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Where's Jonesville? How The Destruction Of Jonesville Left A Legacy Of Housing Discrimination In Bowling Green, Ky, George Carpenter
Where's Jonesville? How The Destruction Of Jonesville Left A Legacy Of Housing Discrimination In Bowling Green, Ky, George Carpenter
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Jonesville was a small tight-knit African-American community in Bowling Green, Kentucky with a unique cultural identity. Family-oriented and extremely self-sufficient, Jonesville thrived as a prime example of southern black culture in the mid 20th century. However, Jonesville did not stand a chance placed against a powerful local institution. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the community was destroyed to create space for an expanding Western Kentucky University. Fueled by the entirely unjust urban renewal legislation, Kentucky Project R-31, Jonesville was wiped from the Bowling Green map. Due to locally sanctioned discriminatory action, the displaced citizens of Jonesville were …