Post by Da Boss on Aug 13, 2020 0:34:41 GMT -5
The city that would become Louisville was first settled by General George Clark as a place just South of the Falls of the Ohio river as a place for people that were moving up and down river to disembark to get their boats past the falls. However, the charter for the city would not be signed until 1790, and was named for the King of France in return for his assistance in fighting against the British in the American Revolutionary War. The city itself would not be of major import for its first few decades until it served as the last place of "civilized" country for Lewis and Clark to disembark for their trek across America.
The tiny settlement would soon undergo a massive population explosion in the 19th century due to its import in getting goods and people around the FAlls of Ohio as steam boats and paddle boats became the fastest manner of travel in the United States. Despite the growing population, all was not well within the growing urban center as tensions began to rise; pro-slavery and abolitionists, Catholics and protestants, racial tensions, ethnic tensions, and a general unease that was growing in the city would explode into violence during an event that has since become known as "Bloody Monday". Incensed by the local "Know-Nothing" party's political writings in the area, protestant mobs attacked the German and Irish Catholic neighborhoods on election day in 1855 in order to suppress their ability to vote for democratic control over the city. To this day, nobody is sure on the exact number of people killed or property that was destroyed, but the only Catholic Church to survive was the Church of the Assumption.
Within a few years, as Civil War tore apart the country, the city itself was spared from the majority of the fighting directly. However, this is in large part because of the efforts of the Union to defend the major shipping port for strategic reasons and the fact that the majority of the people moved into the numerous forts that had been constructed to defend the city. The city also became a major stop on the underground railroad for smuggling African Americans out of the South and into North due to its size and proximity to numerous routes towards the population centers in Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
After the war, a large number of former Confederate Soldiers throughout the state decided to move to Louisville in an effort to find work. This had an effect that was two fold upon the city. The first was, the city became much more "Southern" and "Socially Conservative", a fact that many in the Commonwealth have not forgotten. (Outside of Louisville, it is said that the city isn't part of the Commonwealth and is actually a part of the North and Indiana.) It has been suggested, and was heavily implied at the time, that Louisville was the only city to join the Confederacy after the war was over. The second was a history of racial injustice that the city continues to fight against to this day.
The end of the 19th century would see the city brought to its knees as the vast majority of the down was actually leveled to the ground as a single tornado (which scientists have used the reports of the time to classify as an "F4") ripped through the entire city and destroyed more than $70 million in property and killing more than 200 people. The city that had survived the Civil War relatively unscathed would instead be wiped out by mother nature.
While the rest of the country spend the beginning parts of the 20th century dealing with the Spanish Flu and World War I, Louisville was on the front of an entirely different kind of battle. It would be Louisville where the housing segregation cases would rise to the United States Supreme Court and where the highest court would strike down racial segregation in housing. (This would be the first of far too many times in which the federal government would have to step in and correct the rampant racism in the city, the last happening a merely fifteen years ago.) So, while the rest of the country was fighting for their lives, Louisville was fighting to keep its people separated.
World War II would actually mark a giant industrial boom for the city. The federal government signed a number of contracts with local businesses to supply the armed forces, including Curtiss-Wright, a major aircraft supplier for the Army Air Corp at the time. It was at this time that the city would again be on the front lines of racial tensions within America. While the city employed almost triple the number of African-American police officers as any other "southern" city, they were restricted to only having the authority to patrol neighborhoods which were more than 50% African-American. While it would claim to be progressive in employing more people of color, it would hold them down and restrict them to remove any actual authority of that employment. This period would develop what Louisville would remain known for to this day; "polite racism." Instead of actually passing Jim Crow Laws, the city would instead merely continue to follow the "customs of Louisville" to allow for racism to continue while trumpeting their success in not having racial laws on the books.
After World War II, the city began to experience a massive quantity of "suburbanization." As people fled out to the suburbs, and factories began to relocating to other places where it was more profitable, the city would end up practically shuttering entire subdivisions. This in turn had the unintended effect of making certain neighborhoods too expensive for minorities to own property within, while practically abandoning other neighborhoods financially for decades to come. It would be this period of time that created what is still known today as the "9th Street Divide" where no neighborhood north or east of 9th Street has more than five percent African American population while no neighborhood south or west of 9th Street has more than five percent caucasian population. This would be further complicated by the 1974 "Super Tornado" that would hit the Southern part of the city, destroying a number of minority homes and leading to several deaths. The city, deciding that it was only responsible for repair the damage to the public property, refused to lend any aid to the actual residents impacted by the tornado.
Today the city is still attempting to fight against its current racist practices. While more than half of the African-American population for the entire state lives within Louisville, it would be in Louisville, merely twenty years ago, that the United States Supreme Court would have to declare that you couldn't strike jurors from a jury pool simply bcause they were black. It would be in Louisville that the United States Supreme Court had to say ten years ago that you couldn't force students to participate in busing schemes to "remove" racism by forcing African-American kids to spend more than two hours on a bus just to go to a "White" school. Welcome to the front lines of racial justice; equality isn't winning here.
