Philip Spiess

Herewith I submit:  CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:  Part V:  “Cincinnati’s ‘Colored’ Schools”:

Schools for the "Colored"?:  As you may assume, the Cincinnati schools for African-American children were, from the first, what we would call “segregated.”  Indeed, that they existed at all in the very early days of the city was something of a miracle, for Cincinnati, a northern city and therefore “free,” was, however, close to the slave-holding South, and therefore, having Southern sympathies (for mainly economic reasons), would have (I believe) inclined to the slave owners’ idea that no slave should intentionally be educated – in reading, in writing, or in religion – because doubtless that would lead to thoughts of possible personal advancement, and hence a desire for freedom.  [N.B.:  I use the term “colored” in many passages here, because that’s the term that the African-American writers of the 19^th-century period were using themselves.]

Nevertheless, in 1825 or 1826, when the black population of Cincinnati was calculated at 250 (!), the first school established for colored persons in Cincinnati was commenced by Henry Collins, a black man, in “Glen’s Old Pork House” on Hopples Alley near Sycamore Street (some say it was a carpenter shop, and the location was the south side of Seventh Street, between Broadway and Deer Creek), but it did not last long.  That same year another was established by a black man named (appropriately enough) Schooly [Israel Schooley, an early organ builder?]; it was held somewhere near Sixth and Broadway, which was then known as the “Green” [see “the Little Red Church on the Green” in the previous installment].  Slightly later, a Mr. Wing (it seems he was a white man) kept a school near the corner of Sixth and Vine Streets; he admitted colored youth to his night school.  And Owen T. B. Nickens, a black man from Virginia, who later taught (in the 1870s) at Mount Pleasant, kept a school at intervals, starting in 1834 in “King’s Church” [see the previous installment].  In 1836 Mr. Nickens moved his school to New Street near Broadway.  There he was succeeded a few years later by John McMicken, a natural son [I assume this means he was a bastard, i.e., illegitimate] of Charles McMicken, the founder of the University of Cincinnati.  In short, no school was regularly kept for black children, because teachers were few and there were not many regular scholars.

The Cincinnati public school system (for white students) was established in 1829.  Thus in 1830 the colored people of the First Ward in Cincinnati asked that a school be opened for the benefit of its colored children – here was segregation at an early date.  It is recorded, however, that there was no distinction on account of color in the private schools of those years.  (This is hard to believe, but evidently colored children “of light hue” – doubtlessly mulattoes – were accepted into private schools as late as 1835, when Mr. Funk kept such a school at the southeast corner of Sixth and Vine Streets.)  

In 1834 the faculty of Lane Presbyterian Seminary [see Installment II of this series], alarmed by threats of Kentucky slave-owning mobs, forbade its students to discuss the slavery question.  Rebelling, many of its students went to Oberlin College in upstate Ohio [see Theodore Weld in Installment II].  But some of these students returned to Cincinnati:  commentators of the time tell us that the “beginning of the anti-slavery excitement” in Cincinnati (i.e., the rise of the local Abolitionist movement) was around 1835:  a number of young men and women (white), “filled with the spirit of hatred to slavery, and a desire to labor for a downtrodden race, came into the city and established schools.”  They were all excellent teachers, and “are remembered with gratitude by those who received instruction” from them, but they were subjected to much abuse by the local populace.  Boarding-house keepers refused to accept them, telling them that they had no accommodations for “teachers of n*****s” (i.e., the “N-word” – I only use it here (just the once) to emphasize the local populace’s hateful attitude).  Thereupon these worthy young people rented a house and boarded with each other; part of their salaries was paid by an educational society supported by benevolent white folk.  Later on, in the same vicinity of “the Green” (Sixth Street just east of Broadway), Baker Jones allowed two of his houses to be used as schools; in one, Augustus Wattles taught an advanced class of boys, and in the other, Miss Bishop taught a primary class of boys. But frequently the students would be unable to meet because of mob violence (there is good evidence that the mobs were drunken rabble, who should have been ashamed of themselves for terrifying little children!), although these schools continued, with varying success, until 1844.  [N.B.:  One of these teachers, Mr. Fairchild, eminent in educational and theological work, and later a professor at Oberlin College, eventually became president of Berea College in Kentucky.]

In 1841, Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Denham opened a colored school in Baker Street Church.  This was the largest of all the colored schools, having an enrollment of 200-300 students.  In 1844, the Rev. Hiram S. Gilmore, “a philanthropic gentleman of considerable wealth,” as well as one of “fine talents and rare benevolence,” established the Cincinnati High School, which was, it is said, the best school ever established for the city’s colored people.  Gilmore spared no expense to make it a success.  He built a building of five large rooms and a chapel at the east end of Harrison Street.  Gilmore was principal, and he employed good teachers who taught English (presumably this means literature, and possibly elocution), Latin, Greek, music, and drawing.  In the yard, a complete (!) set of gymnastic apparatus was supplied.  Pupils were prepared for college, and many of them went to Oberlin and other colleges that accepted black students.  Such students as demonstrated proficiency in singing, declaiming poetry, etc., traveled during vacation through Ohio, New York, and Canada giving concerts.  The profits realized by these trips were devoted to furnishing clothing and books to the poorer students of the school.  Sometimes the number of students in this school was as high as three hundred, but the income never equaled the expenses.  In 1848 the principal of the school was Dr. A. L. Childs, previously a teacher, who was its principal at the time it closed.  [Space does not allow the inclusion of distinguished alumni who went on to positions of national prominence, but they were significant, given the size and duration of the school.]

Black Schools Established -- Segregation:  In 1849, an Ohio State law was passed authorizing the establishment of colored schools at the public’s expense (i.e., “public schools”); thus in 1850 an attempt was made to organize such schools under the law.  But the Cincinnati city authorities declared that the colored trustees, elected to run the schools, not being electors, were not, and could not be, qualified as office holders; therefore, the colored School Board could not draw money from the city treasury to pay for any of its expenses.  Peter H. Clark [see Part VIII], therefore, taught in the colored schools for three months to have a legal case against the city (it is said that Peter H. Clark trained all of the teachers in the colored schools between 1859 and 1895).  A white lawyer, Flamen Ball of Clifton, law partner of Salmon P. Chase, took the case, and, by a writ of mandamus (wherein the court, so petitioned, orders a government official to perform a ministerial act), compelled the white School Board to honor the financial drafts of the black School Board.  The black folk won the case, and their schools were opened accordingly.

