Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945–1980 (review)

Tracy K'Meyer's carefully researched book makes a significant contribution to the rich literature on the civil rights movement. By focusing on Louisville, Kentucky, a border city, she demonstrates the impact of regional location on race relations. K'Meyer finds that Louisville contained elements of both northern and southern places. At the end of World War II, Louisville blacks experienced problems typically associated with the South, yet much of the city's socioeconomic and political characteristics were distinctly northern. Like African Americans throughout the South, Louisville's blacks experienced Jim Crow segregation and severe economic discrimination. Stores, recreational facilities, schools, and housing were segregated, and most African Americans were confined to the lowest-skilled and poorest-paid jobs. However, unlike the rest of the South, segregation was not backed by law, and Louisville's blacks had the right to vote, resulting in a "more fluid" and "less complete" Jim Crow system (5).

In addition Louisville had a mixed industrial economy with a strong union presence, was marked by religious diversity, including relatively large Jewish and Catholic populations, and had a liberal white intellectual and business elite, attributes more commonly associated with northern than southern cities. These groups, which provided the basis for interracial cooperation, joined with a rich array of African American organizations and institutions to form ad hoc coalitions that drove the Louisville civil rights movement. Black political power added punch to the work of these coalitions. As in the North, political influence in part came from residential segregation which enabled African Americans to elect black officeholders. Also a factor was that blacks were divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, making them at times a swing constituency, forcing both parties to vie for their votes. At key moments, African Americans would utilize their political power to push through civil rights legislation.

The first postwar coalitions of labor, church, left-wing, and African American groups drew on the rhetoric of democracy to fight discrimination in tax-supported jobs and public facilities. Public pressure, legislation, and legal action helped open up the civil service jobs and provided equal access to hospitals and public parks. In the mid-fifties, Louisville gained a national image as a progressive southern leader when it peacefully desegregated its schools. But school integration was something of a mirage because there was in actuality little mixing of white and black children. The next major campaign for open accommodations found African Americans employing "both the new form of mass non-violent direct action being developed around the South and bloc voting akin to black political activity in the North (77). In the early sixties, after the board of aldermen repeatedly refused to pass a public accommodations ordinance, young African Americans engaged in various forms of mass action, including sit-ins and picketing. At the same time, black leaders mobilized African American voting power and drove out of office the recalcitrant Democratic aldermen. Fearful of the kind of disorder taking place in the Deep South and hoping to preserve Louisville's national reputation for sensible race relations, in 1963 the Republican board of aldermen ultimately passed an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in public places. Still it took two years and the passage of federal legislation before the ordinance was completely enforced.

In the midst of the open-accommodation movement, an interracial coalition made up of an almost dizzying array of community and religious groups, engaged in a campaign for open housing that relied on a variety of tactics ranging from forums to nightly marches and other forms of mass action. When direct action met violence, the coalition again turned to politics, and this time the Republicans were thrown out. In late 1967 the newly-elected Democrats quickly passed an open housing law. However, when legislation failed to lead to the integration of either housing or schools or significant improvement in the lives of African Americans, frustrated young militants turned to black power.

K'Meyer, however...