The tiny settlement would soon undergo a massive population explosion in the 19th century due to its import in getting goods and people around the FAlls of Ohio as steam boats and paddle boats became the fastest manner of travel in the United States. Despite the growing population, all was not well within the growing urban center as tensions began to rise; pro-slavery and abolitionists, Catholics and protestants, racial tensions, ethnic tensions, and a general unease that was growing in the city would explode into violence during an event that has since become known as "Bloody Monday". Incensed by the local "Know-Nothing" party's political writings in the area, protestant mobs attacked the German and Irish Catholic neighborhoods on election day in 1855 in order to suppress their ability to vote for democratic control over the city. To this day, nobody is sure on the exact number of people killed or property that was destroyed, but the only Catholic Church to survive was the Church of the Assumption.
Within a few years, as Civil War tore apart the country, the city itself was spared from the majority of the fighting directly. However, this is in large part because of the efforts of the Union to defend the major shipping port for strategic reasons and the fact that the majority of the people moved into the numerous forts that had been constructed to defend the city. The city also became a major stop on the underground railroad for smuggling African Americans out of the South and into North due to its size and proximity to numerous routes towards the population centers in Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
After the war, a large number of former Confederate Soldiers throughout the state decided to move to Louisville in an effort to find work. This had an effect that was two fold upon the city. The first was, the city became much more "Southern" and "Socially Conservative", a fact that many in the Commonwealth have not forgotten. (Outside of Louisville, it is said that the city isn't part of the Commonwealth and is actually a part of the North and Indiana.) It has been suggested, and was heavily implied at the time, that Louisville was the only city to join the Confederacy after the war was over. The second was a history of racial injustice that the city continues to fight against to this day.
The end of the 19th century would see the city brought to its knees as the vast majority of the down was actually leveled to the ground as a single tornado (which scientists have used the reports of the time to classify as an "F4") ripped through the entire city and destroyed more than $70 million in property and killing more than 200 people. The city that had survived the Civil War relatively unscathed would instead be wiped out by mother nature.
While the rest of the country spend the beginning parts of the 20th century dealing with the Spanish Flu and World War I, Louisville was on the front of an entirely different kind of battle. It would be Louisville where the housing segregation cases would rise to the United States Supreme Court and where the highest court would strike down racial segregation in housing. (This would be the first of far too many times in which the federal government would have to step in and correct the rampant racism in the city, the last happening a merely fifteen years ago.) So, while the rest of the country was fighting for their lives, Louisville was fighting to keep its people separated.
World War II would actually mark a giant industrial boom for the city. The federal government signed a number of contracts with local businesses to supply the armed forces, including Curtiss-Wright, a major aircraft supplier for the Army Air Corp at the time. It was at this time that the city would again be on the front lines of racial tensions within America. While the city employed almost triple the number of African-American police officers as any other "southern" city, they were restricted to only having the authority to patrol neighborhoods which were more than 50% African-American. While it would claim to be progressive in employing more people of color, it would hold them down and restrict them to remove any actual authority of that employment. This period would develop what Louisville would remain known for to this day; "polite racism." Instead of actually passing Jim Crow Laws, the city would instead merely continue to follow the "customs of Louisville" to allow for racism to continue while trumpeting their success in not having racial laws on the books.
After World War II, the city began to experience a massive quantity of "suburbanization." As people fled out to the suburbs, and factories began to relocating to other places where it was more profitable, the city would end up practically shuttering entire subdivisions. This in turn had the unintended effect of making certain neighborhoods too expensive for minorities to own property within, while practically abandoning other neighborhoods financially for decades to come. It would be this period of time that created what is still known today as the "9th Street Divide" where no neighborhood north or east of 9th Street has more than five percent African American population while no neighborhood south or west of 9th Street has more than five percent caucasian population. This would be further complicated by the 1974 "Super Tornado" that would hit the Southern part of the city, destroying a number of minority homes and leading to several deaths. The city, deciding that it was only responsible for repair the damage to the public property, refused to lend any aid to the actual residents impacted by the tornado.
Today the city is still attempting to fight against its current racist practices. While more than half of the African-American population for the entire state lives within Louisville, it would be in Louisville, merely twenty years ago, that the United States Supreme Court would have to declare that you couldn't strike jurors from a jury pool simply bcause they were black. It would be in Louisville that the United States Supreme Court had to say ten years ago that you couldn't force students to participate in busing schemes to "remove" racism by forcing African-American kids to spend more than two hours on a bus just to go to a "White" school. Welcome to the front lines of racial justice; equality isn't winning here.