Blanche Dudley's Home

Looking at the Google Maps image you will see an apartment complex in front of you, the Acorn Apartments. Behind you is Magazine Street and it is as if you just walked down Magazine. In 1920, however, this apartment complex was not here. In fact, Magazine Street continued straight westward and had houses along both sides. Imagine that Magazine continues westward and to your left you see Central High School, the only African American segregated high school until 1956. Acorn Apartments was part of the City View Park segregated housing development that the city of Louisville built in 1969.

But here between 9th and 10th street, where Magazine used to go straight but is now these apartments, was the home of Blanche Dudley. Blanche was 53 in 1920 and in 1928 was classified as a hanger of tobacco, hanging the tobacco from the ceiling to allow gravity to remove any moisture from the leaves before shipment.

Blanche Dudley was born in c.1867 in Kentucky. In 1920 she lived at 915 Magazine, a wood frame, two-unit house on the 900 block between 9th and 10th. Her unit included three other women ages 55, 71, and 73. The other three women worked as either laundress or private cook for a white family. The other unit at 915 was home for two Black men and a woman, all three of whom were in their 20s and 30s.

Blanche was an older woman, widowed, and working up until at least 1935 at 68 years old hanging tobacco from the ceiling at the Campbell factory. Blanche worked at least 23 years for Campbell Company (1912-1935) with little change in her job titles. She worked as a hanger and was also labeled as a general tobacco worker in the city directory. She had little opportunity for upward mobility even though she was a longtime employee.

Blanche moved around a lot, signaling an instability in housing for one reason or another. Residential segregation policies in Louisville, whether official or just enforced socially, prevented African Americans and white people to disproportionately inhabit a space-- if a block was predominately Black then white people were not allowed to live there and vice versa. Rent prices were also high and to make matters worse property owners often charged Black renters three times the rent of a white renter (Wright, Life Behind a Veil, 103). She had lived at 4 different homes between 1912 and 1935. By 1935, she moved to 1022 West Liberty, just a block away from the factory which must have made her commute easier. Years of working in a tobacco factory could have impacted her case of bronchopneumonia in 1945.

Blanche died at 79 years old from her bout with pneumonia.

Directly behind Blanche's home was the West Chestnut Baptist Church which was for Black Louisvillians, the Chestnut Y.M.C.A. which was the segregated Y.M.C.A., and the Carnegie Library or also known as the Western Colored Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. All of these community resources were within walking distance from Blanche's home.

“Blanche Dudley.” 1920 U.S. Census, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, page 237-238. Ancestry.com, accessed June 1, 2021.

Certificate of Death, Blanche Dudley, Commonwealth of Kentucky, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, January 23, 1945, Ancestry.com, accessed June 1, 2021.

“Dudley, Blanche,” Caron’s Louisville City Directory, 1912 (387), 1935 (563), Ancestry.com, accessed June 1, 2021. 

Sanborn Map Company, Louisville, Kentucky, 1905, New York: Sanborn Map Co. 

Wright, George C. Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.