Cincinnati - Race Relations

Race Relations

Because of its location on the Ohio River, Cincinnati was a border town between a state that allowed slavery, Kentucky, and one that did not, Ohio, before the Civil War. Some residents of Cincinnati played a major role in abolitionism. Many escaping slaves used the Ohio river and Cincinnati to escape to the North. Cincinnati had numerous stations on the Underground Railroad, as well as slave catchers.

In 1829, a riot broke out as anti-abolitionists attacked blacks in the city. As a result, 1,200 blacks left the city and resettled in Canada. The riot and its refugees were a topic of discussion throughout the nation, and at the first Negro Convention held in 1830 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Riots also occurred in 1836 and 1841. In 1836, a mob of 700 anti-abolitionists again attacked black neighborhoods, as well as a press run by James M. Birney, publisher of the anti-slavery weekly The Philanthropist. Tensions further increased after passage in 1850 of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Cincinnati for a time, met escaped slaves, and used their stories as a basis for her watershed novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Levi Coffin made the Cincinnati area the center of his anti-slavery efforts in 1847. Today, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, located on the Cincinnati riverfront in the middle of "The Banks" area between Great American Ballpark and Paul Brown Stadium, commemorates this era.

Cincinnati has historically been predominantly white. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported Cincinnati's population as 12.2% black and 87.8% white.

In the second half of the 20th century, Cincinnati, along with other rust belt cities, underwent a vast demographic transformation. Predominately white, working-class families that had filled the urban core during the European immigration boom in the 19th century moved to the suburbs. Blacks, fleeing the oppression of the Jim Crow South in hopes of better socioeconomic opportunity, filled these older city neighborhoods. Racial tensions boiled over in 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. when riots occurred in Cincinnati along with nearly every major U.S. city. In April 2001, racially charged riots occurred after police shot and killed a black man, Timothy Thomas during a foot pursuit.