However, in 1851, the city funds being low, it was declared that the colored School Board could not build a school house.  And then, after a change in the law (1852-1853), the colored schools were placed under the control of the Board of Trustees and Visitors of the public schools of Cincinnati.  Colored trustees could now manage all matters except auditing the accounts.  The colored trustees demurred on this, and in 1856 the law was altered, thereby restoring the rights of the elected colored trustees to control their schools.  Thus in 1858 the first school house for the colored schools (a brick one) was built and occupied; located on Seventh Street, it had four classrooms, the Superintendent’s office, a large hall on the third floor (presumably for meetings and assemblies), and a basement (occupied by the janitor).  The following year (1859) another colored school building was erected on Court Street.  A bit later two smaller buildings were erected on the same lot, these being occupied by a part of the district school.

In 1866, following the Civil War, as more African-Americans migrated to Cincinnati, Gaines High School, the first specifically public colored high school in the city, was erected on Court Street west of John Street, known originally as the Western District School, and later as the Gaines and Western School; Peter H. Clark was principal.  The school was named after John Isom Gaines, a black merchant on the Cincinnati Public Landing who supplied provisions for steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, selling to the colored stewards found on most of the boats; he was known from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.  He was noted as “one of the early friends of education in this city,” a man who labored in the early days for “the education of the colored youth.”  (He was for many years the clerk of the Colored School Board; he died in 1859, and the African-American citizens of Cincinnati erected a monument over his grave in the Colored American Graveyard, Avondale.)  In 1870 Gaines High School graduated its first students, a class of six.  The school included an “Intermediate Department” (which I take to be a Junior High or Middle School); it offered courses (as of 1874) in spelling, definitions, grammar, reading, penmanship, composition, arithmetic, algebra, geography, American history, physiology, drawing, music, and German (the last being an almost necessary requirement for students of any race in order to be able to converse with many of their fellow Cincinnatians at that time).  The High School Department curriculum (as of 1874) included arithmetic, bookkeeping, algebra, mensuration, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, philosophy, botany, geology, physiology, chemistry [notice a large emphasis on the sciences, surprisingly advanced for the 1870s, particularly at an African-American school], universal history [I assume that this is what we now call “world history”], rhetoric [this would be what today we would call “public speaking”], Latin, German [see note above], drawing, music, and English literature [one wonders if this was the literature of England or America, or both].

In 1870, the Walnut Hills school house was erected, it being the finest belonging to the Colored School Board.  It had four large classrooms, “a fine hall” on the third floor, and a large yard in front, paved with brick.  For four years Thomas J. Good was president of the Colored School Board; he succeeded in securing for his race both its rights to the public schools and the school houses themselves.  By 1873-1874, there were three Cincinnati Colored Public School districts:  the Eastern District (schoolhouse on Seventh Street east of Broadway), the Western District (west of Vine Street), and the Walnut Hills District, each with its own board of trustees; there was also a Third Street Colony School.  All teachers in the Cincinnati Colored Schools were required to pass an exam in some twenty-one subjects (i.e., most of those listed above in the high school curriculum, but also Theory and Practice of Teaching, Natural Philosophy [Science], Anatomy, Ancient and Modern History, and Constitution of the United States) in order to be certified to teach (suggesting that there was a small number of actual teachers, and that each taught a wide variety of subjects).  [I wonder how many teachers in the Cincinnati school system today – or elsewhere – could pass exams in all of these subjects!]

A (Very) Gradual Integration:  But in 1874 management of the colored schools was once again placed under the white Cincinnati Board of Education, and the Colored School Board was abolished, never to be reinstated.  Two years later, the position of Superintendent of Colored Schools was abolished, and in 1887, when the Arnett law (abolition of Ohio’s “Black Laws”) went into effect [see Installments I and IV], separate black schools as a class were abolished, for the law now permitted black children to attend white schools.  One immediate result of this abrupt change in the law, and therefore in the schools, was that participation in the colored schools fell dramatically; for example, at Gaines High School, enrollment fell in three years from 130 students to 5 – the end, of course, was that the school closed shortly after 1890.  By 1925, these were the colored schools remaining in the Cincinnati area (as you can see, not all under the Cincinnati School Board):  Newport School; Wyoming School; Lockland School; College Hill School; McCall Industrial School; Douglass School; and Harriet Beecher Stowe School (there was also the Lincoln-Grant School in Covington, Kentucky).  And by 1926 all of the colored schools had closed except for Douglass School and a one-room Jackson Colony (Fifth Street west of Mound Street; part of the Stowe School).

The first real colored Kindergarten in Cincinnati was established in the Dabney Building (420 McAllister Street -- see Part VI) some years after the Civil War by Miss Annie Laws, who bore all of its expenses for rent, teaching, and janitorial services.  One of the distinguished white women of Cincinnati, heavily involved in education and philanthropy (she helped found what are now the University of Cincinnati’s College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, and the College of Nursing and Health), she was deeply interested in the mental development of children.  [N.B.:  The concept of the “Kindergarten” (“children’s garden”), and its subsequent movement, was the inspiration of the German educator Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel, who, influenced by the Swiss educator Pestalozzi, emphasized play, self-activity, and “learning by doing,” in other words, the spontaneous interests and creative experiences of children.  He founded the first school of this kind in 1837 and named it “Kindergarten” in 1840; thereafter the movement spread throughout the Western world.  As a German movement, needless to say, it held great sway in Cincinnati.]

