06/30/2026
Louisville: A Southern City With Northern Problems
by Hunter S. Thompson (1963)
Quino's Cafe is on Market Street, two blocks up the hill from the river in the heart of Louisville's legal and financial district, and often in the long, damp Ohio Valley afternoons a lot of people who might ordinarily avoid such a place will find themselves standing at Quino's white formica counter, drinking a Fehrs or a Falls City beer, and eating a "genuine twenty cent beercheese sandwich" while they skim through an early edition of the Louisville Times. If you stand at the counter and watch the street you will see off-duty cops and courthouse loafers, visiting farmers with
five children and a pregnant wife in the cab of a pickup truck, and a well-fed collection of lawyers and brokers in two-button suits and cordovan shoes. You will also see quite a few Negroes, some of them also wearing business suits and cordovan shoes. Louisville takes pride in its race relations, and the appearance of well-dressed Negroes in the Courthouse-City Hall district does not raise any eyebrows.
This city, known as "Derbytown," and "The Gateway to the South," has done an admirable job in breaking down the huge and traditional barriers between the black man and the white. Here in the mint julep country, where the Negro used to be viewed with all the proprietary concern that men lavish on a good c**n hound ("Treat him fine when he works good -- but when he acts lazy and no-count, beat him till he hollers"), the integration of the races has made encouraging headway.
Racial segregation has been abolished in nearly all white public places. Negroes entered the public schools in 1956 with so little trouble that the superintendent of schools was moved to write a
book about it, called The Louisville Story. Since then, restaurants, hotels, parks, movie theaters, stores, swimming pools, bowling alleys, and even business schools have been opened to Negroes.
As a clincher, the city recently passed an ordinance that outlaws racial discrimination in any public
accommodation. This has just about done the deed; out of ninety-nine establishments "tested" by
NAACP workers, there were only four complaints -- two from the same East End bar. Mayor William Cowger, whose progressive Republican administration has caused even Democrats to mutter with admiration, spoke for most of his fellow citizens recently when he said, "The stories of violence in other citites should make us proud to live in Louisville. We enjoy national prestige for sane and sensible race relations."
All this is true -- and so it is all the more surprising to visit Louisville and find so much evidence to the contrary. Why, for instance, does a local Negro leader say, "Integration here is a farce"? Why, also, has a local Negro minister urged his congregation to arm themselves? Why do Louisville Negroes bitterly accuse the Federal urban-renewal project of creating "de facto
segregation"? Why can't a Negro take out a mortgage to buy a home in most white neighborhoods?
And why is there so much bitterness in the remarks of Louisvillians both black and white?
"Integration is for poor people," one hears; "they can't afford to buy their way out of it." Or, "In ten years, downtown Louisville will be as black as Harlem."
What is apparent in Louisville is that the Negro has won a few crucial battles, but instead of making the breakthrough he expected, he has come up against segregation's second front, where the problems are not mobs and unjust laws but customs and traditions.
The Louisville Negro, having taken the first basic steps, now faces a far more subtle thing than the simple "yes" or "no" that his brothers are still dealing with in most parts of the South. To this extent, Louisville has integrated itself right out of the South, and now faces problems more like those of a Northern or Midwestern city.
The white power structure has given way in the public sector, only to entrench itself more firmly in the private. And the Negro -- especially the educated Negro -- feels that his victories are hollow and his "progress" is something he reads about in the newspapers. The outlook for Louisville's Negroes may have improved from "separate but equal" to "equal but separate." But it still leaves a good deal to be desired.
The white power structure, as defined by local Negroes, means the men who run the town, the men who control banking and industry and insurance, who pay big taxes and lend big money and head important civic committees. Their names are not well known to the average citizen, and when they get publicity at all it is likely to be in the society sections of the one-owner local press. During the day, their headquarters is the Pendennis Club on downtown Walnut Street, where they meet for lunch, squash, steam baths, and cocktails. "If you want to get things done in this town," according to a young lawyer very much on the way up, "you'd better belong to the Pendennis." On evenings and weekends the scene shifts to the Louisville Country Club far out in the East End, or clear across the county line to Harmony Landing, where good polo and good whiskey push business out of sight if
not out of mind.
