kids are shrinking while the pool of young black and brown kids are growing. We can ignore the black and brown kids like we have been, but that would put us at a serious disadvantage going forward. Why do that yourself?

The other problem is that we don't treat all people the same. The years of racial and economic segregation have taken their toll on the Black community. This means it's going to take great resources to improve those communities. These are resources that we are going to have to spend if we want to remain competitive. Not just Louisville, but the nation as a whole. If Louisville can start now then we will have a HUGE leg up on every other community.

It's not hard to attract to young black professionals. You just have to make us feel wanted and that we have the same opportunity as everybody else to compete. The city may have to start to black chamber of commerce, or an arts center in Western Louisville. We have to do our part as well. It can be done.

When I was in high school and college all of my friends were telling me that Atlanta was the place to go. When I went to Atlanta for college i could see why. I had never seen so many young black professionals in one place. A few years later the hot cities were Charlotte, Houston, and Dallas.

Louisville can do the same thing. The West-End is a beautiful part of town. It doesn't have anywhere near the blight that black communities in other cities have. The foundation is here or are we afraid that Louisville may become to poor, old and black?

Revitalizing Russell Pt 2

Times are rough and tough like leather...

C.R.E.A.M.

Raekwon the Chef

This has been much harder to write than I had initially thought. In part 1 I gave you a short history on how we got to where we are. In this part I wanted to give some concrete solutions about what can be done. I was going to write a long piece about what should be done, but because of my radio show and other events we are doing I didn't have the time. Instead I'm going talk about a couple of ideas that I had.

1) 8664

I can't speak for CARR on this one, but I can speak for myself. We need to tear down 64 as it runs through downtown, and create waterfront park west. This would help to reconnect Western Louisville to the rest of the city and would also help to spur redevelopment dollars west of 9th street.

The reason I like the 8664 plan is because it reconnects our city back to our biggest resource. The River. It would save Kentucky almost $1 Billion. Build the East End bridge, tear down 8664, and expand Waterfront Park west.

2) If you are going to build low income housing and apartments all over Russell at least make them mixed income. If you are going to build a low income apartment complex make it mixed income. Have 1/4 for residents of public housing, 1/4 for senior citizens, 1/4 income based, and 1/4 market rate.

This brings the diversity that a neighborhood needs in-order to re-stabilize itself. If the city is going to build apartment buildings they should also look at building a mixed use building. Apartments above and retail below.

3) Bring back the forgivable second mortgage. When we purchased our house we used the forgivable second mortgage and it was a big help. However, that money was just for new construction. We should expand that to include rehabbed housing. That way we could save some of the older houses that are still in the neighborhood and keep our identity.

Although the housing market is relatively weak, I think having a second forgivable mortgage, the one time $8000 first time home buyer, and the recently passed tax breaks for building/remodeling green we should be able to move some houses.

4) If we build these houses and apartments then we should look at partnering with Youth Build to build some of these units. That way we can train kids in the area to build houses in their/our neighborhood. They would learn not only how to build houses, but to build green. Thus preparing them for the future, and hopefully providing a financial foundation on which the community can grow.

These are just some of my ideas. More to follow.

Revitalizing Russell Pt 1 Inner City Blues

One of the main missions of CARR is to revitalize the Russell Neighborhood.  We want to bring it back to it's former glory. I know that is a very lofty goal. Very lofty. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how achievable it really is. It is really difficult to revitalize an urban neighborhood. Like most predominately inner-city African-American neighborhoods, Russell is usually ignored by the rest of the city. We have become a place to warehouse the city's poor, and a good depository for it's halfway houses. 

I could go on and on about the problems and hurdles that Russell faces, but I'm not. I've always been the type of guy to focus on solutions. I believe in order to find a solution you first must know what the problem is, but more importantly, the root cause of the problem. That's why this first installment deals so much with Louisville's history. You have to know how you got to where you are if you plan to move forward. In the following installments I'm going to talk about plans that we have come up with to try and revitalize Russell. I'm also going to talk a lot about how to get the ear of your elected officials. To get them to pay attention to you and act on your proposals. Maybe you might be able to learn something that could benefit your neighborhood or city. We could also learn a thing or 2 from you as well. Let's start with a brief history lesson. 

 I'm not going to go in-depth into the history of Russell and the history of African-Americans in Louisville, but I will give you a brief overview. I believe this is essential because some of the things that have happened in Louisville's past is directly affecting what's going on today. But you can say this about almost every city and it's relationship to it's majority African-American neighborhoods.   

First lets look at the history of Louisville and the history of race relations in Louisville. In the early years Louisville was a key player in Slavery in the United States. After the United States outlawed the importation Africans, Louisville became the central distribution point of slaves being sold to the south.  The term "sold down the river" was first coined in Louisville. Slaves, like horses, were bred on Ky farms, and brought to Louisville to be "sold down the river" to plantations in the south.  At the same time Louisville was also home to free Blacks. Free Blacks who had the right to vote. In fact, were encourage to vote. This is quite odd. In every other city in Kentucky the opposite was true. In fact, many of the cities free blacks lived in houses in predominately White neighborhoods. Now, these houses fronted the alleys and were very small, but they were still in wealthy White neighborhoods. Louisville really wasn't segregated until the Black population crossed the 10% barrier. Until then Blacks could go to movie theaters and sit in the front row, sit anywhere on street cars, and the like. This again, is the exact opposite of what happened everywhere else in Kentucky. 