I think we all have some idea of what happened with black education in the public schools of Cincinnati in our own time.  Although segregation did not exist per se by law in the public schools, the far more subtle segregation by geography, i.e., neighborhoods, existed simply by the boundary lines drawn by the school board for the school districts:  if you lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, you went to a predominantly black school (and vice-versa).  (I recall hearing stories of white parents on the edges of those neighborhoods petitioning the school board to allow their child to go to a predominantly white school in a different district nearby.)  And if you look back through the earlier posts on this “Forum,” you will find accounts by Mr. Lounds and others about “segregated swimming classes” at Walnut Hills High School (verified by my mother, who graduated from Walnut Hills in 1939). Yes, times have changed, but the beat goes on – only the “scenery” and the individual incidents change – and then none too often [see Installment I for the “Cincinnati Race Riot of 2001”].

[See Proceedings of the Semi-Centenary Celebration of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Cincinnati, Held in Allen Temple, February 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th, 1874; With an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colored Schools; also a List of the Charitable and Benevolent Societies of the City (Rev. B. W. Arnett, ed.; Cincinnati:  H. Watkin, 1874; 135 pp.); Wendell Phillips Dabney:   “Colored School History to 1902, by Shotwell – Teachers in Colored Schools, 1925,” Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens:  Historical, Sociological and Biographical, 100-111 (Cincinnati:  The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926); John B. Shotwell:  History of Schools of Cincinnati (Cincinnati:  1902); and Walter McKinley Nicholes:  “The Educational Development of Blacks in Cincinnati from 1800 to the Present” (1977 thesis).]

Part VI:  “Wendell Phillips Dabney and Cincinnati Machine Politics” will be posted soon.

[to be continued]

Jerry Ochs

Socially distanced Seder

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

The WHHS Alumni Foundation sent out this news by email today.  Sincere sympathy to the family of our class's  "Raymond" of "Raymond and Bill" fame in the class graduation rendition of Pomp and Circumstance.  The torch of school leadership was passed to his son Jeff, who presided over our last reunion high on a hill. I extend my condolences to Mr. Brokamp's family and friends. 
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/cincinnati/obituary.aspx?n=raymond-brokamp&pid=195904312&fhid=27748
 

Nancy Messer

EVERYONE PLEASE LOOK IN TO YOUR STATE'S REQUIREMENTS TO VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT FOR THE NOVEMBER ELECTION. IT IS NECESSARY FOR EVERYONE TO VOTE AND WE DON'T KNOW HOW LONG THE CURRENT HEALTH ISSUES WILL LAST. INVESTIGATE THIS ISSUE IN YOUR STATE AND BE PREPARED TO VOTE.

Dale Gieringer

Dale G.
 

Philip Spiess

As a fellow writer with Dale of the words to our class's Pomp and Circumstance parody, let me agree with Dale that, despite the words we wrote (they practically wrote themselves, actually), we really did not mean, nor did we intend, any true disrepect to Philip McDevitt, Raymond Brokamp, or William Spreen.  We were teenagers, expressing the traditional teenage attitude toward the principal and assistant principal disciplinarians who sometimes caught us doing what we shouldn't have been doing.  And we were gadding about in our creative abilities to write said parody.  If the (perhaps misplaced) humor was not obvious in the silly lyrics, the homage to said principals -- by the very mention of them -- should have been obvious in the very satire.

That this was recognized by Raymond Brokamp on the night of our 50th Reunion was pretty evident to me:  when he spoke in the tape that was run that "that song still gets under my skin" and "if I ever find out who wrote it" (after all those years, after all) -- and he said it all with a grin -- I knew that he was more amused than irritated -- he was doing his own thing, getting back at us, yes, after all those years.

So, "Hail, Ph. McDevitt; hail, Raymond and Bill!  We always did like you -- and we always will!"

David Buchholz

And now for something from WHHS that will make you feel good...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qAUAwbZBnw&feature=youtu.be

Gene Stern

Thank you David for sharing that wonderful example of what our Performing Arts Fund is doing for WHHS!  I wanted to remind our classmates that, yes, the new Cares Act has removed the Required Minimum Distributions from our IRAs for 2020, but that the QCD (Qualified Charitable Deduction) is still in place for anyone who will be 70 1/2 by 12/31/20.  Here's what I am doing: I have sent my QCDs to my IRA custodian but only for QCDs to not be included in my 1040 next year-not for RMDs that are NOT being used for charitable purposes.  Charities will all be hurting due to reduced giving due to the Pandemic and I decided that those charities I have supported (like our Performing Arts Fund) needed my money and since it was of no negative consequence to me,  I have continued my QCDs but suspended my remainder of RMDs as the law now allows.   I request that my classmates consider this course of action with their own IRAs

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Thank you Dave!  Wonderful performance!   The technology these days really does help to keep us connected in ways we could have ever dreamed back in our day.  Those young performers gave me a smile and a couple of tears. 
I can't even imagine that after all of our hard work writing, practicing and rehearsing, that "The BEST PEANUTS EVER!", the Peanuts of '62, would be shut down due to a pandemic. It must be a heartbreaking disappointment. 
My other tear, of course, is for Rick, although not  sadness, just a great memory sliding out of my eye and rolling down my face.  

Philip Spiess

Lord, these kids look young!  (But I guess they are -- and we are real old!)

Bruce Fette

Dear Classmates,

I assume that tickets to the WHHS shows brought in some amount of funding, and that such funding would then be applied in some useful fashion. Back then, I had no awareness of the management of those funds.

However, as these very gifted kids have shown, their show would have been excellent. And we have shared in the show, even though only one of many songs. As such, my question to you is, how could the ticket sales be collected for our opportunity to enjoy this song and thereby thank the kids for sharing their talent?