Anybody who pays dues to at least two of these clubs can consider himself a member in good standing of the white power structure. This is the group that determines by quiet pressure, direct action, and sometimes even default just how far and fast Louisville will move toward integration. Among themselves, it is clear, they are no more integrated now than they were ten years ago, and they are not likely to be at any time in the near future. They have for the most part taken their sons and daughters out of the public schools or moved to suburban areas where the absence of Negroes makes integration an abstract question. The only time they deal actively with Negroes is when they give the maid a ride to the bus stop, get their shoes shined, or attend some necessary but unpleasant confrontation with a local Negro spokesman. Despite an ancient conditioning to
prejudice, however, they are in the main, a far more progressive and enlightened lot than their counterparts in Birmingham or even in a lot of cases than their own sons and daughters.
There is a feeling in liberal circles, especially in New York and Washington, that the banner of racial segregation has little appeal to the younger generation. And Murray Kempton has written
that the special challenge of the 1960's "is how to appease the Negro without telling the poor white."
But neither theory appears to apply in Louisville. Some of the bitterest racists in town belong to the best families, and no Mississippi dirt farmer rants more often against the "ni***rs" than do some of Louisville's young up-and-coming executives just a few years out of college. At Bauer's, a fashionable pine-paneled tavern much frequented by the young bucks of the social set, the sentiment is overwhelmingly anti-Negro. Late in the evening some of the habitues may find themselves carried along in the confusion of drink and good-fellowship toward Magazine Street in the heart of the colored section. There, at Oliver's and Big John's and the Diamond Horseshoe, the action goes on until dawn and a carload of jovial racists are as welcome as anybody else, black or white. The Negroes suspend their resentment, the whites suspend their prejudice, and everybody enjoys the music and the entertainment. But there is little or no mingling, and the activities of the night are quite separate from those of the day.
You get a feeling, after a while, that the young are not really serious either about denouncing the "ni**er" for "not knowing his place" or about ignoring the color line for nocturnal visits to Magazine Street. Both are luxuries that will not last, and the young are simply enjoying them while they can. Mayor Cowger likes to say: "People are different here. We get along with each other because we don't like trouble." Others will tell you that Louisville has no overt racial problem because the greatest commitment of the majority of white citizens is simply to maintain the status quo, whatever it happens to be.
In such a society, of course, it might be argued that almost anything can happen as long as it happens slowly and inconspicuously without getting people stirred up. All of which naturally frustrates the Negro, who has said that he wants freedom now. If the Negro were patient -- and who can tell him he should be? -- he would have no problem. But "freedom now" is not in the white Louisville vocabulary.
A good example of the majority viewpoint shows up in the housing situation, which at the moment is inextricably linked with urban renewal. As it happens, the urban-renewal project centers mainly in the downtown Negro district, and most of the people who have to be relocated are black. It also happens that the only part of town to which Negroes can move is the West End, an old and tree-shaded neighborhood bypassed by progress and now in the throes of a selling panic because of the Negro influx. There is a growing fear, shared by whites and Negroes alike, that the West End is becoming a black ghetto.
Frank Stanley, Jr., the Negro leader who said "Integration here is a farce," blames urban
renewal for the problem. "All they're doing is moving the ghetto, intact, from the middle of town to
the West End." Urban-renewal officials reply to this by claiming the obvious: that their job is not to
desegregate Louisville but to relocate people as quickly and advantageously as possible. "Sure they
move to the West End," says one official. "Where else can they go?"
It is a fact that whites are moving out of the West End as fast as they can. A vocal minority is trying to stem the tide, but there is hardly a block without a "For Sale" sign, and some blocks show as many as ten. Yet there is "hardly any" race prejudice in the West End. Talk to a man with his house for sale and you'll be given to understand that he is not moving because of any reluctance to live near Negroes. Far from it; he is proud of Louisville's progress toward integration. But he is
worried about the value of his property; and you know, of course, what happens to property values when a Negro family moves into an all-white block. So he's selling now to get his price while the getting is good.
Depending on the neighborhood, he may or may not be willing to sell to Negroes. The choice is all his, and will be until Louisville passes an "open housing" ordinance to eliminate skin as a factor in the buying and selling of homes. Such an ordinance is already in the planning stage.
Meanwhile, the homeowner who will sell to Negroes is a rare bird -- except in the West End.
