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We do not know what life was really like in Lexington's African American neighborhoods throughout the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. To our knowledge no one has yet written a complete study of Lexington's neighborhoods—segregated Black, White, or integrated—as they developed and changed over the years. The picture we do have is fragmented. We have not read everything there is to read on the subject, and what we have read is inconsistent. The White city officials, social reformers, and "slum clearance" proponents of the time tended to describe African American neighborhoods in negative or at best patronizing terms. Black residents and scholars, and more recent White scholars, have tended to describe the neighborhoods as sometimes challenging but often welcoming places to live, with rich histories and community life.
Here is what we have pieced together, along with major questions we still have:
Before the Civil War, Lexington was integrated in a physical but not a social or economic sense. Lexington and Fayette County had a large population of enslaved Black people, but not all enslaved people lived on plantations or in the homes of the White people they worked for. Some lived in alleys near the White homes where they worked, and some may have lived in the backyards of those White homes. Other Black people, both enslaved and free, lived in rural or urban settlements or barracks near workplaces such as farms or hemp factories. A few had achieved their freedom and lived as free African Americans in homes they built, purchased, or rented.
When the war ended, a great number of formerly enslaved people moved to Lexington seeking jobs, education, assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau, and freedom from rural violence. Lexington's African American population increased from 3,080 in 1860 to 7,171 in 1870—growing more than 100%. In 1880, African Americans represented almost 50% of the population (Kellogg 1982, 31) .
The new arrivals found housing in the existing Black settlements, in the small alley homes, or in new settlements created by (mostly White) landowners who divided larger parcels of land. These new settlements were usually on the outskirts of town, and often on land that was considered undesirable because of poor drainage, distance from the city center, or proximity to railroads, dumps, and similar unpleasant uses. The houses built on the land dedicated to Black settlements were generally small, with poor sanitation; residents often had to make do with community wells and shared privies.
The urban settlements, which were often named for the landowners who had sold the land, included Adamstown, Taylortown, Brucetown, Davis Bottom, Goodloetown, Gunntown, Kinkeadtown, Lee’s Row, Pralltown, Smithtown, Bradley Street Bottoms, and the Lower Street area. Some of those communities merged as they grew.
Fayette County was also home to a number of rural settlements, most inhabited by either White or Black people, but not both. The predominantly Black settlements included Bracktown, Cadentown, Jimtown, Jonestown, Little Georgetown, Maddoxtown, Pricetown-Nihizertown-Centerville, and Uttingertown-Columbus. Most of the people who lived in these settlements farmed, or worked on nearby farms (Ockerman 2021, 74-78).
Many of the rural settlements have decreased in population, and some have all but disappeared. Much that used to be rural is now suburban. Jonestown, for example, has completely disappeared into a suburban neighborhood inside Man o' War Boulevard. Residents of several communities, notably Bracktown and Cadentown, are working to preserve their neighborhoods' integrity and history.
With the development of the urban and rural Black settlements, Lexington began to be truly segregated. Before the war, Whites had found it preferable for enslaved Black people to live nearby where it was easier to oversee and control them. After the war, Whites preferred and imposed "a physical and social separation of the races that was unknown before the war" (Kellogg 1982, 41).
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, in the central part of town but outside the Black settlements, Black and White people lived in relative proximity, but it was not a truly integrated community. On a given street one block might be White and the next block Black, or one side of a street might be Black and the other side White.
Over the years Lexington expanded around the urban Black settlements until they were no longer on the outskirts of town, but simply part—a segregated part—of Lexington's urban fabric. The settlements formed the basis of what remained predominantly African American neighborhoods, and some settlement names are still in use, at least informally.
Several writers (Kellogg and others) have explained that the urban settlements from which most of Lexington's African American neighborhoods grew had often been built on land that was unsuitable for residences. Planning and zoning decisions in the 20th century perpetuated the proximity of non-residential uses in Black neighborhoods, as we have shown on this website in the section on Planning and Zoning.
Overcrowding was common in Lexington's Black neighborhoods. At first this was partly because so many formerly enslaved people had arrived in Lexington over a short time period. As time went on, pro-segregation policies contributed to overcrowding by preventing most Black people from living anywhere else. (We discuss those policies—redlining, restrictive covenants, and realtor steering—elsewhere on this website). White absentee landlords owned a high percentage of homes in many Black settlements and neighborhoods; some were not scrupulous about upkeep. For many residents who did own their homes, low wages made it difficult to afford needed maintenance. Until the first quarter of the 20th century and in some cases later, many homes in these neighborhoods did not have running water or inside toilets; in some cases the sewers were available but landlords would not pay for the connections. Under such circumstances, property deterioration and unhealthy living conditions were nearly inevitable.
