Residents still find city split along old racial lines

DAYTON — — When Claud Bell Sr. started looking for his first house in Dayton in the mid-1950s, he knew that, as a black man, there were places set aside for his family.

“The ads for property said ‘Colored’ right in the newspaper back then,” Bell said. “You couldn’t just go over to East Dayton and buy a house if you were black.”

More than 50 years later. Bell, like most Daytonians, still lives in a neighborhood where most of his neighbors are of the same race he is.

In the 2000 census, Dayton’s non-Hispanic population was about 53 percent white and 43 percent black. There was a scattering of Hispanics, Asian and other races.

An analysis of the city’s census tracts at the time showed that most sections of the city’s neighborhoods had obvious racial identities. Areas in East Dayton were up to 99 percent white in 2000, while West Dayton had tracts that were up to 98 percent black. A few tracts, mostly in neighborhoods close to North Main Street, had diverse populations ranging from about 36 to 66 percent white.

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Residents still find city split along old racial lines
DaytonDailyNews.com