Redlining in Cincinnati: Effects on Black Well Being

Cincinnati's history is defined by its borders. At its founding, it marked the furthest point west before you found wilderness that hadn't yet been colonized. During the Civil War, it was the border of the Union, serving as an integral point of the Underground Railroad as escaped slaves crossed the Ohio River from Kentucky. For black Cincinnatians, borders are more than geographic. In the Antebellum period and Jim Crow Era, black Cincinnatians, like in many other American cities, were unable to access the same jobs, housing, or service options as their white counterparts. At the same time, Cincinnati became a hotbed for abolitionism and a battleground to determine whether slave owners could bring their slaves into the state. Henry Louis Taylor Jr. described the city most aptly in Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820-1940:

"Cincinnati was not simply a northern city looking South. The city had a dual personality, a schizophrenic northern and southern personality occupying the same urban body. Across time Cincinnati would feel this duality - a northern city, a southern city; two cultures, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in a single city"

After the National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration to expand access to mortgages, the Home Owners Loan Corporation adapted policies called "redlining" from the private real estate sector to assess credit risk in different neighborhoods. This codified housing discrimination in the US, and in Cincinnati, created another border that its black population had to deal with. The HOLC and FHA used 1930 census data to determine the risk associated with providing mortgage support in certain areas. The problematic portion of this is that factors like race and ethnicity were significant indicators of a neighborhood's risk grade. These grades were then mapped, with the worst neighborhoods shaded in red, hence the term "redlining". These red areas were overwhelmingly black and immigrant neighborhoods, and these grades allowed mortgages to be denied to these communities for decades which significantly worsened residential segregation and urban decay.

University of Richmond has digitized hundreds of redlining maps across the nation as part of their Mapping Inequality project. However, Cincinnati is not one of them. The only record I could find of Cincinnati's redlining map is a drawn map featured below.

Since Cincinnati's redlining map has no digital version, I decided to make one. A full methodology of how this map was created can be found at the bottom of this webpage. In short, I used 1930 census data to determine each tract's racial, economic, and housing characteristics, and then gave each tract a score for each characteristic. These scores were based off of Cleveland's redlining grades featured on Mapping Inequality's website. Once a tract was scored for each individual characteristic (e.g. percent black, job composition, etc.), these scores were weighted and used to create an overall index score of how "risky" the tract was. There are 4 grades "A: Best", "B: Still Desirable", "C: Definitely Declining", and "D: Hazardous" displayed in green, blue, yellow, and red, respectively. A legend for all maps can be found by hovering over the button in the bottom left of the map.

The two sections of the city graded the worst were the West End/East Price Hill and Avondale/Walnut Hills (featured below). Both of these areas saw significant turmoil in the decades following redlining. First, the West End was decimated by slum clearance programs known as "Urban Renewal" in the 1950's that stemmed from the Housing Act of 1949. Second, Avondale was the location of large race riots in the "Long Hot Summer of 1967" and also in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

In order to understand how race played a role in Urban Renewal, the 1967/1968 Race Riots, and current racial relations, recognizing the context and importance of residential segregation is necessary. Redlining restricted credit access for communities of color which led to continued under-investment in these communities, leaving the urban landscape to decay. Economists from the Chicago Fed found that these inequities had economically meaningful and lasting effects on residential segregation, home ownership, house values, rents, and credit scores when analyzing neighborhoods affected by redlining. Since these communities remained poor and black due to the inability to move, they became the targets of Urban Renewal slum clearance programs which displaced many of the families who had previously lived in these areas. For neighborhoods spared from Urban Renewal, they often became ripe targets for gentrification in the future. One such example in Cincinnati is the neighborhood of Over The Rhine. If interested, I have made a similar analysis of Over The Rhine's gentrification that can be found  here .

The end result of this slum clearance and gentrification in these neighborhoods is housing instability and displacement for the families who previously lived there. First and foremost, this forces people to relocate to areas that have different schools, different access to transportation, and different social ties, all of which potentially disrupt education, jobs, and community development. Secondly, when people are displaced, they are forced to move to where they can afford and where they are accepted, and in these cases, the end result all too often leaves people, especially black people who face housing discrimination, in substandard housing which poses risk to their own physical and mental well being.

The slideshow below documents this process by looking at the West End as large portions of its housing stock were demolished and replaced by highways. One important consideration when thinking about this case study is why the highways were built and who they were for. After World War II, the G.I. Bill was passed in 1944 to allow veterans access to low-cost mortgages, among other financial rewards, for their service. These benefits, however, were barred from black veterans. In addition to these mortgages for veterans, the federal government sponsored other incentives for suburban, single-family homes such as the Mortgage Interest Deduction, which allows households to reduce their taxable income by the amount of interest paid on their mortgage. This resulted in a phenomenon known as "white flight" where white families fled to the suburbs both because of their ability to access these financial incentives as well as a desire to distance themselves from the growing black, urban population. This phenomenon increased exponentially after the summers of 1967 and 1968 which saw race riots in cities all over the city. A short video from NPR explaining White Flight and its connections to redlining more in depth can be found  here .