Philip Spiess

Herewith I submit, per Mr. Lounds' request of February 15, CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:  Part VI:  “Wendell Phillips Dabney and Cincinnati Machine Politics”:

Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865-1952) was a fearless African-American leader, editor, politician, and historian of his people in Cincinnati at the end of the 19^th century and into the first half of the 20^th century.  He is known mainly today as the editor of The Union, Cincinnati’s oldest and longest-running Negro newspaper (a weekly, it ran for 46 years from 1907 to 1952), and as the author/compiler of Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens:  Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Cincinnati:  The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926; 440 pp.), still considered by most local historians as the key source and starting point for the study of the African-American history of Cincinnati.  But he was also intriguingly involved in the Republican “machine” politics of the “George B. Cox era,” prior to the city’s political reform movement in the 1920s, as we shall see.

W. P. Dabney was born in Richmond, Virginia, to former slaves John Marshall Dabney and Elizabeth Foster Dabney (they must have been recently slaves, for this was 1865!).  The father, John, opened his own catering business after the Civil War and did well enough to provide his family with a higher standard of living than did most former slaves.  Indeed, in 2015, John Dabney was posthumously honored at Richmond, Virginia’s Quirk Hotel as a famed caterer and bartender --  he is known, in select quarters, as the world’s greatest mint julep maker (and this took some doing to be so considered in the Old South!  One doesn’t know which of the varied and hotly-debated Julep recipes he used, but, being a Virginian, he undoubtedly used Bourbon whiskey).  John Dabney also instilled in his son a respect for religion as a means of overcoming racial injustice, and he further inculcated the political view that the Republican Party helped blacks, whereas the Democratic Party did not (which was true enough immediately following the Civil War).

In his youth, young Wendell Phillips Dabney sold newspapers (note the future connection to journalism) and played guitar with his older brother.  He also sometimes danced alongside future famed tap-dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (they grew up together in Richmond).  He also served as a waiter at a local restaurant in the summer (shades of the important black poet Langston Hughes in Washington, D. C., for whom the Washington restaurant “Busboys and Poets” is named), but he became demoralized because of the way he was treated by the white customers.  In his senior year at high school, he protested the separation of whites and blacks for graduation; his protest was successful, and the first ever combined white/black graduation was held at Richmond High School in 1883.

Oberlin College in Ohio has been mentioned numerous times in these installments as the “go-to” college for black students seeking higher education.  Thus Dabney went there, spending 1883 in the preparatory department of the college; while there, he used his musical talents to be first violinist at the Oberlin Opera House.  He was also a member of the Cademian Literary Society.  By 1884, he began teaching at a Louisa County, Virginia (just north of Richmond), elementary school; in addition to his regular courses, although he had never studied a note, and knew nothing about the basic points of music composition and arrangement, he also taught guitar.  (The famed Czechoslovakian classical composer Antonin Dvorak once said of Dabney, “You break all the rules, yet your technique, I must admit, is superb, and your style matchless.”)

In 1890, Dabney left Richmond and opened a music school in Boston for both amateur and professional musicians (he later ran a music school in Cincinnati, having a music studio for a while in the Rudolph Wurlitzer Music Company). In 1893, he worked with Frederick Douglass on an exhibition for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the largest World’s Fair ever held in the United States.  And then, in 1894, Dabney moved to Cincinnati to oversee a property, the Dumas House hotel, that his mother had inherited from her aunt, Serena Webb.  

McAllister Street and the Dumas House hotel:  In the 19^th century, the most important African-American area of Cincinnati was the district around McAllister Street.  This street was adjacent to the northern boundary of old Fort Washington (located at the eastern and upper end of the Public Landing, a block or so southwest of what is now Lytle Park); it ran north and south from Fourth Street to Fifth Street one-half block east of Broadway (originally called “Eastern Row”).  In the earliest days of the city, this part of town was a lovely area known as “Sargent’s Square,” after the gardens and “palatial” frame residence of Colonel Sargent, secretary of the “Old Northwest Territory.”  After the Colonel’s house was torn down, a short road was cut through the “Square”; it became McAllister Street.  Some small frame houses grew up on the street, and eventually, when brick houses became fashionable on Broadway, a few brick houses were built on McAllister Street as well.  Gradually, most of the buildings and lots on the street came to be owned by African-Americans, as were a good number of residences along east Fifth Street, upper Broadway and Sycamore Street, and on Sixth and Seventh Streets. 

The highest three brick buildings on McAllister Street, built at some time in the 1840s, gradually consolidated into a joined group of lodging houses, four and a half storeys in height; these eventually became the Dumas House, an African-American-oriented hotel, which, by the end of its celebrated career, was considered the oldest black hotel in the United States (it is also generally reputed to have been one of the sites involved in the “Underground Railroad” [see Installment II]).  For many years the hotel was notable in two regards:  first, the black folk who stayed there or lived in the area were fairly well-off African-Americans, as they were commercially involved in or connected with the steamboat and other city trades [see “John Isom Gaines” in Installment V], or they were servants in the wealthiest houses of Cincinnati (there were a good number of distinguished black butlers in those houses at this time), or (as successful gamblers) they were “sporting-men.”  Second, in the days before the Civil War, wealthy white Southerners often brought their black or mulatto mistresses with them when they came to do business in the “Queen City,” putting them up at the “colored hotel,” while they themselves would stay at a white hotel (possibly the Spencer House on Third Street or probably the Burnet House -- see Post #4519).

The Cincinnati Race Riot of 1841 [see Installment I], though it is said to have begun (or the mob assembled) at the 5^th Street Market (5^th and Vine Streets), actually centered on McAllister Street and the Dumas House and extended over to Sixth Street and Broadway.  Other racial disturbances over the years, large and small, also centered on this area, as it was the fashionable district of the “Black 400.”  For the Dumas House had porches and balconies on the second and third floors, as well as large dining rooms and ballrooms, so every black snob or “swell” who hoped to rank in black society made it a point to show his face at the Dumas House at least once a day.  A two-storey addition in the rear of the Dumas House was where gentlemen of “sporting proclivities” [see above] could indulge in the biggest poker and faro games in the West.  The report is that, in those days, “Negroes made money,” and it is said that these African-American gents “gambled like gentlemen and the sky was their limit.”  The reporter of all of this is Wendell Phillips Dabney, whose great uncle, “Sandy” Shumate, a bachelor, handsome, debonair, and a bon vivant, was the owner of the Dumas House, so he should have known.  When “Sandy” Shumate died in 1869, his sister, Mrs. Serena Webb, inherited the property.

