Learn about Lexington’s history of segregation, redlining at these community events
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Segregation is a common tale in American cities — most practiced discrimination in housing loans and urban renewal — but at the same time, every town has its own unique narratives.
After the Civil War, for example, Lexington had a class of Black jockeys, trainers and owners who had successful careers in the horse industry and started to build homes and wealth in Lexington. As Jim Crow laws took hold across the country, Black horsemen were shoved out of the business, and in 1933 the Kentucky Association Track in Lexington’s bustling East End was closed. The Keeneland Track opened in 1935. Yet another route to prosperity was shut off.
Lexington will get a chance to fully understand these stories this summer and this fall, thanks to a lucky conflation of events that happened more or less coincidentally.
First off, there is the Segregated Lexington website, which will continue to explore the documents of housing policy history here.
In addition, Keeneland Library has an exhibit entitled “The Heart of the Turf: Racing’s Black Pioneers,” which chronicles the rise and fall of Black horsemen and women in the racing industry. After Aug. 31, the exhibit will move to the Lyric Theatre for the month of September, and then in October and early November, it will be at the Central Library.
That’s convenient because starting Sept. 18, Central Library will be hosting a concurrent exhibit titled “Undesign the Redline.” Library employee Clarissa Thomas saw the Undesign exhibit in Dayton, Ohio, and started working on bringing a similar exhibit to Lexington, with the help of the Lexington Public Library Foundation.
A New York nonprofit called Designing the We researches different cities to explain to residents exactly how we got to this point.
“We design it for people who don’t really know about redlining to tell a story that doesn’t get told,” said co-founder Braden Crooks. “Redlining is not just an artifact of the past, it really sets the stage for where we are now and all the challenges we’re facing.”
Lexington’s horse industry sets it apart, Crooks said, but another thing that sets it apart is that in the midst of urban renewal in the 1960s, Lexington resisted some projects that would have further obliterated Black communities. For example, at one point there was a plan to put a highway through downtown, as many other cities did, but it never happened here. Urban renewal, however, did happen in places like Davis Bottom and Elm Tree Lane/Rose Street.
Crooks and his group are being advised by a group organized by the library of academics, housing experts and advocates. “Ultimately this will be about the consequences of institutional racism and how that plays out today,” said Anne Donworth, the foundation’s development director.
The exhibit will also look at the constant fight over gentrification of Lexington’s poorer neighborhoods. “To have gentrification, you have to have segregation,” Crooks said. “Redlining devalued residential real estate, which made it more attractive to real estate speculators because of artificially low prices, so you can flip it for more money. In that sense gentrification is another consequence of redlining.”
The exhibit will also look at Lexington’s Urban Service Boundary, and what role it has played in housing injustice, and what Lexington can do moving forward.
Talking about racism can be a tough sell these days, as politics effectively dilutes many region’s teaching of our history. But Crooks says the power of this kind of exhibit is that “it’s a specific history, a specific policy, it’s not vague ideas of racism writ large. We can show how it still affects lives.”
Yet another community event will focus on that injustice with a community read-along of a seminal history of redlining in this country, ”The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein. First published in 2017, “The Color of Law,” focuses on consistent government policy across the country that created and enforced housing segregation.
The Blue Grass Community Foundation is sponsoring the event, along with an appearance by Rothstein and his daughter, Leah Rothstein on Oct. 24 at the University of Kentucky. Together, they’ve authored a new book titled “Just Action” about how cities can move forward on undoing past injustices, which they will also discuss.
Foundation Director Lisa Adkins said the foundation was inspired by community interest in author Heather McGhee, who appeared here in 2022 to discuss her book “The Sum Of Us,” which detailed how racial segregation hurts everyone.
“I think many of us have a basic understanding of redlining, but ‘The Color of Law’ makes the fact based presentation of how deep and how wide redlining was,” Adkins said. “It wasn’t accidental or incidental — it was a very intentional plan that involved our government at all levels, and the impact lasts today.”
Like Crooks, Adkins believes that the facts, laid out in Rothstein’s book make the case. “It’s a book that documents through policy and through law and government action at all levels of government how redlining came to be ad what the impacts of that are still today,” she said.
If you go:
The Heart of the Turf will be at the Keeneland Library until Aug. 31. It will move to the Lyric Theatre for September, and then to the Central Library for October to coincide with “Undesign the Red Line.” For more information, contact the Keenland Library at 859 288-4224.
“Undesign the Red Line” will open at the Lexington Central Library on Main Street on Sept. 18. The exhibit will probably be up through November. For more information, contact Kelli Parmley at (859)-231-5500.
“The Color of Law” event with authors Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein will be held at the University of Kentucky Student Center on Oct. 24, time to be announced. For more information, contact the Blue Grass Community Foundation at https://www.bgcf.org/.