With whites overwhelmingly making up the suburbs, this means that those commuting from the suburbs on the highways to the city were also overwhelmingly white. This means the West End, a poor, black neighborhood, was demolished almost entirely for the benefit of wealthier, white suburbanites.

As noted above, Avondale and its surrounding neighborhoods saw a marked increase in its black population between 1950 and 1960, at least some of which was caused by the demolition of much of the West End. By 1967, this made Avondale a concentrated location for black angst over lack of jobs, poor housing, segregation, and police harassment. As part of the "Long Hot Summer of 1967", which saw 159 race riots in cities across the US, Avondale's frustration with these issues erupted in riot after the arrest of Peter Frakes, a young, black man who had been protesting in the street over the arrest of his cousin Posteal Lasky Jr. who had allegedly murdered a white woman. For nearly 5 days, rioters smashed windows, looted businesses, and lobbed homemade Molatov cocktails at white-owned businesses. The governor called in over 700 National Guardsmen to assist the police in quelling the riots. By the end, one person was dead, 63 were injured, and 404 were arrested. The city suffered nearly $2.6 million in property damages.

C. Smith, a prominent black photographer in Cincinnati, documented the riots in the photos seen to the left and published in his monthly publication "Ghetto Magazine". Reflecting on his experience with the riots in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer 50 years later, Smith shared some of his experiences:

"I was down there every day, at Reading and Rockdale or over on Burnet. I had on a dashiki, so I was accepted by the rioters. I used a Speed Graphic camera. You could tell I was a professional photographer. It was different then. I moved about freely. The police didn't have all that yellow crime tape up like today"

"The rioters didn't understand the danger they were in. The police were walking up the street with their guns drawn. The police shot a dog. It was just barking. It wasn't hurting anyone"

"We had these mom-and-pop black-owned stores and shops. They were small family businesses but didn't have insurance. They were barely hanging on. The rioters targeted the white-owned business, but once the fires started, they spread to black businesses. After the riots, businesses disappeared from Avondale. "

"I was just trying to get as many pictures as I could. But I do remember thinking at the time, I hope nobody gets hurt or killed."

A year later, violent riots occurred again after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. On April 8th, four days after King's assassination, nearly 1500 people were gathered at a memorial service in Avondale when the rumor that a white officer had shot the black wife of a local jewelry store owner. Despite the rumor not being true (the wife had been shot by her husband accidentally while struggling with robbers), Avondale went ablaze with anger and sorrow in the face of King's assassination and their own local frustrations. That night, nearly 70 fires occurred in Avondale's business corridor, which was already struggling after the 1967 riots. In Mount Auburn, another heavily black community near Avondale, a white student named Noel Wright was dragged from his car and stabbed to death by 8 black rioters.

While the riots were over by the night of the next day, the city still suffered $3 million in property damage (approx. $22 million today), and 2 people died. After a second year of riots, white (and black) families who had the ability to move away from Avondale did so, leaving the community emaciated.

Whether you believe these riots were justified, there is no denying that black communities across the United States, including Cincinnati, were systemically denied opportunities to access better housing by both the government, banks, and the real estate industry. Since most black families had few housing choices, landlords had little incentive to maintain their units or lower rents. As a result, black families were forced to remain in substandard housing that disproportionately affected their financial, physical, and mental health, and they paid more for it. Given these conditions, it is unsurprising that housing was a key component in the rage expressed by black communities in 1967 and 1968.

While redlining clearly has significance to the demolition of the West End and the Avondale riots in 1967 and 1968, it's important to recognize that the effects of redlining are still felt today. Many of the communities graded poorly nearly a century ago by racist criteria remain poor, black, and under-invested. The choice to prevent new capital from entering these areas and prevent black communities from accessing housing are responsible for much of the generational poverty, racial wealth gaps, poor infrastructure, housing insecurity, and crime endemic to these neighborhoods.

Taylor, Henry Louis Taylor Jr. "Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820-1970", University of Illinois Press. 1993.  link 

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "How Real Estate Segregated America" Dissent Magazine. 2018.  link 

Aaronson, Daniel, Daniel Hartley, and Bhashkar Mazumder. "The Effects of the 1930s HOLC 'Redlining' Maps" Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. 2019.  link 

Badger, Emily. "Self-fulfilling prophecies: How Redlining's Racist Effects Lasted for Decades". New York Times. August 24, 2017.  link 

Curnutte, Mark. "Avondale riots 50 years later: 'It's never been the same'". Cincinnati Enquirer. June 9, 2017.  link 

Curnutte, Mark. "A decade-by-decade look at how Avondale came back after the 1968 riots". Cincinnati Enquirer. April 5, 2018.  link 

While Mapping Inequality has no map for Cincinnati, they do have one for Cleveland. Since Cleveland and Cincinnati are geographically and (somewhat) demographically similar, I used its information as a guide for my choices described below. In 1940, Cleveland had a population of 878,336 that was 69.9% native-born white, 20.4% foreign-born white, and 9.6% black according to Mapping Inequality. According 1940 census data found from Social Explorer, Cincinnati had a population of 621,987 that was 84.6% native-born white, 5% foreign-born white, and 10.3% black. While the share of foreign-born whites is far smaller in Cincinnati compared to Cleveland, the black share of the population is almost the same which is why I thought it was the best choice to model my map off of.