Later, as the white community began to build its residences around Western Row (later Central Avenue; see, for example, Dayton Street), the black community followed suit.  As a result, the Dumas House began its long decline; its main revenue now derived from its saloon, under proprietors Andy Slaughter, Dan Carter, and others.  The East End of the city declined in its property values, and the Dumas House hotel returned to its earlier status as a lodging house.  Mrs. Webb, the owner, died in 1894, the property coming, through her will, to Wendell Phillips Dabney’s mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Dabney. Thus Wendell Phillips Dabney was put in charge of the property, and it became “the Dabney Building” (on the death of his mother, Dabney inherited the property).

The Dabney Buildings:  Where once it had become (again) a lodging house, the Dabney Building next became a tenement, the lower floor remaining a saloon, but it then became (successively) a club room, headquarters of The Bohemian Club, the Douglass League [see below], a dancing school, a dancing hall, the Pilgrim Baptist Church, a hand laundry, and a clothes pressing establishment, as well as, over the years, a center for major political meetings.  The yard in the rear was converted into a gymnasium, the first public colored establishment of its kind in the city.  When the gym closed, the main hall came to be used for general and political purposes (the gym became a garage).  Many meetings were held in the hall by the Republican Union [see below], with great feasting and drinking occurring.  The top floor of the Dabney Building was made into a hall for the True Reformers [see Installment VIII].  This hall finally became flats (apartments).  From about 1906 to 1926 The Union newspaper (at first funded by the Republican Party, the views of which, perforce, were promoted in the paper; but see both above and below) occupied part of the second floor; Mr. Dabney’s family dwelt in the other part.  In due course, Dabney extended his property from the alley near Fourth Street on McAllister Street to Fifth Street, and some ways around the corner onto Fifth Street.  Circa 1928, the property was acquired by the Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, which built its headquarters on the property; on the east side of McAllister Street, the Sacred Heart Home (a Catholic charity) was erected, and across the street from it was erected (1921) the Fenwick Club’s Annex, a home for unmarried Catholic men (much like the YMCA).  (Although the Fenwick Club Annex was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it, like a number of other Cincinnati sites on the National Register, was torn down by Proctor & Gamble in 1979 [see earlier installments].) 

Something About Machine Politics:  Prior to the Civil War, Cincinnati’s politics had tended to be predominantly Whig, with its commercial interests, adhering to the Midwest politics of big-wig Whigs like Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison.  But following Harrison’s abrupt death a month after taking office as President (1841), his successor, John Tyler, a Southerner, followed the distinctly more Democratic inclinations favoring pro-slavery and states’ rights, and Cincinnati’s politics (as I’ve said before), following Southern commercial interests, began to become distinctly Democratic in flavor.  This tendency was further influenced by the Irish potato "famine" of the 1840s and the great influx of immigrants seeking political freedom after the European revolutions of 1848-1849, when many Irish, Italians, and Germans emigrated to Cincinnati, the majority of them Roman Catholic.  The Whig Party, nationalistically focused, was dying, and the Democratic Party, increasingly oriented toward the working-class foreigners, was growing apace – thus Cincinnati became a city controlled by the Democratic Party.

However, following the Civil War, after which the new party of Lincoln came increasingly into power, and the Republicans produced, in succession, the Ohio Presidents of Grant, Hayes, and Garfield (and a little later Benjamin Harrison), Ohio itself turned Republican.  Nevertheless, Cincinnati remained in the Democratic fold:  what was called the “George Pendleton-John R. McLean Political Machine” dominated its politics in the 1870s-early 1880s.  George Pendleton had turned from the Whig Party of his father to the Democratic Party in the 1850s as a supporter of states’ rights; he is known today as the “father” of the U. S. Civil Service and its reform (1883; his house on the National Register of Historic Places still stands on the hill at the eastern end of Liberty Street).  John R. McLean’s father, Washington McLean, owned the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper, which was a major voice for the Democratic Party.  John joined the staff as a reporter, and in 1881 he became the sole proprietor of the Enquirer.  Later John moved to Washington, D. C., and in 1905 acquired the Washington Post newspaper as well (the suburb of McLean, Virginia, is named after him, and he was the father-in-law of Evelyn Walsh McLean, the last private owner of the Hope Diamond, now in the Smithsonian Institution; the D. C. home of the McLeans is now the Indonesian Embassy).

But in 1884 something happened which turned politics on its head in Cincinnati.  This was the occurrence of the “Cincinnati Courthouse Riots,” one of the largest urban civil riots in U. S. history.  (These riots were not mentioned in Installment I, because they were not race riots.)  The corrupt Democratic “machine” (not necessarily Pendleton himself) rigged elections and the appointment of judges to its personal financial benefit, and, while crime was rising significantly in the “Queen City,” judges and juries were being lenient and murderers were being let off.  The storm broke in March of 1884, when William Berner, a German murderer of his employer, was sentenced to a term in jail, rather than hanging.  I won’t go into the details here, but there were three days of violent rioting in downtown Cincinnati, the Hamilton County Courthouse (to my mind, the most beautiful architecturally of the county’s seven courthouses) and Jail were charged and gutted by fire, and some fifty citizens were killed and about 150 wounded before the National Guard brought in a Gatling gun (one of its first uses against civilians) and dispersed the mob.

No historian (that I’m aware of) has ever written about how the Courthouse Riots altered the face of Cincinnati politics, nor have I ever taken the time to thoroughly investigate the matter, but it’s clear to me that the upshot of the riots was that the Democratic Party “machine” was drummed out of office and a new Republican “machine” came into power in Cincinnati in its place.  A young man elected to the Cincinnati City Council in 1879 was George B. Cox, who owned a saloon at the corner of Longworth and John Streets (a spot known as “Dead Man’s Corner”).  As a member of the Decennial Equalization Board, he was able to fix the tax rates for prominent citizens and their properties; he also served significantly on the Board of Public Affairs at the time of the Courthouse Riots.  After 1886, Ohio Republican governor Joseph B. Foraker (of Cincinnati) allied with Cox and boosted him as a major Republican fund-raiser in the city.  Cox became a Republican political ward boss who every time delivered the votes of his delegation as promised, and so, in due course, he became the executive chairman of the local Republican Party.  Although he lost several elections for local office himself, he rose rapidly to political dominance, influencing most local elections; he did this partly because he was smart enough to franchise local working-class groups, but he also engaged the local black community in Republican politics through the Republican Union.  He had two chief lieutenants, the one, “Rud” Hynicka, was Deputy County Treasurer, controlling vast funds, and the other, August (“Garry” or “Gus”) Herrmann, very popular in the “Over-the-Rhine” district, was president of the new Board of Water Works Commissioners, which also controlled large sums and contracts for upgrading Cincinnati’s water system (the one still in place); he was also president of the Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team from 1902 to 1927 and was the “father” of national baseball’s World Series.  The great “muckraker” journalist, Lincoln Steffens, in his book, The Shame of the Cities (1904), called Cincinnati at this time one of “the two worst-governed cities” in the U. S.  When he interviewed “Boss” Cox at his headquarters in his saloon, Steffens asked him (I’m quoting from memory here), “Do you have no civic political clubs?  Do you have no reforming newspapers?”  “Yes,” replied Cox, pointing laconically over his shoulder with his thumb, “but I also have the telephone.”

What, you may be asking, does this have to do with Wendell Phillips Dabney, the focus of this piece?  Well, in the years I was working at the Cincinnati Historical Society, Dabney’s name kept cropping up.  We knew he was a leader in the African-American community during these years, but how did he seem to have a certain influence as well in the greater Cincinnati community?  Then one day we found it – a rare photograph of the “Cox Machine,” George B. himself, surrounded by his Republican cronies – and right in the center, next to “the Man” himself, was Wendell Phillips Dabney!  He was Paymaster of the city of Cincinnati, not only responsible for controlling and issuing the city’s paychecks to all of its employees, but he was also in charge of bringing in the colored Republican vote at election time and collecting Party dues from faithful African-American Republicans for supporting (and financing) that vote.  In other words, Dabney was Cox’s third, that is to say, “black” lieutenant!  (Remember that Dabney’s father, John, had instilled in him that the Republican Party helped blacks.)

The Paymaster of Cincinnati:  It can be said (and easily believed) that sentiment against colored folk intensified when they got the vote; many were determined to keep them from voting at all.  Indeed, African-American citizens of Cincinnati, literally determined to vote or die, went to the polls; although no weapons were in evidence, these nascent voters often carried on their persons “guns, knives, dirks, and razors,” in places of easy access.  There were not, according to W. P. Dabney, “many colored Democrats,” but factions were formed in the Republican party that courted the Negro.  According to Dabney, “colored men were on many committees, were well mixed in all political deals, were called on for counsel and consultation, but . . . very few [actual] positions were given to them.”

George B. Cox [see above] was rising, due to ward work, the saloon, and all the other influences of the “lower world.”  But at this time, the man who was a greater power than Cox was “Bill” Copeland [see Part VIII], a colored man who had a big saloon and a tremendous following at the polls; therefore Cox became his fast friend – and Copeland held every position possible for a colored man to hold at that time.  Together they founded the Blaine Club, a Republican stronghold to which quite a number of black men belonged, although white men did not fraternize freely with black men when white women were present.

In 1894, Wendell Phillips Dabney arrived in town.  As he put it, “at the end of the first year he became a citizen, the second year a politician, the third year assistant license clerk in the auditor’s office.”  A good number of prominent African-American men held positions of political authority:  “Bill” Copeland controlled downtown and the courthouse; Ford Stith was “King of Walnut Hills”; “Dave” Irwin was “Lord of Cumminsville"; and Professor Andrew DeHart, it is said, was well versed in every political chicanery.  At that time (1896), the great colored Republican organization was the Ruffin Club.  Meeting at the Dumas House [see above] over beer, a number of conspirators determined to take over the Douglass Club in the West End; by the next night, it was done, and the whole organization had become the Douglass League, Wendell Phillips Dabney president.  As a result of its political efforts, more leading African-American men were put into positions within the city government and the waterworks department – and Dabney was promoted to the city treasury.  When Julius Fleischmann (of the yeast company family) won as Mayor of Cincinnati, the Republicans were in full power, and the smaller black political clubs of the city and county joined into what became the Hamilton County League of Colored Clubs.  But, as W. P. Dabney put it, “the Republican party freed [black] bodies from the shackles of slavery, but the colored people [of Cincinnati] have never been able to free their souls from the shackles of party.”  Dabney was returned to the city treasury in 1907 and for years was "acting" as head paymaster of the city (he actually held the title of assistant paymaster), paying out millions annually, and holding the record for paying five hundred men in 65 minutes without an error; when he finally was appointed head paymaster, the highest position in the city government held at that time by an African-American, he still only received the salary of an assistant paymaster because he was colored (Cox had died of a stroke in 1916).  As a result, he resigned in 1923, and in 1925 he became affiliated with the Independent Party; as Dabney wrote in 1926, “there are over 40,000 colored people [in Cincinnati] who have had for years votes enough to elect councilmen, or bring defeat or victory to either party in a fairly close election.  They had the lever of power but knew not how to use it.”

