Constantine Harper stands by a Red Bank Expressway in what used to be Dunbar, a village staid by former slaves from Kentucky. Harper, along with a Madisonville Community Council, is perplexing to convince Cincinnati officials to change a name of a Red Bank Expressway to Dunbar Expressway. / The Enquirer/Leigh Taylor
By Steve Kemme
Dunbar was a tiny African-American village that had been initial staid in a early 1800s by refugee slaves journey from a South.
Located in a vale during a western corner of Madisonville along what is now Red Bank Expressway, Dunbar became one of a initial black neighborhoods in southwestern Ohio.
“It became a really bustling village by 1850 or thereabouts,� pronounced Ruth Ann Busald, who chairs a story cabinet of Madisonville Community Council.
The 16-acre, all-black area of medium homes with a church as a focal indicate continued into a 20th century. Children swam in Duck Creek, picked blackberries on a mountain nearby a rivulet and played in a woods. When it snowed, they rode sleds down Bush Street.
“People looked out for any other,� pronounced Constance Harper, a 70-year-old Finneytown proprietor who was innate and lifted in Dunbar. “At a time, we were a village that was poor, though we didn’t comprehend it since there was so many love.�
But in a 1940s, Cincinnati officials began formulation to modify Dunbar, that a city called Corsica Hollow, into an industrial area.
A 1948 city master plan, that pronounced many of a houses there had deteriorated, announced a area “unsuitable for residential use.�
During a after half of a century, a Red Bank Expressway was built, and many of a houses were abandoned. The city demolished a remaining structures in 1995, including a tiny white, wood-frame church that had been built in 1907.
Today, zero of Dunbar remains.
This depicts a intersection of Corsica Place and Bush Street in Dunbar in 1995, shortly before this residence and a rest of a remaining houses in a village were ripped down. / Provided by Ruth Ann Busald
The hollow, bordered by Red Bank Expressway, Red Bank Road, and tyrannise tracks, is filled with businesses, including a Christ Hospital Imaging Center, a Sleep Management Institute and a Gorilla Glue Factory.
But former Dunbar residents and descendants of residents wish a ancestral tiny village to be remembered. They and a Madisonville Community Council have asked a city to change a name of a Red Bank Expressway to a Dunbar Expressway. The city has taken no movement so far.
“It would meant a lot to us,� pronounced Harper, who helps classify annual reunions of former Dunbar residents and their descendants. “It would be a permanent sign of Dunbar. We came from common beginnings, and we wish my children to know that. Too many times, story is wiped away.�
The initial residents of Dunbar were exile slaves who crossed a Ohio River and afterwards followed a Little Miami River and Duck Creek.
“The initial settlers of Dunbar were refugees from a South and brought with them all their Southern roots and hospitality,� Luevenia Spruell, a former Dunbar proprietor wrote in an letter about a community’s story in a Madisonville Community Council newsletter in 1995.
The all-black residential enclave grew and eventually enclosed a church and several stores.
In a early maps of Madisonville, what is now Red Bank Road was called Deerfield Road, Busald said. When Madisonville was annexed by Cincinnati in 1911, Deerfield Road altered to Dunbar Road. In 1941, Dunbar was altered to Red Bank Road.
The church in Dunbar was a devout and amicable focal indicate of a community.
The New Mission Baptist Church assigned it from 1907 to 1963, when a assemblage changed to a new church a brief stretch divided on Ravenna Street in Madisonville.
“When we was a child, that church was a iota of a community,� pronounced Harper, whose great-grandfather, Ben Ballew, was one of a church’s founders. “We children would accumulate on a stairs and play.�
During large snows, adults and children would accumulate around a bonfire nearby a large ash tree during a tip of Dunbar Street. They would fry “anything edible� in a fire, Spruell wrote.
“That large tree was right by a house,� Harper said. “The bonfire would comfortable us all up. My mom and other women would make prohibited chocolate for everybody.�
Most of a houses in Dunbar were small. Harper pronounced during her childhood, there were 11 people vital in her family’s one-story residence consisting of a livingroom, dual bedrooms and a kitchen.
“It didn’t feel to us children like it was crowded,� she said.
A kind, inexhaustible suggestion permeated her domicile and a whole village of Dunbar, Harper said.
“If we had some potatoes and we had meat, we would give we some of a beef and we would give us some of a potatoes,� she said. “Then, together, we would both have beef and potatoes to eat. That’s how it was in Dunbar.�
Harper left Dunbar when she married in 1961. But, like many other former Dunbar residents, she has continued attending a New Mission Baptist Church during a Ravenna Street location.
“We have about 6 generations of Ballews who are a partial of that church,� she said.
But distinct a New Mission Baptist congregation, a village of Dunbar couldn’t survive.
A 1961 city devise pronounced all 53 houses there were in decayed condition and should be demolished. It took 34 years for that devise to be carried out.
With dispersion skeleton looming, many residents left in a 1970s and ‘80s. In 1980, usually 37 residents remained in Dunbar, according to a 1980 Census.
The remaining houses that were ripped down in 1995 had been deserted prolonged before.
“I was only ravaged when that happened,� Harper said. “We were such a tighten community.�
Every summer, there’s a Dunbar reunion cruise in a park during a finish of Desmond Street in Madisonville. About 50 people came to a one this year.
Harper and a other former residents are dynamic to continue a reunions as prolonged as they can in sequence to applaud a village founded by former slaves that grew into a close area where residents cared for and stable any other. That’s also because they wish a Red Bank Expressway to be renamed a Dunbar Expressway.
“Dunbar is in a hearts,� Harper said. “As prolonged as we live and as prolonged as we can speak, everybody is going to remember Dunbar. �
Have an thought for Our History? Email skemme@enquirer.com
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