DWIGHT JAMES

It's people that has grown up and lived here for years. You know, their parents and grandparents. you know, all of them growed up here. So, it means more to most people than some.

The iconic part I remember is right there in Armory and Linn, the record shop. It was a lot of black owned businesses down here. All of this, they wiped… just closed everything. Now, we don't own anything in our own neighborhoods, you know? And it's really hard for us to get anything going with the way things is written up and stuff, you know? But that's how it is, you know? It was our neighborhood. You know, we were born and grew up here. All our parents, all of them. When they came to Cincinnati from down south, they moved right down here, and spread out throughout the city.

Editor’s note: Pictured is an L&R Fish Bar ad that appeared in an issue of Ghetto Magazine, a Black-owned DIY zine from the early 1970s.

Listen to Dwight’s West End story: