It’s a city best known for bluegrass and thoroughbred horses. But Lexington, Ky., is also a metropolitan area with more than half a million residents—a multicultural community where people are coming together to talk about their city’s history.
Nurturing that effort is REALTOR® Kristen LaRue Bond. In doing so, she’s championing the idea that all community members have a voice in the policies and practices that affect their lives.
With the support of Bluegrass REALTORS® and Kentucky REALTORS®, Bond and a team of faithful volunteers have produced a documentary, “Lexington: Resilience in the Redline.”
The film uses narrative, historical records and interviews to show the impact of 20th century government policies, and lending and real estate sales practices on Black Lexingtonians. The film covers not just national policies that discouraged sales and mortgage lending to Black residents but also local decisions—such as removal of a neighborhood to make way for a stadium and the creation of segregated public housing projects—that affected how and where Black residents lived.
Underpinning that history are residents’ stories of resilience. Eighty-year-old P.G. Peeples, president and CEO of the Urban League of Lexington, says he looks back at what earlier generations overcame for inspiration. “I’m just so proud of the heritage—the fact that they did not cower in the face of the obstacles,” Peeples says in the film. “They didn’t, so we have an obligation to build for the next generation.”
Additional support for the documentary came in the form of two fair housing grants from the National Association of REALTORS®. A $7,500 grant enabled Bluegrass REALTORS® to travel and undertake in-depth archival research and historical assessment of NAR’s archives to inform the documentary project, and another $7,500 grant to Kentucky REALTORS® helped underwrite the cost of producing the film. (NAR’s Fair Housing Grants are part of the Community Development Advocacy program, which helps state and local REALTOR® associations and their members take a lead role in Building Better Communities.)
Resilience in the Redline” premiered last August at Lexington’s historic Lyric Theater, and it continues to be screened and discussed at community events around the city.
“What surprised me—and what continues to surprise me—is that how well-received the film is,” Bond says. “Even people who might be more sensitive to talking about racial issues finds our film appealing in the sense that they’re willing to lean in and think.”
Combining Data With Storytelling
A former science teacher with master’s degrees in biomedical science and secondary education, Bond today leads the K&D Team at Guide Realty with her husband Darryl Bond.
She is also an industry leader who has served as president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers of Central Kentucky. It was in that capacity that she attended a meeting at the offices of Bluegrass REALTORS® in 2023 to hear a presentation by two concerned community members.
Rona Roberts and Barbara Sutherland had been engaged in something of a passion project—combing city records to unearth instances of unjust policies faced by Black Lexingtonians. Their ultimate goal: Find ways for the Lexington community to right the wrongs of the past.
It wasn’t difficult to find records of blatant discrimination, Roberts says.
After Roberts and Sutherland had worked for four or five months, they invited some city leaders to hear their findings. “Going in, we were all about reparations, but to a person—Black and White—they said … ‘You need a different approach.’”
Among the friends they met with was James Brown, a Lexington City Council member who is also a REALTOR®. “James said, ‘I think you should focus on housing, and I think you need to show Bluegrass REALTORS® what you’re doing,’” Roberts recalls.
Eventually, the two women were invited to speak to the leadership of the association and came prepared with a 30-minute PowerPoint deck. “I’ll tell you the truth … we were worried about it because one of the five main injustices that we were pointing out was how REALTORS® had behaved,” Roberts says.
But instead of discouraging Roberts and Sutherland, Bluegrass REALTORS® leaders embraced the opportunity to incorporate the local history into their fair housing education. Roberts credits the leaders at the time, including then-CEO Justin Landon, RCE (now CEO of the MetroTex Association of REALTORS® in Dallas), not only for being open-minded but also for having the vision to take the presentation to the next level.
That meeting set Black Yarn’s film in motion.
“I just made the point that, ‘You really should get the stories behind these numbers. And, by the way, this is the story of my family and my family’s friends—because they were some of the early residents in the neighborhoods that were referenced,” Bond says.
“Resilience in the Redline” was two years in the making. Regina Lewis, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Kentucky School of Public Policy and Administration, and Black Yarn’s director of research, recalls the Aug. 22 premiere as “an incredible night.” In addition to the local real estate community, she says, “We had a lot of policymakers, right? We had the vice mayor, we had the former mayor, we had a number of council members and people that represent our state, as well as a lot of community leaders—people that lead nonprofits or different organizations and corporations.”
“One of the things we really wanted to focus on in the film [was] about these communities coming together,” Lewis continues. “Oftentimes, the narrative is in this deficit kind of framework—low income, high poverty, all those things—but we really wanted to focus on the resilience. In spite of all these obstacles that are coming against the Black community here in Lexington, there’s still this community that was resilient and that locked arms with one another.”.
“They locked arms with each other, and took care of each other,” Bond adds.
Inspiring Other Communities
LaRue, Roberts and Sutherland founded Black Yarn as a way to raise funds for the film. Now, the organization is looking beyond housing, Bond says, to cover a range of issues.
“We focus on storytelling, research and collaboration, all with the aim of highlighting Black experiences and making those align with the experiences of all Americans—normalizing that,” she says. “We hope to encourage other citizens in smaller communities or mid-sized communities to explore what their history is … to partner with and collaborate with community leaders who are willing, and tell your own story.”
The film shares a moving final message that says, in part: “Now more than ever, our neighborhoods need camaraderie, not just proximity. Connection, not just coexistence. Let this film be the beginning, not an ending. Together, we can say, our story is your story, too.”
“That's what we hope to do,” Lewis says. “Invite the entire community—Black, White, everybody—to lock arms and figure out ways to make our community one where everybody can thrive.”
"An initiative as powerful as 'Lexington: Resilience in the Redline' exemplifies the commitment REALTORS® make to the communities they serve, and the importance of education when it comes to fair housing," says Kyle Tetzlaff, RCE, AHWD, who served as chief operating officer of Kentucky REALTORS® at the time of the grant and who is now CEO of Vermont REALTORS®.
“The REALTOR® organization at all three levels played an instrumental role in the production of this documentary. Through the power of the three-way agreement, the local, state and national associations contributed to the documentary both financially and through the time commitments of our volunteer REALTOR® leaders and staff,” Tetzlaff says.
“I would definitely like to say thank you to our National Association of REALTORS®, Kentucky REALTORS® and Bluegrass REALTORS®. They have been 100% behind this project, supporting it in every way possible—and just wonderful to work with,” Bond says. “I’m proud to be a REALTOR®, and to know that I’m part of an organization that backs me the way that they have. Instead of pushing back, they pushed me forward.”
