Since Drexel has been in the news lately due to the racially motivated arson there, I’d figure I’d take y’all for a quicky pix tour.  I keep on wanting to do this area in depth, but don't feel to comfortable taking pix here, honestly.

 

 

This is actually one of the older suburbs of Dayton, with the first plat dating to 1900 or so..  But for some reason it never really took-off, as you can tell by the absence of postwar curvy street suburbia on these aeriels.  Basically old subdivisions dying off into dead farmland.

 

 

 

 

On the ground, a boulevard of broken dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Root beer stand (& note the vacant house behind it)

 

 

 

 

Racial divisions part of Drexel's history

 

House fire that was ruled arson has put spotlight on racially mixed neighborhood.

 

By James Cummings

 

Staff Writer

 

Saturday, August 23, 2008

 

JEFFERSON TWP., Montgomery County — Saundra Ballard said when she was growing up in Jefferson Twp. she heard rumors about racism being strong in the Drexel neighborhood that straddles West Third Street.

 

But the stories remained rumors until a month ago when a neighbor convicted in 2005 of racially motivated arsons in the neighborhood began threatening her and her family.

 

On Thursday, Aug. 21, Ballard's house was heavily damaged by an intentionally set fire. Ballard said Earl McLearran told her before his arrest July 31 on charges of ethnic intimidation that "no black people (were) going to live in our neighborhood and be safe."

 

McLearran's mother and sister said Friday that no one in their family was responsible for the fire.

 

Area residents say Drexel has a long-standing reputation as a hotbed of racism. But the neighborhood has been largely peaceful for years.

 

"It's just certain people out there who are racist now," said Jefferson Twp. Trustee Brice Sims.

 

Ballard, a black woman who moved to her house at 322 Albers Ave. last year, said she got along fine with her neighbors, white and black, before run-ins with Earl McLearran started in July.

 

"The neighbor across the street and the other young lady, her daughter, are the best neighbors you could have," Ballard said. "We all watch out for each other's houses."

 

Sims and Jesse Gooding, a former township trustee who was also long-time president of the Dayton chapter of the NAACP, said most Drexel neighbors have gotten along that way for years. But Gooding said he was afraid to walk alone through the neighborhood when he first campaigned for township trustee in the 1970s.

 

"They would throw racial slurs at you," Gooding said.

 

Drexel in past decades was almost entirely white. He said poor white families migrating to Dayton from Kentucky and Tennessee "kind of gravitated to Drexel," Gooding said.

 

Tensions were common as residents tried to prevent non-whites from moving in, Gooding said.

 

In recent years, several groups of new houses have been built in Drexel and Trotwood with the help of tax credit financing, according to assistant Montgomery County Administrator Joe Tuss.

 

Tuss said private developers entered into partnerships with non-profit corporations to build new houses that could be sold to low- and moderate-income buyers at reasonable rates.

 

McLearran was convicted in 2005 of setting fire to several such houses while they were under construction. Prosecutors said McLearran set the fires because he didn't want new houses that would be occupied by blacks in his neighborhood.

 

Drexel today has a mixture of white and black families, and many of the black families purchased the new houses. The new houses sit on lots scattered among some well-kept older houses, some run-down houses and vacant lots choked with weeds.

 

Gooding said some of the tensions stem from poor white families who resent the arrival of working class blacks with more income and nicer houses.

 

Ernest Moore, who has lived on Albers Avenue for 27 years, said what older neighbors resent is that they didn't get a chance to benefit from the newly constructed houses.

 

"They let us believe those houses were for the people in the community, but they weren't," Moore said.

 

Moore said Drexel has always had a lot of families from Kentucky, and many of them have wanted to maintain the neighborhood as it's always been. But he said it's not the older people causing trouble on his street now.

 

"It's the younger generation," he said. "Some of them want to have their white power, and they're running up against the younger black ones who want to have their black power

 

Yeah...Drexel...yeah...

Interesting!

ouch?

Dayton lifer here. Growing up on the east side, I always heard about Drexel in the vein of "there be Morlocks." I didn't know who, or what lived there, nor its skin color (black, white, hillbilly/briar, etc) but it always sounded like this weird unearthly place where you wanted to keep the car doors locked and drive through as fast as possible.

Drexel sort of has this low rent "honky-tonk" vibe going (though there arent any real honky-tonks here AFAIK). 

 

Forgot to ad this one:

 

 

 

One of Dayton's underground cultural ambassadors is the briar art-rock project Drexel.  The lead, Drexel Dave, is a also a folk artist.

 

 

 

 

 

"briar art-rock project" - Lol. Yeah, D.D. consistently cracks me up. What is Drexel Dave's connection to the Drexel place name?

He used to live there when he was younger.

"He said poor white families migrating to Dayton from Kentucky and Tennessee "kind of gravitated to Drexel" [...] Tensions were common as residents tried to prevent non-whites from moving in" [...]

 

That is not surprising. Appalachians migrated northward during the 1960s to the 1990s looking for work. OTR was another hotbed of Appalachians. Most come from areas where there were no to very few Blacks -- and many counties still maintain an extremely low ratio -- and where racism is still a large issue. You'll find more Confederate flags fly down in Floyd County, Kentucky, for instance, than in Cincinnati entirely -- and not for heritage, either. The racism only migrated north.