And arguments are presented with great feeling that those who will show their homes only to whites
are not prejudiced, merely considerate of their neighbors. "Personally, I have nothing against colored
people," a seller will explain. "But I don't want to hurt the neighbors. If I sold my house to a Negro it
would knock several thousand dollars off the value of every house on the block."
Most Negro realtors deny this, citing the law of supply and demand. Good housing for Negroes is scarce, they point out and prices are consequently higher than those on the white market, where demand is not so heavy. There are, however, both white and Negro real-estate speculators who engage in "block busting." They will work to place a Negro in an all-white block, then try to scare the other residents into selling cheap. Quite often they succeed -- then resell to Negroes at a
big profit. According to Jesse P. Warders, a real-estate agent and a long-time leader in Louisville's Negro community, "What this town needs is a single market for housing -- not two, like we have now." Warders is counting on an "open housing" ordinance, and he maintains that the biggest obstacle to open housing without an ordinance is the lack of Negroes on Louisville's Real Estate board.
In order to be a "realtor" in Louisville, a real-estate agent has to be a member of "the Board," which does not accept Negroes. Warders is a member of the Washington-based National Institute of Real Estate Brokers, which has about as much influence here as the French Foreign Legion.
Louisville, like other cities faced with urban decay, has turned to the building of midtown apartments as a means of luring suburbanites back to the city center. In the newest and biggest of these, called "The 800," Warders tried to place a Negro client. The reaction was a good indicator of the problems facing Negroes after they break the barrier of outright racism.
"Do me a favor," the builder of The 800 told Warders. "Let me get the place fifty per cent full-- that's my breakeven point-- then I'll rent to your client."
Warders was unhappy with the rebuff, but he believes the builder will eventually rent to Negroes; and that, he thinks, is real progress. "What should I say to the man?" he asked. "I know for a fact that he's refused some white people, too. What the man wants is prestige tenants; he'd like to have the mayor living in his place, he'd like to have the president of the board of aldermen. Hell, I'm in business, too, I might not like what he says, but I see his point."
Warders has been on the firing line long enough to know the score. He is convinced that fear of change and the reluctance of most whites to act in any way that might be frowned on by the neighbors is the Negroes' biggest problem in Louisville. "I know how they feel, and so do most of my clients. But do you think it's right?"
The 800 was built with the considerable help of an FHA-guaranteed loan, which places the building automatically in the open housing category. Furthermore, the owner insists that he is color-
blind on the subject of tenants. But he assumes none the less that the prestige tenants he wants
would not consider living in the same building with Negroes.
It is the same assumption that motivates a homeowner to sell to whites only-- not because of
race prejudice but out of concern for property values. In other words, almost nobody has anything against Negroes, but everybody's neighbor does.
This is galling to the Negroes. Simple racism is an easy thing to confront, but a mixture of guilty prejudice, economic worries and threatened social standing is much harder to fight. "If all the white people I've talked to had the courage of their convictions," one Negro leader has said, "we
wouldn't have a problem here."
Louisville's lending institutions frustrate Negroes in the same way. Frank Stanley, Jr., claims that there's a gentlemen's agreement among bankers to prevent Negroes from getting mortgages to buy homes in white neighborhoods. The complaint would seem to have a certain validity, although once again less sinister explanations are offered. The lending agencies cite business reasons, not race prejudice, as the reason for their stand. Concern for the reaction of their depositors seems to be a big factor, and another is the allegation that such loans would be a poor risk -- especially if the institution holds mortgages on other homes in the neighborhood. Here again is the fear of falling property values.
There is also the question whether a Negro would have any more difficulty getting a mortgage to buy a home in a white upper-class neighborhood than would a member of another minority group -- say, a plumber named Luciano, proud possessor of six children, a dirty spitz that barks at night, and a ten-year-old pickup truck with "Luciano Plumbing" painted on the side.
Mayor Cowger, a mortgage banker himself, insists that a Negro would have no more trouble than the hypothetical Mr. Luciano. Another high-ranking occupant of City Hall disagrees: "That's what the mayor would like to think, but it just isn't true. Nobody in Rolling Fields, for instance, would want an Italian plumber for a neighbor, but at least they could live with him, whereas a Negro would be unthinkable because he's too obvious. It wouldn't matter if he were a doctor or a lawyer or anything else. The whites in the neighborhood would fear for the value of their property and try to sell it before it dropped."
