River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley

The Ohio River has great symbolic significance in African American history. During the industrial age, it marked the division between the Jim Crow South and the urban North. Before that, it symbolized the passage of blacks from slavery to freedom along the underground railroad. Hence, African Americans frequently referred to the Ohio as the River Jordan. But what about African American life in the communities located along the river itself? In the urban centers of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Evansville, blacks faced racial hostility from outside their immediate neighborhoods as well as class, color, and cultural fragmentation among themselves. Yet despite these pressures, African Americans were able to build bridges across the social chasms that separated them to create vibrant new communities. Joe Trotter examines African American urban life in these four Ohio Valley cities from the arrival of the first blacks in the region to the civil rights movements of the recent past. Standing at the forefront of both community development and social conflict was the long-term transformation of southern agricultural workers into a new urban working class.