Utilizing 1930 census data found from Social Explorer, I created an index of how credit worthy a tract was based on racial and economic demographics. For race variables, I looked at the percentage of a census tract that was black, foreign-born whites from "Acceptable" countries, and foreign-born whites (and non-whites) from other countries. As mentioned above, I sorted these countries based off of Cleveland's redlining map on Mapping Inequality. When looking through, I noticed several Grade B areas had populations of foreign-born English and Germans. On the flip side, areas with foreigners from Eastern Europe, especially Slavic countries, were given lower grades. Because of this, I sorted the foreign-born countries into these two categories. "Acceptable" countries were England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland (Eire in the census), Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany. The "less desirable" countries were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Greece, Other (Europe), Mexico, Cuba, and all of Asia.

The economic variables I used were the unemployment rate and the composition of jobs within the census tract. Jobs designated as "Professional Workers", "Semi-professional workers", or "Proprietors/Managers/Officials" were coded as "high class" jobs whereas jobs designated as "Clerical/Sales/Kindred", "Craftsman, Foreman/Kindred", "Operatives/Kindred", "Domestic Service", "Non-Domestic Service", and "Laborers" were deemed "low class" jobs.

For each of the above variables, I then scored the observed values from 1 to 4 where the values that were more risky according to 1930 creditors (e.g. higher share black or foreign born-white, few high class jobs, high unemployment, etc.) were given higher scores. These scores were then weighted and added together to create an index of these different variables. The resulting index score determined a census tract's grade.

Before I put the specific numbers used for scores and weighting below, I want to clarify that this index was not meant to perfectly replicate the actual relining map of Cincinnati. I have a drawn photo of this map, and while much of my map is accurate to the real thing, there are several census tracts that are a grade off (e.g. parts of Price Hill (Southern West Side) like Census tract 93 are designated as a C Grade whereas Price Hill as a neighborhood is designated as a B Grade on the redlining map). Some of this variation can be explained by my use of census tracts since the redlining map I have is separated by neighborhood. Even so, since my model does not have access to all the data or methodology used by the FHA in the 1930s, there is bound to be some error. Regardless, it does display the trends of redlining mostly accurately, and is a useful tool for discussing how redlining impacted Cincinnati's race relations in the decades directly after these maps were drawn. Below I've written exact numbers used for scoring and weighting the aforementioned variables and written out an example.

Variable Scoring:

• Black percent: 1 if less than or equal to .5%, 3 if greater than .5% and less or equal to than 5%, and 4 if greater than 5%
• "Acceptable" foreign born percent: 1 if less than or equal to 2.5%, 2 if greater than 2.5%
• "Less desirable" foreign born percent: 1 if 0%, 2 if less than or equal to 5% and not equal to 0%, 3 if greater than or equal to 5% and less than 50%, 4 if greater than or equal to 50%
• Unemployment Rate: 1 if less than or equal to 7.5%, 2 if greater than 7.5% and less than or equal 10%, 3 if greater than 10% and less than or equal to 15%, 4 if greater than 15%
• "Low Class" Jobs: 1 if less than or equal to 50%, 2 if greater than 50% and less than 75%, and 3 if greater than or equal to 75%
• "High Class" Jobs: 1 if greater than or equal to 25%, 2 if less than 25%

These Scores were then put into the following equation:

• Index Score = 2*(Black Percent Score) + "Acceptable" Score + "Less Desirable" Score + 1/2*(Unemployment Score) + "Low Class" Jobs Score + "High Class" Jobs Score
• Black Score was given a weight of 2 given its overarching relevance to cities across the nation and the obvious additional prejudice faced by blacks under redlining. Unemployment was given a weight of 0.5 because it was not directly mentioned in Mapping Inequality's notes, but I felt it would help capture some larger aspect of local economies that I did not have data on.

This Index Scoring Equation produced results with this distribution:

Census Tracts were graded by their scores in the following way:

• Grade A: "Best" if their Index Score was less than or equal to 10, Grade B: "Still Desirable" if their index score was greater than 10 and less than or equal to 13, Grade C: "Definitely Declining" if their index score is greater than 13 and less than 17, and Grade D: "Hazardous" if the index score is greater than or equal to 17.
• As can be seen above, there were 107 tracts total included in Cincinnati city limits. Of these, 22 were Grade A, 34 were Grade B, 34 were Grade C, and 17 were Grade D.