Another common contention is that Negroes "don't want to move into an all-white neighborhood." The East End, for instance, remains solidly white except for alley dwellings and isolated shacks. The mayor, who lives in the East End, has said, "Negroes don't want to live here. It wouldn't be congenial for them. There are some fine Negro neighborhoods in the West End --
beautiful homes. They don't try to buy homes where they won't be happy. People just don't do things like that." Some people do, however, and it appears that almost without exception they get turned down flat. One Negro executive with adequate funds called a white realtor and made an appointment to look at a house for sale in the East End. Things went smoothly on the telephone, but when the Negro arrived at the realtor's office the man was incensed. "What are you trying to do?" he demanded. "You know I can't sell you that house. What are you up to, anyway?"
No realtor however, admits to racial prejudice, at least while talking to strangers. They are, they point out, not selling their own homes but those of their clients. In the same fashion, mortgage bankers are quick to explain that they do not lend their own money. A man making inquiries soon gets the impression that all clients, investors, and depositors are vicious racists and dangerous people to cross. Which is entirely untrue in Louisville -- although it is hard to see how a Negro, after making the rounds of "very sympathetic" realtors, could be expected to believe anything else.
Housing ranks right at the top among Louisville's racial problems. According to Frank Stanley, Jr., "Housing is basic; once we have whites and Negroes living together, the rest will be a lot easier." Jesse P. Warders, the real-estate agent, however, rates unemployment as the No. 1 problem area, because "Without money you can't enjoy the other things."
The Louisville Human Relations Commission, one of the first of its kind in the nation, agrees that although the city has made vast strides in the areas of education and public accommodations, the problems of housing and employment are still largely unsolved because "These areas are much more complex and confront long-established customs based on a heritage of prejudice." Of the two, however, the commission sees housing as a bigger problem. J. Mansir Tydings, executive director of the commission, is optimistic about the willingness of merchants and
other employers to hire Negroes: "Already -- and much sooner than we expected -- our problem is training unemployed Negroes to fill positions that are open."
Yet there is still another big hurdle, less tangible than such, factors as housing and employment but perhaps more basic when it comes to finding an ultimate solution. This is the pervasive distrust among the white power structure of the Negro leadership's motives. Out in the dove-shooting country, in the suburbs beyond the East End, Stanley is viewed as an "opportunist politician" and a "black troublemaker." Bishop Ewbank Tucker, the minister who urged his
congregation to arm themselves, is called an extremist and a Black Muslim. The possibility that some of the Negro leaders do sometimes agitate for the sake of agitation often cramps the avenues of communication between white and Negro leaders.
Even among Negroes, Stanley is sometimes viewed with uneasiness and Bishop Tucker called a racist. A former president of the Louisville NAACP, on hearing the statement that local Negroes "resent the national publicity concerning Louisville's progress in race relations," laughed and dismissed Stanley as a "very nice, very smart young fella with a lot to learn." (Stanley is twenty-six.)
"He wants things to go properly," said the NAACP man. "But difficult things never go properly -- life isn't that way." He smiled nervously. "Forty years ago I came back here thinking I could be a Black Moses -- I thought I was going to set my people free. But I couldn't do it then and it can't be done now. It's not a thing you can do overnight -- it's going to take years and years and years."
Nearly everyone agrees with that, and even with all its problems, Louisville looks to be a lot further along the road to facing and solving the "Negro problem" than many other cities. Even Stanley, who appears to make a cult of militant noncompromise, will eventually admit to a visitor that he threatens far more demonstrations than he ever intends to produce.
"The white power structure here tries to cling to the status quo. They keep telling me not to rock the boat, but I rock it anyway because it's the only way to make them move. We have to keep the pressure on them every minute, or we dissipate our strength.
"Louisville isn't like Birmingham," he adds. "I think there's a conviction here that this thing is morally wrong -- without that, we'd have real trouble."
~ Hunter S. Thompson
The Reporter, vol. 29, December 19, 1963
Reprinted in The Great Shark Hunt
Photo: 1961 protests lead businesses to integrate in Louisville