Louisville has always been a city where the main populace never really wants to ruffle any feathers. A go along to get along type of city. It always has been and it still is. Don't get me wrong. Blacks may have had it a tad bit easier in Louisville than in many cities in the south and north, but there still was a lot of racism in the city. Louisville still had it's share of violent protest and riots. 

Another major influence on race relations in Louisville and on the psyche of the city as a whole is it's location. Louisville was once known as the gateway to the south. All Ohio river traffic had to stop here. Most railways ran right through Louisville. However, if you look at the map, Louisville is in a kind of no mans land. We aren't the South. We have some southern ways, but we're not southern.  We're not exactly in the Midwest. We have some midwestern architecture (just like we have a great mix of Southern architecture), and we have some midwestern attitudes, but we still aren't quite midwestern. We have a little East Coast attitude, and some of that western frontier spirit. However, we are neither east nor west. Louisville has an identity crisis. We can be very progressive and we can be very conservative all at the same time.  That's why Blacks always had the right to vote, and were encourage to vote. But, there was still rampant racism. That's why we propose these grand building projects, but then we fight them tooth and nail. 

With the history of Louisville as a backdrop lets look at a brief history of Russell. Russell was originally one of Louisville's first "suburbs." The neighborhood that would become known as Russell was founded around the 1870's. It was a place where the city's wealthiest citizens would call home. They moved to stately victorian mansions on such grand streets as Jefferson, Walnut (president day Muhammad Ali Blvd.), and Chestnut. The streets in-between these, Madison, Ceder, and Magazine is where the working class lived. Behind the Mansions there were small shotgun houses that fronted the alleys. In most of these houses is where some of Louisville's Black population lived. As the Black population of Louisville started to rise they slowly moved into Russell. As more and more Blacks moved in the white population started to move out. White flight. By the early 1900's Russell was pretty much an all black neighborhood. 

Russell was the center of African-American life in Louisville. It was the Harlem of KY. Russell was a mix of some of the wealthiest African-Americans , the working class, and some of it's poorest citizens. The settlement pattern pretty much followed that of the previous inhabitants. The wealthiest African-Americans lived on Jefferson, Walnut and Chestnut. the rest on the streets that fall in-between those.  

Russell also boasted a rich business district known as Old Walnut Street. Old Walnut Street was home to several theaters, restaurants, night clubs, roller rinks, homes and schools. It was the heart of Russell. It was also Russell's connection to the heart of the city.  If you look at a map of the City Russell is pretty much shaped like a square. The original neighborhood was bounded by 6th street on the eastern edge, Jefferson street on the northern edge, Broadway on the Southern edge, and 32nd street on it's western edge. 

Russell's declined followed that of many inner-city neighborhoods. First, the end of de-facto segregation meant that Russell's wealthiest residents could move out of the neighborhood. Which they did. Urban Renewal did the rest. Under Urban Renewal's watch Russell lost it's connection to the heart of the city. Everything from 6th to 9th street was torn down. Everything on Old Walnut street except two buildings were razed. In fact, they razed almost every structure in Russell to 13th Street.  Russell was effectively cut off from the rest of the city. 9th street now became Russell's western edge. Then when 1-64 was being built the 9th street exit became of 4 lane boulevard with a tree lined center median. 9th street went from your typical city street to what was described above.  All in all Russell lost over 5000 businesses, and homes. It was replaced by approximately 500 low income housing units. Most of what was razed was east of 9th street was turned into surface parking. All of this took about 30 years, and Russell has never fully recovered. 

Now what? How do we go about revitalizing Russell? In the next installment I'm going to talk about how we can revitalize Russell. Why some of the city's best half-hearted efforts have failed, and why should we even care. 

Historic Preservation

We here in the Russell Neighborhood have been trying to get classified as historic preservation district for well over 2 years now. Every time we get over one hurdle we encounter another.  It's almost like the city doesn't want us to have this distinction. I can understand why. If we were to get this designation then a lot of the "slum" lords and Half-way houses in the neighborhood might actually have to keep their property up. It would also make it hard for Habitat for Humanity to build their houses. 

It's not that I mind having habitat for humanity houses in my neighborhood. I don't. I don't mind rental housing.  I just wish they would spread the wealth. Why does the west end have to the majority of rental houses, habitat for humanity homes, and half-way houses? It is because we are a poor blighted neighborhood? Is it because the rest of the city that is east of 9th street ignores what goes on here? I would say yeah. Louisville is a hyper segregated city. It always has been and looks to be that way for some decades to come. 

I think the city is afraid that if we get this distinction that we will use it to try and keep some of these half-way houses and rental properties out. That we will somehow set a master plan for the area that calls for curbing these types of developments. If that happens then the city just can't put the "undesirables"  in our neighborhood and forget about them. If that is what the city is afraid of then they should be. Because that's exactly what we intend to do.