Organizing in the Housing Projects of Cincinnati’s West End

In 1948, the Cincinnati City Planning Commission published its “Metropolitan Master Plan.” It was an ambitious outline of the city’s future, promising “more health centers, more branch libraries, more recreation centers, safer streets” and, above all else, “a more efficient and inviting Cincinnati Metropolitan Area for today and for tomorrow.” This plan would enact sweeping changes across the entire city, including the drastic “redevelopment of areas beyond hope of restoration.” Those who lived in areas marked for redevelopment quickly found that the term didn’t come close to capturing the destruction that would come from Cincinnati’s urban renewal “Master Plan.”

Most impacted by this was Cincinnati’s West End community, specifically the Kenyon-Barr area. Long-time West End resident John Harshaw writes in his book Cincinnati’s West End that Kenyon-Barr “did not even get a chance to be a ghost community […] Every structure that housed friends, neighbors, and relatives was crushed along with the history that each structure possessed.” The area’s demolition, which made way for the current I-75 interstate, displaced roughly 27,000 people, with 98% of them being Black.

Those who remained in the West End post-renewal lived in one of the area’s many newly constructed housing projects. These complexes were the other side of the “double-edged sword” that was urban renewal: what were once luxuries, such as central heat, indoor plumbing, and hot/cold water were now a standard for those living in the newly built living spaces. And while the West End community was permanently fractured by the city’s “Master Plan,” these spaces allowed for the remaining members to build a thriving and active organizing base.

One of the most important spaces in the post-renewal West End community was Park Town Homes. A “cooperative community,” purchasing at Park Town meant residents were awarded equity stake in the housing project rather than individual ownership of their specific unit. This, in turn, required residents to actively participate in the upkeep and decision-making surrounding the cooperative. It was expected that there be “a strong residents organization with each resident of Park Town on some committee and each committee active,” per a July 1962 issue of the cooperative’s newspaper, the Park Town Crier ¹.

Groundskeeping, membership, and facility usage were all monitored and handled by committees made up of cooperative residents.  While Park Town’s organizational structure was meant to address the cooperative and the cooperative only, members also saw it as a built-in vehicle for broader organizing efforts across the community. In the July 1962 issue of the Park Town Crier, an editorial reads in part: “we were not told that the city expected or wanted Park Town to be a social or political force […] it is our conviction that Park Town residents are obligated to themselves and the community to make ourselves a social force to be reckoned with.”

This embrace of Park Town as a “social force” solidified it as an organizational bastion within the West End community. Park Town’s community center was described in the July 1962 issue of the Crier as “functioning really as a Cincinnati community center,” hosting community-wide socials, dances, and political events. In 1963, the West End Community Council was founded to combat further urban renewal efforts in the area, utilizing the Park Town community center as their meeting space and the Crier as a method of distributing information and updates. In the same year, the Park Town residents’ council voted to create a “Committee to Promote Integration,” described in the April 1963 issue of the Crier as “a pressure group which shall express Park Town’s concerns for the larger community,” and sought to work with “other community groups in the city-wide campaign to eliminate segregation in public and private housing developments.” The cooperative also housed a community nursery school, bringing what the April 1963 issue of the Crier described as the “relatively new” idea of pre-school education to the city of Cincinnati.

Park Town, while substantial in its organizing efforts, was just one piece in the West End community’s post-renewal existence. The West End Horizons, a community-wide offshoot of the Park Town Crier, sheds light on the efforts of other community members, who utilized their living spaces as organizing apparatuses in the same way Park Town members did.

An August 1965 issue of Horizons highlights the efforts of two members of the Laurel Homes Tenant Council’s Traffic Committee: Mrs. Betty Mathis and Mrs. Mary Lou Jones,. Both had attended hearings before the Cincinnati City Council about potential traffic hazards within the community. Mothers clubs were formed across multiple housing projects to increase and provide supervision for young children in the area: images in a January 1966 issue of Horizons shows a conglomeration of Stanley Rowe, Laurel Homes, and Lincoln Court mothers who organized a supervision program for children playing in the nearby tot-lots. The same issue also highlights a recreation committee formed in Stanely Rowe apartments to ensure similar safety and enrichment for young people in the community.

It’s easy to look at the city of Cincinnati’s “Master Plan” and the destruction it caused as a death knell for the West End community. However, the organizing that took place within its newly built housing projects points towards not the death of a community, but rather its evolution in the face of intense adversity.

The inaugural issue of the West End Horizons, dated April 1965, writes that “things are happening! And more will continue to happen, if we continue to want it and work for it!”. This work would begin in the West End’s many housing projects, where members would utilize their proximity and the organizational structures to better not only their individual living spaces, but the whole community.

The urban renewal of Cincinnati’s West End was just one part of a nationwide redevelopment initiative, the effects of which are still felt today. In Detroit, not only are predominately Black neighborhoods falling victim to higher rent costs and discriminatory housing practices, they are now also being disproportionately affected by climate change. Residents of the city’s Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood are now facing heightened flood risk due to heavier rainfall and health issues due to enduring hotter summers without air conditioning.

Rather than wait for systemic change to occur, however, residents are instead taking matters into their own hands, creating their own community-led advocacy groups that will hopefully bring sustainable living practices and climate equity to their neighborhood. Much like Cincinnati’s West End community, Jefferson Chalmers helps to illustrate the wider capacity for Black communities to evolve in the face of intense adversity—or in the case of today—existential threat.

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