Creating a Multiracial Community in Post-World War II Cincinnati: The Kennedy Heights Experiment

Creating a Multiracial Community in PostWorld War II Cincinnati Ybe Kennedy Heights Experiment James E. Cebula _ ate in the twentieth century,Eric Foner noted that in the previ ous generation American historians had shattered the old historical consensus and redefined the nature of historical study by borrowing methods from other disciplines to write " new histories." For Foner and other academics, the social movements of the 1960s influenced much of this revisionism. As these postWorld War II social movements underwent CINC, NNATI KENNEDY HaGHTS This map shows the location of Kennedy Heights in the Greater Cincinnati area. Kennedy Heights Community Plan, 1983. CINCINNATIMUSEUMCENTER AT UNION TERMINAL, CINCINNATI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS. scholarly scrutiny,one influential grc, up of social scientists distinguished between pre- and postwar activism by noting a shift of focus from the workplace to communities.1 Writing at the high tide of grassroots neighborhood organizing,historian L. Charles Tilly · asked, " Do Cornrnunities Act?" Summarizing the prevailing theories about urban life,Tilly notes that the complexity of the city and the intense mobility of modern urban social life has worked against sustained community solidaritv and sustained activism. Tilly did, however,tentatively suggest that if neighborhood activism could succced ,it would be among middle-and upperclass homeowners:Some twentyfive years later,political scientist Robert Putnam,after an exhaustive examination of available statistical data and social science liter, iture of the last generation, has concluded that latetwentieth century Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family,friends, neighbors,and our democratic structures. Putnum thus confirms Tilly: s and others'conclusions that democratic social activism in the last half century has been in significant decline.3 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NEDY 1* 1614' 32 JAMES E. CEBULA Urban historian Zane L. Miller concludes similarly about the frigmentation of contemporary urban life. Miller' s reading of changing intellectual perceptions abotit whilt constitzites a city lias significantly shaped his perspective. Situatitig his analysis of communin within " the context of ch·anging ideas about the role of place in social theory and practice," Miller concludes that the meaning of communitv changes constantly,redefined by the role of taxonomies of social reality in sh·aping the processes by which people define and solve problems." 4 As a result of that process, in Miller' s view,the 1. zte twentiethcentury metropolis beellme . 1 place where concern for the larger community or social group gave way to the primacy of the individual. One of the most important of Miller's changing taxonomies has been race relations. Nowhere has the matter of race more defined the changing demographics of American cities than Cincinnati,Ohio. As in many Americin cities in the North and \ Vest iii the years immediately following the Second World War,African Americans migrated to Cincinnati to fill industrial jobs. Civil rights organizations leveraged the wartime antifascist propog·and 1 to prc, mote not only victory abroad but racial equality at home:Alembership iii civil rights organizations soared during and · after the war, and empowered liberal coalitions of labor and civil rights groups battled institutionalized racism, especially its most visible symbolsegregation . Racial tensions led city governments around the country to establish commissions to promote racial equality and to alleviate racial tensions before they became widespread: Responding to civil rights challenges, the federal govertiment accelerated the p·aradigm shift away from acceptance of segregation to the recogP 1 nition of individual rights in various w·ays. ihe Servicemen' s Readjustment Act ( or " G.I. Bill of Rights"), enacted in 1944,financed educations for black and white veterans,helping to open the professions and trades to many who were previously shut out of them. President Harry S Truman' s Commission on Civil Rights focused national attention on racial discrimination in the workplace and in housing. ' Ihe availability of low interest and guaranteed loans provided opportunities for home ownership, further pressuring segregated housing patterns th: it had persisted despite the U.S. Supreme Court's invalidation of racial zoning laws in 1917. Rising expectations led to increased political participation as well as energizing the growing civil rights movement. After the Second World War,the Court twice responded to the increased concerns about racial inequality,first by outlawing restrictive housing covenants in Shelley ' u...