No Housing, No Derby: The Open Housing Marches of 1967

In the spring of nineteen sixty-seven, civil rights organizers in Louisville made a calculation. The Kentucky Derby was the most valuable event in the state, its most internationally recognized brand, and its most sacred civic institution. The city had refused to pass a fair housing ordinance. The organizers decided to connect the two facts publicly.

"No Housing, No Derby" became the rallying cry. Activists threatened to disrupt the race if the city did not act. They organized nightly marches through Louisville neighborhoods, building toward Derby week in May. The marches were met, repeatedly, by organized white mobs that attacked the demonstrators with verbal abuse and physical violence. Each confrontation was documented and photographed.

The protests drew national attention. By the time Derby week arrived, the pressure on city government was substantial. The demonstrations continued. Civil rights leaders including A.D. King, the brother of Martin Luther King Jr., marched with Louisville organizers through downtown streets.

The city's Board of Aldermen passed a fair housing ordinance in December of nineteen sixty-seven, about four months before the federal Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty-eight was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Louisville acted first.

What the ordinance accomplished in practice, over the following years, was tested against the same private mechanisms that had made the earlier legal prohibition on racial zoning ineffective. The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights would report, six years later, that segregation in Jefferson County had deepened rather than retreated. The law changed. The geography moved more slowly.