Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/111400

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 39 of 136

30 Key Dates continued writes University of Louisville professor Tracy K���Meyer in her book Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South, was its adherence to the 1870-ratifed 15th Amendment. ���Arguably Louisville���s single most important Northern characteristic,��� she writes, ���was that African-Americans faced none of the typical Jim Crow restrictions on voting, and indeed participated actively in elections and political-party structures.��� T hrough annexations between 1868 and 1922, physical west Louisville grew to its present size. Te frst land grab lowered the southern boundary to Magnolia Avenue and the western edge to 26th Street, then 28th Street a year later. So California and Russell, or at least their territory, were complete, along with much cigarette packs; and, new to Louisville in 1927, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, which took up 72 acres around 16th and Hill streets. By the 1960s, according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville, four Louisville plants employing 9,000 workers were churning out a sixth of all the cigarettes manufactured in the U.S. Add to those businesses furniture manufacturers Gimnich Furniture at 620-24 S. 31st St., Consider H. Willett at 30th and Kentucky streets and Evans Furniture at 18th and Broadway; the long-lived Mengel Box Co. between 10th and 12th on Kentucky; Corhart Refractories at 16th and Lee in Algonquin; beer brewers Senn & Ackerman, on Main between 17th and 18th, and Falls City at 30th and Broadway; Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co. at Seventh Street Road and Shipp Avenue, which once employed So a west Louisville demographic pattern ��� furthered by ever-expanding streetcar lines ��� had taken hold by the early 1900s: whites in the far west (except for the black working-class section that would become Park DuValle) and blacks in the near west. of today���s Park Hill neighborhood. In 1894, after a huge tornado four years before had devastated the town of Parkland, the city annexed it. A year later, with far-west Shawnee Park open to adventurous residents, the land east of it between Broadway and Chestnut, along with another swatch of land east of 34th Street, also became city property. Ten came north Algonquin in 1896. Te rest of today���s Shawnee and Chickasaw neighborhoods followed in 1912, and the whole of southwest Parkland (���Little Africa���) and Algonquin were added to the city in 1922. Te 1892 opening of Shawnee Park in an area primarily settled by dairy farmers catalyzed a rash of homebuilding there, especially because millionaire developer Basil Doerhoefer, whose money originally came from the sale and subsequent management of the nation���s largest plugtobacco manufacturer, National Tobacco Works at 18th and Main streets in Portland, owned and subdivided much of that Shawnee real estate. By then, two decades had already gone by since a 346-acre tract of rural land between today���s 28th and 34th streets was divided into more than 1,000 lots in 1871 and auctioned of to become the mostly white enclave of Parkland, made possible during those non-auto days by mule-driven and then electric streetcars. Public transportation was chic back then. So a west Louisville demographic pattern ��� furthered by ever-expanding streetcar lines ��� had taken hold by the early 1900s: whites in the far west (except for the black working-class section that would become Park DuValle) and blacks in the near west. It was just a matter of which group would stay and grow and which ��� for a variety of reasons beyond racial intolerance ��� would eventually go. Te west Louisville manufacturing scene was robust back then and would continue to be into the 1960s, led by tobacco ��� the aforementioned National Tobacco Works, eventually acquired by giant American Tobacco Co.; Axton-Fischer Tobacco, which employed 1,200 workers at 20th and Broadway and was bought by Philip Morris in 1944; a string of tobacco warehouses along West Main; an early rendition of Reynolds Metals that made foil for 5,600 workers; whiskey distillers Old Sunnybrook at 26th and Broadway and Bernheim at 15th and Breckinridge; Whiteside Bakery at 14th and Broadway; and Ford Motor Co.���s third assembly plant on Southwestern Parkway just south of Chickasaw Park. Professional baseball entered the mix with the frst Eclipse Park at 28th and Elliott Avenue from the 1870s to 1892 and its successor at 28th and Broadway until 1899, to be resurrected as a third Eclipse Park at Seventh and Kentucky circa 1903 to 1922. And leisure came with a new twist ��� for whites only ��� when Fontaine Ferry amusement park opened at the western end of Market Street in 1905. But race ��� and a few other factors ��� got in the way of prosperity in west Louisville. Te black community, which had frst stood up to Jim Crow in 1870 when three African-American males boarded a city streetcar at Ninth and Chestnut outside the old Quinn Chapel and, after being ejected for the color of their skin, successfully sued the carrier in district court, desegregating public transportation, stood up again in 1914 when a black man bought a homesite on a white block in Portland, breaking a recently passed Louisville housing ordinance saying he couldn���t. In a test case, Buchanan v. Warley, that coincided with Louisville obtaining its branch of the NAACP, both district and state appellate courts deemed the segregation ordinance constitutional, but in 1917 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling. Tat did not, however, halt west Louisville housing discrimination based on race; it only shifted the discrimination from government-endorsed to privately arranged deed manipulation that wouldn���t be outlawed until the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act. So for decade upon decade after Buchanan v. Warley, white sections of west Louisville remained white and black sections remained black. Cracks did appear in the armor of white-controlled west Louisville. Te era of the automobile and road-building quickly replaced the era of widely used but distance-limited public transportation, opening huge parcels of rural land east, southeast and south of the city to housing and amusement parks, among other places. The U.S. Supreme Court declares the act unconstitutional in 1883 after eight years of it being ignored. 1893 The number of city wards rises to 12, with wards 9 to 12 representing west Louisville. 1894 The city gobbles up acreage out to 33rd Street south of Broadway, including Parkland. 1895 Big pieces of Russell and Portland, plus Shawnee Park and its Broadwayto-River Park Drive (Chestnut) approach become part of Louisville. 1896 The Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholds the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities, as long as ���separate but equal��� facilities are provided for both races. 1901 Alice Hegan���s Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch is published, followed by Calvary Alley in 1917. 1904 Kentucky���s Day Law makes it illegal to have whites and African-Americans attend the same school, whether public or private. The U.S. Supreme Court ��nds the law constitutional in 1908. 1912 The rest of Shawnee, including Fontaine Ferry Park, and most of Chickasaw are annexed. 1914 A city ordinance is unanimously passed restricting blacks from residing on blocks with predominantly white residents, and vice versa. After being upheld in both circuit and state appellate courts, the continued on p. 35 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3 3

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Louisville Magazine - MAR 2013