Segregated Lexington

This descriptive website contains evidence we discovered and relied on
to develop "Lexington, Kentucky: Segregated By Design,"
a presentation that examines segregation in our small city.
—Barbara Sutherland and Rona Roberts

Why is Housing in Lexington Segregated?

Is it by accident? Or is it by design? The answer is clear. Over many decades, local and federal government, landowners, property developers, realtors, bankers, landlords, and individual home-sellers intentionally created a segregated community. Government-sanctioned segregated housing benefited White people and harmed Black people. For a few crucial decades, primarily the 1940s through the 1960s, White people with working class and middle class incomes bought houses made affordable, in part, by government-backed home mortgages. Very few Black people were able to do the same. As the value of their houses appreciated, White owners built wealth and shared it with their families across generations, creating inequalities that persist today.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in 2022, White wealth is more than eight times greater than Black wealth; "Black families have about 12 cents for every dollar held by white families." Researchers for a Minneapolis Federal Reserve study concluded in 2016 that "...no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households over the past 70 years."

For much of the 20th century, government polices explicitly excluded Black people from a proven pathway to wealth building through home ownership. In its 1970 investigation, A Low Income Housing Study for Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky, the Planning Commission acknowledged this explicitly: 

Prior to the passage of civil rights legislation covering fair housing practices [1968], the only housing available for Negroes was in predominately "Negro areas." These areas were essentially within the 13 low standard neighborhoods, two new Negro subdivisions, the small Negro settlements in the rural areas of Fayette County, and in the public housing projects. 

Only a tiny fraction of Black people were able to buy a home that would appreciate in value and build family wealth during the years when multiple forms of government assistance helped White people become first-time homeowners. By the time in the late 1960s when government policies changed to remove legal barriers to Black home ownership, the cost of homes had increased so much, relative to incomes, that many Black families could still no longer afford the cost of buying their own homes. 

The film Segregated by Design paints a national picture of 20th century de jure (law-based) segregation and its causal contribution to the wealth gap between Black and White families in the United States. Both the presentation and website titled “Segregated Lexington” document some of the history and ongoing impacts of de jure segregation in Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky.

Note of caution: You may come across language on this website that you find harmful or offensive. To provide evidence that segregation in Lexington did not happen by accident, we have found it necessary to use materials that reflect the time period when they were created and the views of their creators. As a result, some texts may exhibit racist and offensive views that do not reflect our values.