Avondale is a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is home to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. Its population is 11,345 in the 2020 census.
Ninety-two percent of Avondale’s residents are African American, and more than 40 percent live at or below the poverty line. More than 77% of rental properties. Two race riots broke out in Avondale in 1967 and 1968, which were part of the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement in the United States. North Avondale, Evanston, Walnut Hills, Corryville, and Clifton are neighbors.
History
In the 19th century, Avondale was a rural area. Its inhabitants are Protestant families from England or Germany. It is said that the wife of Stephen Burton, a wealthy mortuary, started naming the area Avondale in 1853 after noticing a resemblance between the stream behind her house and the River Avon in England. It was introduced on July 27, 1864, by Daniel Collier, Seth Evans, and Joe C. Moores. Between the 1870s and 1890s, bandits, vagrants, drunkenness, and fighting plagued the town. The city of Cincinnati, OH took over Avondale in 1896. After the railway line was laid, poor people moved into the area; from 1920 until World War II, 60% of Avondale was Jewish. It was a neighborhood until the construction of Millcreek Road in the 1940s, which displaced residents from the Black West End. At the time, housing authorities allowed black families to move into black neighborhoods, and Avondale has had black residents since the mid-19th century.
1967 riots
The 1967 uprising began on June 12 and lasted for several days. They were just one of 159 riots that swept cities across the United States during the “Long Hot Summer of 1967”. In May 1967, Posteal Laskey Jr.’s case was that he was the Cincinnati strangler. Laskey is a man accused of raping and murdering six women, and the jury’s verdict is seen as controversial. On June 11, Peter Frakes, Laskey’s cousin, brought a sign that read “Cincinnati Guilty-Laskey Innocent!” The police arrested Frakes for exercising his First Amendment rights. Angry black community leaders held a rally on June 12 at the Abraham Lincoln statue near Reading and Rockdale streets. Some people fled the riots to destroy property.
Aftermath
Avondale’s once thriving business district along Burnet Avenue was abandoned after the riots of 1967 and 1968. Many damaged areas have been vacant for ten years. The riots helped perpetuate the belief that the city was dangerous for families and helped fuel the “white flight” into the countryside. Between 1960 and 1970, Cincinnati lost 10% of its population, compared to only 0.3% from 1950 to 1960. After the riots, blacks were elected to town boards and committees. In 1967, none of the 69 council members were black.
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