Cincinnati Magazine
April 7, 2021
In some aspects, Cincinnati is a very different place than it was two decades ago. But when it comes to race relations, it’s almost exactly the same. Black people living and working here can attest to the structural racial divide that continues to undergird their experiences.
Illustration by Kingsley Mebechi
Beneath the city’s shiny new buildings, popular restaurants, and everyday wheeling, dealing, and power brokering lie the ashes of April 2001. That’s when Over-the-Rhine exploded in an uprising after the death of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of then-Cincinnati Police Officer Stephen Roach, and it was a reckoning that some say was a long time coming.