Because of racial segregation, Black people of various income and education levels intermingled in Lexington's African American neighborhoods. In her Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Karen Cotton McDaniel described the black community of 1910 as "an inclusive place with all classes forced to live together, sharing the same streets, grocers, restaurants, tailors, schools, parks, beauty and barber shops, mortuaries, and churches" (McDaniel 2013, 66).
Members of Lexington's early Black communities established several churches, and before the state mandated the establishment of (segregated) schools for Black children, the communities themselves established and funded schools. Residents also created numerous other charitable, social, cultural, recreational and education-related associations to better their own lives and those of their neighbors. Two such organizations were the Colored Orphan Industrial Home Board of Managers (1882), which established and funded Lexington's only orphanage for African American children, and the Committee for Health Camp for Colored Children (1944), which ensured that low-income Black children received meals and open-air exercise in the summer. Both of those organizations continued for many years during a time when the White community provided no such assistance for Black children (McDaniel 2013, 66). McDaniel points out that most of these institutions were created by women, and she adds, "Although black women did not have access to the level of personal financial wealth, or enjoy the security of protection from violence, or have the same publicity opportunities, as white club women, they still initiated every progressive reform that white women instigated" (McDaniel 2013, 69).
Throughout the twentieth century, the older African American neighborhoods in Lexington have often been described as "slums." (We discuss that pejorative designation below.) The neighborhoods have also faced government, private, and institutional attempts to "fix" them, all too often through demolition and displacement. We are unaware of any sustained and serious consideration of an investment approach, one that either required owners to maintain the houses they rented to Black families or allocated public funds toward that same end. We discuss government attempts at destroying Black neighborhoods, and neighbors' resistance to them, in the section on Urban Renewal.
Lexington's first public housing projects, Aspendale and Bluegrass, opened in 1937. The federal government funded these projects, and, like other housing projects around the country described in Segregated By Design, they were segregated. Aspendale was for Black families and Bluegrass was for Whites; for years an 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire physically separated the two projects. Later, authorities united the two components under the name Bluegrass-Aspendale. A second public housing site, Charlotte Court, opened in 1941 just off Georgetown Road. It, too, was segregated (Lexington Housing Authority). (The barbed-wire fence between Bluegrass and Aspendale was removed in 1974. A photo is available at https://kyphotoarchive.com/2017/02/06/fence-separating-races-removed-1974/)
According to author and UK History Professor George C. Wright, who grew up in Charlotte Court in the 1950s, Aspendale and Charlotte Court were considered "attractive and convenient" places to live. He described a sense of community and pride in both complexes; the residents formed neighborhood associations and "took care of their apartments and yards" (Wright 1980, 10). He also reported that living in the projects provided a "stepping stone" for African Americans; the rents were modest, and many families were able to save enough to purchase homes once Black subdivisions were built in the 1950s and 1960s (Wright 1980, 11).
In spite of the advantages of public housing to those who lived there, in February 1950 the Lexington Leader reported that realtors expressed "sharp criticism of Lexington's municipal housing plans." The realtor representatives, including the president of the Lexington Real Estate Board, told the City Commission ". . . they felt the expenditure of public funds for municipal housing is unfair to taxpayers," and asserted that private capital would do the job better and at lower cost (Lexington Leader 1950).
The new Black subdivisions Dr. Wright mentioned were Haskins Drive (1950), St. Martin's Village (around 1957), and Oakwood (mid-1960s).
Haskins Drive, developed with private capital by Lexington native Ovan Haskins, an insurance manager and real estate broker, was, according to Dr. Wright, the "best housing available to blacks in Lexington at that time," but the homes were expensive and available to only 26 families (“Haskins, Ovan"). Construction of St. Martin's Village started in the mid-1950s and continued to the 1960s; eventually there were about 150 homes. The St. Martin's Village developers were C.M. Seeberger and Joseph N. Fister, Jr., both of whom were White (Davis 2004). Oakwood opened in 1964 with 106 homes selling for about $20,000 each. It was so popular that 139 homes were added 5 years later in adjacent Oakwood Estates.
Articles we have read described some purchasers of homes in these African American subdivisions as teachers, a tile-setter, police officers, and people in similar occupations (Davis 2004). We do not know how many more Black families would have been able to purchase similar suburban homes (either in all-Black or integrated subdivisions) if more homes had been available to them.
Several other people have researched and written about the significant contributions of people who lived in Lexington's African American neighborhoods, and the rich, diverse communities they created. For example, Alvin M. Seals' 1963 MA thesis described the variety of voluntary associations—mostly centering around charitable and social activities—in Lexington's Black communities. For his 2002 book, Lexington Kentucky, Gerald L. Smith compiled a wealth of vintage images showing African American people, communities, activities, and events. The Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, developed by Reinette Jones and Rob Aken, is a rich source of information about most of Lexington's early Black neighborhoods, as well as numerous prominent Lexington African Americans. The Blacks in Lexington Oral History Project, initiated in 1978 as a partnership between the Urban League and the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, includes 232 interviews with prominent and "ordinary" community members. Similarly, the East End Lexington Oral History Project includes 15 interviews in which African American residents of the East End recount their lives in the area from the early 20th century into the 21st.
A 1995 Lexington Herald-Leader series, "Distant Neighbors," included articles about several neighborhoods including "We Really Do Need Each Other" (about Green Acres) by Darla Carter, and "I'll Be Here 'Til They Carry Me Out" (Ohio Street) by Andy Mead. Merlene Davis wrote about St. Martin's Village in the 2004 Herald-Leader article, "1950s Blacks Relished an Enclave of Their Own." In the 2010 Herald-Leader article "It'll always be home," Tom Eblen wrote about Oakwood subdivision.
By the first quarter of the 20th century, some community leaders were expressing concern about Lexington's "slums." Although the "slum" areas were not often clearly defined, it appears that the neighborhoods referred to included most of the African American neighborhoods, and a few low-income White sections.
In 1924 the Lexington Board of Health commissioned a survey of housing conditions from Madge Headley of Chicago. In her report Headley mentioned "old and new three-room houses and shacks" as well as Chicago Bottom, Brucetown, Davis Bottom, Goodloetown Yellmantown" (Lexington Board of Health 1924, 6). Later in the report she mentioned Pralltown.
Headley found that about one-third of the city's population still used privies, even though 90% of the city's streets had sewer lines. According to James Hanlon, the 1924 study recommended that the required lines be installed in several sections immediately, but the city took no action, "even though new, white-occupied housing beyond the city limits was being connected as far back as 1919." Even where there were sewer and water lines, many homes did not have indoor plumbing. Although some owner-occupants were able to afford the plumbing, others could not. And in some neighborhoods most of the properties had been bought over the years "by white absentee owners who had little incentive to make such improvements" (Hanlon 2011, 745).
According to the records we have read, it appears that much of the early impulse to do something about the living conditions in Lexington's low-income neighborhoods arose from concern about their supposed effect on the larger (White) community. Various reports used terms like "cancer," "invasion," and "blight" when they referred to neighborhood conditions, thus invoking "a vision of a plague spreading across the city, moving from one neighborhood to the next" (Wendell Pritchett, quoted in Hanlon 2011, 737).
Some examples of Whites' stated fears about contagion follow.
A 1920 Board of Commerce housing survey stated, "Cooks and servants employed in Lexington homes and in hotels and restaurants in the preparation of food and in commercial enterprises handling food, laundry and supplies that go into all classes of Lexington homes to be handled by individuals live in houses in an unbelievable condition (Lexington Herald 1920).
“[A] cook, a laundress, a chauffeur, a nursemaid, a barber, a clerk, coming from a home where there is infectious disease, brings the germs to daily work” (Lexington Board of Health 1924, 6).
If the specter of contagious disease was not frightening enough, officials invoked supposed threats to property values:
"A serious problem develops in the old and new three-room houses and shacks. They line alleys and back streets, they cluster together in well known, notorious neighborhoods, and invade the sparsely built districts along the city Lines. They will constitute a serious objection to the annexation of some of the suburbs, growing up just over the city line." . . ."The unfit houses in these small areas debase the standard homes in the larger areas, just as debased currency affects sound money" (Lexington Board of Health 1924, 6).
"Housing conditions in Negro districts and their physical appearance have been found to affect the value of residence property of all classes for several blocks in all directions. Consequently much of the white residence property bordered on the Negro sections of the city are in a semi-slum condition" (Lexington Herald 1920). James Hanlon, who cited the 1920 Lexington Herald article, pointed out that "property values were, of course, a matter of subjective appraisal, and so such contentions tended to be self-fulfilling" (Hanlon 2011, 742).