Among his other achievements, Wendell Phillips Dabney was the first president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP (founded 1915).  He also wrote a biography of his friend, Maggie L. Walker, the first black woman to charter a bank in the United States and serve as its president (her home in Richmond, Virginia, is now a National Historic Site).  Further, he wrote a number of published songs, among them “De Noble Game of Craps” (1898), “The Fall Festival March” (for the opening of the 1^st Cincinnati Fall Festival, 1900 – see my Master’s thesis, 1970, “The Cincinnati Industrial Expositions [1870-1888]:  Propaganda or Progress?”), “God, Our Father (A Prayer)” (1904), “If You Must Be Caught” (1921), and “You Will Miss the Colored Soldier” (a.k.a. “My Old Sweetheart,” apparently a stirring march) (1921), as well as publishing Standard Mandolin Method (1895; with James F. Roach), and Dabney’s Complete Method of Guitar (1^st ed., 1896).  He was an uncle and music teacher of the ragtime pianist and composer Ford Dabney.  In 1897 he married Nellie Foster Jackson of Cincinnati, a widow with two sons whom Dabney adopted.  His philosophy, stated many years ago, can be summed up in these several statements:   “We fight for our rights, so why not conduct ourselves as to cause the whites to see the injustice of withholding them?”; “Many of us talk so much about our civil rights that we forget about our civic duties”; and “Law for money, medicine to benefit humanity, and music for pleasure.”

[See Wendell Phillips Dabney:  Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens:  Historical, Sociological and Bio-graphical (Cincinnati:  The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926; 440 pp.).]

Part VII:  “Some Lights on African-American Music and Other Entertainments in Cincinnati” will be posted soon (this will be the second to the last of a total of 8 installments).

[to be continued]

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Bruce: I'm certain an EXTRA donation to the WHHS Foundation PERFORMING ARTS FUND  would be a way to compensate the  students.  

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Phil, Thank you again.  You have the makings of a super book here if you've not published it already.  

JoAnn Dyson (Dawson)

Phil, these pieces on the African American presence in Cincinnati make really interesting reading.  I started reading in the middle of the series and have enjoyed each one.

In 1 of the pieces you mentioned Harriet Beecher Stowe School.  I went there for elementary school.  I understand it was a K-8 school before becoming solely an elementry school (K-6).  Among the things I liked about the school were the branch library attached to the school where I obtained my 1st library card; the large painting hung in the auditorium illustrating life in the 1800's; and the beautiful large pipe organ.  I don't know when the school ceased to function as an elementary school.  The building still stands on 7th St. (at least it did when I last visited Cincinnati) and can be seen from the 75 fwy.  I don't know what it is used for now.

I look forward to the remaining installments.

Linda Karpen (Nachman)

Phil, your "Cincinnati Story" has been and continues to be such an exceptional gift for us all! Thank you and stay well!!

Jerry Ochs

I'm waiting for the movie to come out.  I think Leonardo DiCaprio should play Phil.

Philip Spiess

Barbara:  No, these pieces aren't published (except here); I'm writing them for the Forum.  If I published these as a book, I'm enough of an "academic" to want to add footnotes and all that apparatus (and I wanted to keep them easy and digestible).  I am casually working on two other books, but neither is on Cincinnati.

JoAnn:  After a quick search for information on the Harriet Beecher Stowe School, I can offer the following:  The school was established in 1914 (I seem to recall it was established in an older school building, but so far I haven't located those notes again) by Jennie D. Porter -- of whom I do know something -- she was also the school's first principal.  In her day she was a very controversial figure in the schools, tangling with the school board and also with Wendell Phillips Dabney, because she believed that black children should be educated in segregated schools in order to achieve their full potential, away from the prejudices of white children and white teachers.  (Dabney felt that encouraging segregated schools would expand the practice of segregation elsewhere in society.)  For this reason I did not mention Porter in either the installment on schools (it would have changed the focus) nor in the installment on Dabney (it would have made it too long).  I may write her up in Part VIII (on "Cincinnati Reformers" -- we'll see).  As to the school itself, it closed in 1962, but the building continued to be used, as an adult education center, a school for the mentally handicapped, an office building, and as the local Fox 9 television station (still its present use?).  I think most elementary schools when we were down in the grades had school branches of the Cincinnati Public Library (I know Clifton School did; a librarian used to come out to the school every several weeks or so, though I believe teachers supervised the taking out of books once a week -- and, by the way, Clifton School was also K-8 until about 1954, when it turned K-6); the mural of Harriet Beecher Stowe's era was a nice touch for them to add; but the presence of the pipe organ blew me away!  Was it ever used?  (We know Walnut Hills High School had an organ, but it was electronically operated, not pneumatically operated through pipes; my sister Barbara played it on a number of occasions.)

Linda:  As I said just above to Barbara, I am writing all of these historical vignettes on Cincinnati (not just the ones on Cincinnati's African-Americans) in the hope that they will be of interest to my classmates, a "gift" if you will.  Maybe we should share the lot of them with the current students of Walnut Hills as well.

Jerry and Dale:  On another subject (previously unbroached), I thought this might particularly amuse you two:  We all know the old British saw:  "The sun never sets on the British Empire!"  It seems the Irish later amended and emended this to:  "The sun never sets on the British Empire -- because God cannot trust the English in the dark!"

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Thank you Phil,uti

I am so glad to be on this chat board and to be a lucky recipient of your knowledge and beautiful writing.  The talents in our class are amazing. Thank you all

Jeff Daum

Thank you Philip for continuing to provide us with these erudite and illuminating narratives.  Your knowledge base and writing skills shine.

cheers,

Jeff

Paul Simons

I want to say thanks Phil for filling in some - a lot - of the history we were never taught. It looks like the multiple crises this country is experiencing today can be traced to attitudes and policies whose genesis was the country’s original sin, slavery. Some of these holdovers have been addressed and corrected but many have not and we’re now paying the price. 

JoAnn Dyson (Dawson)

Re the pipe organ at Stowe, yes, it was played, though infrequently.  The husband of my 5th grade teacher and the organist at Mt Zion Methodist Church, Mr. Ryder, would play it on some special occasions.  He was my piano teacher.  Once, he gave me a tour of the organ's innards.  The tour was facinating.  I don't know what happened to that organ.

