[citation needed] Shortly before the Civil War, the area became popular among German immigrants, mostly from Bavaria.

In 1954, black Korean War veteran and electrician Andrew Wade IV and his wife Charlotte, who had found themselves unable to buy a home in a suburban neighborhood due to Jim Crow housing discrimination, got help from activists Carl and Anne Braden.

[7][8] The Wades selected a house in Shively that they wanted to buy, and the Bradens bought it on their behalf and deeded it over to them.

[9][10] Soon afterwards, the Wades' home was repeatedly attacked—including cross burning on an adjacent lot, rocks through their windows, rifle shots into the house, and ultimately a dynamite bomb that exploded under their daughter's bedroom while they were in the home (no one was injured).

[13] After the bombing, the Wades left and very few other blacks attempted to move in, and the community remained a largely white "sundown town" well into the 1960s.

Budget surpluses became shortfalls, and Shively tried but failed to annex more suburban territory in Pleasure Ridge Park in 1984.

The same year, the town was hit with a scandal when police chief Michael Donio admitted to taking bribes to allow prostitution in the area.

Such events led to the community's reputation as "Lively Shively" (as the name of the town is pronounced with a "long i", this is a rhyme).

However, the area along Seventh Street north of Dixie is still known for its seedy adult entertainment businesses.

[15] Into the 2000s, the area lagged behind eastern and southern Jefferson County, with one of its few remaining large retail centers, the 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) Dillard's on Dixie Highway (est.

1956), closing in 2007 due to slow sales at the location despite the chain's general profitability in the Louisville area.

On November 5, 2018, Democrat Beverly Chester Burton became the first African-American to be elected mayor of Shively.

[20] Its modern boundaries are roughly Millers and Bernheim Lane to the north (Louisville's Algonquin neighborhood); Louisville's Seventh Street to the east; I-264 and St. Dennis to the west; and Rockford Lane and Pleasure Ridge Park to the south.