In the 1931 Comprehensive Plan, concerns about "slums" were based in part on their supposed drain on city resources, or their negative impact on the community as a whole:
"[T]hese unhealthy, unsanitary settlements are a menace to health and safety in the city, and a constant drain on the economic resources of the citizens for free medical work, for charities, and for extra police and fire protection" (Lexington City Planning and Zoning Commission 1931, 23).
The 1931 Comprehensive Plan's authors acknowledged that work had been done to follow the recommendations of the 1924 Housing Study, but pointed out that "much remains to be done still to bring these blighted areas up to standard from the sanitary and housing standpoint." The Plan added:
Fully appreciating the difficulties presented by the physical and especially by the economic side of the problem, it is believed, that the public, which because of tradition and perhaps sentimental reasons has been wont to look with tolerance upon these conditions, should be aroused to the vital importance of . . . taking drastic action if necessary to rid the community of substandard housing and sanitary conditions in these neighborhoods (Lexington City Planning and Zoning Commission 1931, 24 ).
The 1924 housing report also decried the perceived inability of impoverished neighborhoods to produce upstanding citizens and workers:
"The effect of dilapidated, damp, filthy, disease infected houses, which are shelters, but not homes, in producing lack of thrift, bad working habits, criminal standards, low earning ability, and improper living standards, cannot be measured in dollars. These houses counteract all we do in our public schools and much of our medical and nursing work . . . An unhealthful, unsanitary house cannot turn out a capable workman" (Lexington Board of Health 1924, 3).
The 1939 WPA Real Property Survey of Lexington homes found that 19.2% of owner-occupied homes and just over 50% of non-owner-occupied homes needed major repairs or were unfit for habitation (26). The same study found (15 years after the 1924 Housing Study) that 23.9% of the city's dwelling units included no flush toilets, and 15.5% had neither a flush toilet nor running water. Not surprisingly , the study identified the areas with the highest percentage of substandard residences to be generally "identical with those where sanitary facilities are lacking" (US Works Projects Administration 1939, 26–29). And those, again not surprisingly, tended to be in or near the areas that had originally been the first Black settlements (US Works Projects Administration 1939, Condition of Structures Map).
In comparison with the 1924 housing study and the 1931 Comprehensive Plan, the WPA report used more objective language in describing the "substandard" areas and their occupants. For example, the WPA study found that "of the 4,254 Negro-occupied units enumerated in the survey, 3,567, or 83.8%, fail to prove themselves adequate." Many of the substandard homes were owner-occupied, the study found, and went on to say, "This is significant when it is realized that this group's plight is not of deliberate choice but rather reflects the inability of the owner to make needed repairs owing to a lack of economic stability" (US Works Projects Administration 1939, 36).
Some of the photos and descriptions in the early reports, especially the 1924 housing study, show truly deplorable conditions in which no human being should have to live. We do not know, however, how representative those photos and descriptions are of all the early African American neighborhoods. As we have mentioned above, the same neighborhoods were home to many people who entered professions, formed charitable and social organizations, saved money, started schools, and raised successful children.
We also do not know what efforts city officials, landlords, charitable organizations, or private businesses might have made to improve conditions in the "slums." It is clear that medical people and social workers attempted to address immediate health and social issues. But it is not clear that the city followed recommendations for improved city services, and it does not appear that the financial sector or the absentee owners of the properties did anything with regard to home improvement or other loans, or that local business did much to raise wages or end job discrimination. We also do not know whether anyone in the White leadership and power positions in the city considered the effects of residential or employment segregation.
Reading several reports across several decades leads to a perception that while researchers and planners repeatedly pointed out the harms and horrors of under-resourced, mainly Black neighborhoods, and often seemed to assume Black residents' culpability for deplorable conditions, little or nothing was done to address root causes by fixing an unjust economic system or by setting and enforcing adequate living and health standards for all owners and landlords in the city. Nor does it appear, in spite of many assertions about negative neighborhood conditions affecting the whole community, that help was offered for those who could not afford their own remediation.
In conclusion, we continue to ask: Was Lexington segregated by design?
The movie Segregated By Design describes how racist policies—restrictive covenants, redlining, exclusionary zoning, and steering by realtors—concentrated Black people in confined neighborhoods, forcing overcrowding. Some cities withdrew services like water and sewer. Some placed polluting industry and toxic waste plants in Black neighborhoods, or simply sited Black neighborhoods in such areas to begin with. We know from our research that across many decades Black people and neighborhoods in Lexington faced similar challenges resulting from similar policies. There is much more, however, that we do not know about life in Lexington's Black neighborhoods across time.