Philip Spiess

JoAnn:  Here are a few additional notes I just found on the Harriet Beecher Stowe School:  It was founded and organized by Jennie D. Porter (a black graduate of the University of Cincinnati) who was also the school's principal.  It was dedicated in 1923 and was (at that time) the largest public school in Cincinnati ("irrespective of race," my source says), having 3,080 pupils (including Sinton Park and Jackson Colonies, also under Miss Porter).  Besides the classrooms, the school had "two open-air rooms, a kindergarten, two domestic science rooms [this refers to what in our time at WHHS was called "Home Economics"], two domestic art rooms [?], a catering department, laundry, power machine sewing room, print shop, house construction room, cabinet making shop, wood-working shop, library, teachers' room, two shower rooms, swimming pool, doctor's office, pre-natal clinic, two play rooms, principal's office, assistant principal's office, lunch room with kitchen and storeroom, gymnasium and auditorium."  The auditorium contained that pipe organ, the purpose of which, it was said, was "inspiring the children to better conduct" (whether this thinking was along the lines of Congreve's "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," or whether the organ was to remind the children of being in church, is hard to ascertain at this late date). 

According to Wendell Phillips Dabney, Stowe School was "the only school in the city organized on a psychological basis to prove statistically that the Negro is not mentally inferior."  What this meant (apparently) was described by Dabney in the entry on "The New Harriet Beecher Stowe School" in his 1926 Cincinnati's Colored Citizens (page 235):  "The school is reorganized on a psychological basis and is now functioning (1) in providing equality of opportunity for all; (2) in providing the educational training that will be most valuable both for the individual and from the standpoint of society; (3) in providing teachers who are specialists not only of their particular subject, but also of human nature; (4) in providing classification of pupils according to their intelligence, followed up by a carefully planned program of educational guidance.  The classification is a means by which problems become isolated, studied and solved psychologically for the good of the child, society and the state."

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

By now, you have probably received an email from the WHHS Alumni Foundation, asking for you to participate in writing letters encouragement to the class of 2020:
 

We are asking alumni to reach out, with notes of encouragement, to the 2020 Senior Class. Share your experience, your words of wisdom on how to meet and excel in challenging times. Engage with Seniors to empower our students, to shift their perspective, find opportunities to help, and reimagine their future!

The Alumni Foundation will publish this communique to the 2020 Senior Class. 
The deadline to participate is May 4^th.

Send your note to WHHS Alumni Foundation 3250 Victory Parkway Cincinnati OH  45207

Attention: SURSUM AD SUMMUM 2020 Senior Class

Send your communications by email to: whhsstories@gmail.com

I particularly enjoyed the performance by Christina and Erika Nam, playing a beautiful arrangement of MOON RIVER. 

Those of you who were in Walnuts of '62, may recall the chorus and orchestra performed it on stage. Whenever I hear the song, I'm transported back.
 

The arrangement and performance by these talented sisters, with honors to their mother on piano, is nothing less than perfection. https://youtu.be/aGLdv8g4sX0
 

Senior Christina Nam and 7th grader Erica Nam have performed on the world stage. Today, dueto the COVID-19 pandemic they are quarantined at home. In their words, they 'hope it enlightens your quarantime' (pun intended)! We want to share their exceptional talents with you.

Christina and Erica are current students in the Walnut Hills High School Chamber Orchestra under the direction of John Caliguri. Their mother and pianist, Ester Hyun Nam, is a WHHS alumna, class of 1992. 

As a senior, Christina has been accepted to institutes including Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute and Colburn School in LA. We look forward to hearing great things from her in the future. 
 

Ira Goldberg

This was posted today on FB by the Walnut Hills Historical Society

The Last Global Pandemic: Walnut Hills High School, 1918-1919

The Walnut Hills High School yearbook, the Remembrancer for 1918-1919, presents a spectacular perspective on the year of the “Spanish” Flu. 1918 was also the last year of the “European War,” after the entry of the US known as the First World War. The book opens with a dedication to the memory of “those brave boys of Walnut Hills High School” killed in the war, a list of twenty including some notable Cincinnati names. Alumni must have thought it spoke well of the school, in those bygone days, that most of the young graduates had died as officers.

The class of 1919 was also a graduating high school class with all the hopes and “in” jokes and societies and teams the school at Ashland and Burdette sponsored every year. Yet from the beginning the class confronted grown-up difficulties. A poetic “Class History” by graduating Senior Emma Freericks recounted the momentous events since the class had started high school in the fall of 1915. In their sophomore year
“The message sped throughout the land. One day,
That war had been declared to rid the world
Of Prussia’s autocratic government.”

A Calendar for the Senior year includes comments about the ways in which the larger world impinged on student life. October was dominated by a single event. Beginning on the 2nd: “An epidemic of influenza is started.” On the 3rd, “The flu is getting worse.” On Monday the 7th we read “Whaddya know about this? Schools shut down on account of the flu!” On Friday the 11th we learn “No School all week. Shows are closed too, alas – also soda water and churches.” After that, every Friday through November 8th we see the note “No school all week.” That fifth week, the Calendar added the remark “This won’t last forever.” Monday November 11 contained a still more startling notation: “The Germans throw in the sponge and peace there is. Grand blowout downtown. Parade and superfluity of noise and confetti.” This, I suppose, is what comes of a classical education abridged by five weeks at home with neither church nor soda water. 

Emma Freerick’s Class History a bit more elegantly recounted
“The world went mad with joy, ‘flu’ was forgot
For exhibitions of unbounded bliss.
The doors of school again were opened wide;
Once more we started in to gain success;
But just before Thanksgiving Day, the ‘flu’
Broke out again, and we were quarantined
Until the last days of the waning year.”

In Walnut Hills as in the wider world, the tremendous disruption of the flu, closing the high school for practically all the 1918 part of the school year, took a back seat to the news of the Great War. Somehow, Armistice Day seemed not only bigger news, but also a more momentous liberating influence. The authorities threw open the doors of social isolation. The new virus, however, paid no heed to political news and 11/11/1918 invited a resurgence.

The images show Emma Freerick’s 1919 Senior picture, and the old Walnut Hills High School from the 1918 Remembrancer.

- Geoff Sutton