Celebrate Juneteenth, Support Louisville’s Positive Social Associations

June 17, 2020
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In 2005, Kentucky officially became one of the now 47 states to recognize Juneteenth as an American holiday. Celebrated annually on June 19, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the end of the civil war, Juneteenth marked the declaration of freedom for the last Black people enslaved in our country.

155 years after General Granger read the orders, our community is facing the harsh realities of systemic racism, the outcomes of which are holding an entire part of our community back from achieving their full potential. The Greater Louisville Project collects data for the Metro Louisville area to weigh our progress against that of our peer cities. Included in this data are measurements of various racial outcomes. 

Juneteenth is a time for coming together to celebrate Black culture and community connections.  One measure of those connections is the number of social associations we have as a community.  These social networks enable residents to be resilient during difficult times. Social associations can help those in poverty find solutions for the problems they face obtaining transportation, child care, or housing. They can also help to improve self-esteem, provide hope, and energize the community. Louisville currently ranks 14th out of our 17 peer cities for our number of social associations.

Fortunately, Louisville is home to many organizations that allow us to come together, learn from our past, engage in discussion for our future, and share the human experience. 

“Spaces like this museum show the importance of coming together,” said Roots 101 African American Museum Founder and CEO Lamont Collins. “Our best moments in history are when we came together. The museum teaches all of us, all races, to become better ancestors for future generations.” 

While current data on the number of social associations in Louisville in unavailable, during this week of Juneteenth, the GLP is sharing a list of long-standing and new organizations that build and support social associations among the Black community of Louisville:

100 Black Men of Louisville

Ag in the City

American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky-Louisville

Anti-Racism for Kids: An Age-by-Age Guide to Fighting Hate

Bicycling for Louisville

Black Lives Matter

Brothers Helping Brothers

Carl Braden Memorial Center

Change Today, Change Tomorrow.

Citizens of Louisville Organized & United Together

Compassionate City

Diversity at the Table

Dr. Joseph McMillan National Conference on the Black Family in America

Fellowship of Reconciliation-Louisville

Girls to Goddesses

Kentucky Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression

Kentucky Center for African American Heritage

Louisville Juneteenth Festival

Louisville Peace Action Community

Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice

Louisville Urban League

Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice

New Roots

Outdoor Afro

Parents for Social Justice

Play Cousins Collective

Roots 101: African American Museum 

Showing up for Racial Injustice

Showing up for Racial Justice

University of Louisville Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice

University of Louisville’s Women’s Center

University of Louisville Cultural Center

University of Louisville PEACC Program

West Jefferson County Community Task Force

West Louisville Talks

West Louisville Urban Coalition

Kentucky Association of Professional African American Women

To learn more about Louisville’s statistical progress, visit our website, follow the Greater Louisville Project on social media, and join our making list. Together we will continue to catalyze positive change for Louisville.

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Natural Breaks Algorithm

For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.

Z-Scores

Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).

Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.