Residents formed a safety watch after a neo-Nazi march in Lincoln Heights, but racist incidents still cause turmoil

Despite its proximity to a busy highway, Lincoln Heights’ rolling hills, parks and well-kept lawns are pictures of calm suburban life north of Cincinnati.

Today it’s home to about 3,000 mostly African American people a few miles from Kentucky and the Ohio River, which divided free northern states from the slave-owning south. In the 1920s, Lincoln Heights became one of the first self-governing Black communities north of the Mason-Dixon line.