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.

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30 Key Dates continued Nationally renowned sculptor Ed Hamilton, 66, grew up in the midst of the district���s hubbub; he and his parents lived in an apartment on the third foor of the Mammoth Life and Accident Insurance Building at Sixth and Walnut. (Te insurer was the largest black-owned business in Louisville then.) His father had a tailoring business and his mother a barbershop on the frst foor. ���I had no concept of what segregation meant,��� Hamilton says, ���because we had our own stuf. . . . Around certain corners of Sixth Street, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, there were various shops that were run by Lebanese, Jews, but we never experienced ��� I know I didn���t ��� any form of prejudice by going in those stores.��� In 1956 Hamilton became part of the frst integrated class at formerly all-white George D. Prentice Elementary on Sixth Street after spending frst through third grade at all-black Paul Dunbar Elementary at 10th and Magazine streets. (where north-south railroad tracks create a division),��� Aubespin says, ���you will fnd that the names of (several) streets change because the whites that lived there wanted to make sure that black people knew that this was not their area.��� So Magazine Street became Del Park Terrace; Chestnut became River Park Drive; Madison became Vermont Avenue; Walnut became Michigan Avenue; Cedar became Larkwood Avenue; Jeferson became Herman Street. Hamilton says she noted west Louisville opening to African-American residents in stages ��� an almost systematic turnover of white blocks to black. ���First the cut-of mark was 18th Street; then African-Americans got to move down to 28th Street; then 34th Street; then 41st Street; and then fnally we got to go down to the parkway,��� she says, as realtors resorted to ���blockbusting��� ���I remember when my mother would say, ���Let me trace your foot,������ says Bernadette Hamilton. ���And you didn���t know that she would take (the outline) downtown to try to ��nd you a pair of shoes. Sometimes they ��t, sometimes they didn���t.��� His wife Bernadette, also 66, recalls bits of indirect prejudice from her childhood experience. ���I remember when my mother would say, ���Let me trace your foot,������ she says. ���And you didn���t know that she would take it downtown to try to fnd you a pair of shoes. You couldn���t try on shoes then, so she would use this cardboard template to see what size shoes you were going to need. Sometimes they ft, sometimes they didn���t. You gave them to the next child down if they were too small.��� She grew to understand the rationale of the white perspective: ���Te insult was to us, but to them it was about, ���We can���t sell this product if a black person has tried it on.������ For her junior-high years, Bernadette Hamilton lived in the Southwick public-housing project, a 1960 urbanrenewal project right across the street from 1952-completed Cotter Homes in Park DuValle, the neighborhood that formed around the southwest corner of Parkland known as ���Little Africa.��� She attended DuValle Junior High (now a middle school) and set her high-school sights on Central ��� the only black high school before desegregation. Ed Hamilton, whose family moved to Beech Street in Park DuValle when he was 12, also wanted to attend DuValle and then Central, but his mother ���intervened��� and he ended up at white-weighted Parkland Junior High (now Lyman T. Johnson Traditional Middle School) and Shawnee High at a time when whites still dominated those neighborhoods. ���My thought is this,��� Hamilton says. ���We came from a time period when a lot of our elders thought . . . if you were white, you were right. . . . I guess she thought I���d get a better education at Shawnee. I can���t say I did.��� Did he feel any animosity directed toward him? ���I found the animosity mostly with some of the teachers who weren���t too crisp on having us there,��� he says. Both Bernadette Hamilton and Merv Aubespin made the same telling observation about a peculiar turf-protecting change in street signs as blacks drove west through Russell and Shawnee. ���If you still go down to 32nd Street ��� persuading white homeowners to sell quickly before more blacks bought nearby and home values precipitously declined. Te changeovers were often unpleasant. Around 1966, says Aubespin, ���I found a house for my wife and my baby. I broke the block on Shawnee terrace. It was the frst house on the west side past Market, right down the street from Fontaine Ferry, and that was an all-white neighborhood. . . . A week after we were in there, I walked outside and on both sides of the street, all the way down, were for-sale signs. Tat was my welcome. By the time I left there, that whole area had become all-black.��� A similar scenario played out for the Hamiltons when they bought their frst house on 43rd Street between Market and Main. ���When we moved there we still had white neighbors,��� Ed Hamilton says. ���But gradually, you could tell, they were slowly moving out.��� Te fgures for the desertion of west Louisville ��� which picked up considerable speed in the violent spring and summer of 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and then a full-scale riot, with two deaths and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, broke out at 28th and Greenwood in the quickly deteriorating Parkland neighborhood ��� are startling. Te percentage of minorities (all but a few African-American) in 1950, when the total population peaked, was 27.4 percent. By 1960 it was 39.7 percent; by 1970, 65.8 percent; by 1980, 76.1 percent; by 2000, 81 percent. Te white population, between 1950 and 2010, declined by a whopping 90.3 percent. But it wasn���t just whites who were feeing west Louisville; African-Americans were feeing too. Between its 1970 peak and 2010, the black population decreased by more than 30 percent ��� much of the exodus a result, as well as a cause, of crime, drug use and the erosion of gainful employment. Today, west Louisville has been left a shell of its former self. U.S. Supreme Court declares the ordinance unconstitutional in 1917. 1922 Annexation grabs south Chickasaw, including the old State Fairgrounds site, and Algonquin. 1934 The National Housing Act is passed, creating the Federal Housing Administration. A subsequent 1937 housing act initiates Section 8 subsidized housing. 1937 The worst ��ood in local history inundates 60 percent of the city, including all of west Louisville, remaining above ��ood stage for 23 days. Eight years later, a second big ��ood drives 50,000 residents from their homes. 1940 The ��rst west Louisville public housing projects, Parkway Place and Beecher Terrace are completed. 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education declares state publicschool segregation laws unconstitutional. 1955 Louisville Mayor Andrew Broaddus issues executive order ending segregation of the city���s public parks, swimming pools and Iroquois Amphitheater. 1957 Louisville voters approve a $5 million bond issue to begin a series of urban renewal projects. 1964 The national Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination in privately owned businesses that serve the public. 1968 The national Fair Housing Act is enacted, making it illegal to discriminate against anyone seeking to buy or rent property. 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3 5

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