Becky Payne (Shockley)

Steve's idea sounds good to me!

Becky

Philip Spiess

Another installment, per Mr. Lounds' request:

CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:  Part VII:  “Some Lights on African-American Music (and Other Entertainments) in Cincinnati”

[Note:  I apologize for the length of this piece, which I’ve tried to keep as short as possible, but I thought that the information which I’ve included was important.]

Some Lights on African-American Music in Cincinnati:  Cincinnati’s pre-eminent art form since the Civil War, if not before, has always been music.  This is generally credited to the German immigrants with their Saengerfests (which built Cincinnati Music Hall) and the many-splendered beer-hall orchestras, both at the pre-Prohibition family saloons in the “Over-the-Rhine” district (such as “Wielert’s Saloon” and the “Atlantic Garden”) and at the hilltop resorts atop Cincinnati’s several inclines [see Post #3343].  Indeed, aside from the 19th-century’s Pike’s Opera House on Fourth Street, the Cincinnati Opera itself was begun in 1920 by Cincinnati’s Musicians’ Union No. 1 (1897) – the first unionized musicians in the country -- at the beer-garden resort on the lake in the Cincinnati Zoo known as the Club House (1876-1937); the Opera finally moved from the Zoo to Cincinnati Music Hall in 1972.  But perhaps strong (if not equal) credit for Cincinnati’s musical heritage should also go to Cincinnati’s African-American community, which brought its own traditions and special brands of music to the Queen City.

And first, let us return to the music of the levee [mentioned in the opening of Installment I, Post #4528].  Although African slaves were brought to America from a number of diverse regions and tribes (though mainly from along the western coast of Africa), and therefore from sometimes highly diverse cultures, for the most part those cultures were not “primitive” at all:  they had complex social and work arrangements and arts and technologies which had developed over centuries.  (Think of, say, the Middle Ages in Europe, where almost everyone was illiterate but learned – that is to say, was educated – through some form of apprenticeship, either in the home or the place of work, by those in the community who were older than themselves – the elders.)

Anthropologists have established that black African culture goes back 5,000 years.  The first music was vocal, and music became intimately connected with African custom and practice.  All rites of passage were accompanied by music.  There were various types of music for chores, such as for sawing wood and harvesting, and for sports, such as hunting and fishing.  There are three predominant methods of African musical expression:  instruments, dances, and songs.  Nor is African music a solitary occupation; it is always done in participation with others.  Song is the bond of fellowship between human beings and between tribes.  These, then, were the detailed musical traditions that Africans brought to America when they became slaves – and when they arrived on the levee at Cincinnati.

“Patting Juba”:  Space is too limited to go into many details on African-American music (it is widely and extensively varied, as you might know), nor is this a treatise on music, per se.  So let me focus on one aspect of it that was well-known on the Cincinnati levee in the 19th century [and mentioned in Installment I]:  “patting juba.”  As a student of Cincinnati history, I occasionally came across this phrase in Cincinnati books of the turn-of-the-century (such as, say, Frank Y. Grayson’s Pioneers of Night Life on Vine Street (Cincinnati:  Cincinnati Times-Star, 1924), and I had only a vague idea of what it might mean, but it was suggestive from the little I knew about minstrel shows (of which more later).  I only finally captured an understanding of it a year ago, when, doing a five-week Lenten class for my church on “African-American Spirituals,” I invited the distinguished black ethnomusicologist, Sule Greg Wilson, to come to our church and lecture and perform.  He has studied, performed, and recorded songs and dance examples of “patting juba.”  Simply put, it is the hands tapping (“patting”) or smacking (striking) rhythmically on different parts of one’s body to re-create drum beats (different parts of the body – for example, the cheeks or the chest or the thighs – create different sound resonances), developed because drums were forbidden by law sometime after 1698 in the slave states of the South, on the theory that slaves might be sending messages by drum that the white slave owners could not understand (which was quite possibly true).

“Juba” came from dances in Africa, where it was called “Giouba,” and it transferred to Haiti, where it was called “Djouba.”  Another, more recent (19th century) and colloquial name for it was “Hambone,” supposedly from “hand-bone,” the hard part of the hand which makes the most sound.  Juba is characterized by complicated patterns, generally involving 3-over-4 rhythms, as well as once well-known but now largely forgotten dance steps, such as the “turkey trot” and the “pigeon step.”  These are often accompanied by chanted or sung comic or nonsense rhymes which keep the rhythm going.  Apparently the variations of the beats and rhythms of “juba” have found their way into modern music, most notably in “Bo Diddley’s Beat”; “hambone” dancing, some think, eventually devolved into the “Jitterbug.”  “Juba” was [as I understand it, from the writings of Lafcadio Hearn and others – see Installment I] the common African-American music so often heard on the Cincinnati Levee (Public Landing) in the 1830-1850 period (the period when Stephen Foster was working there and trying to capture, in his songs, the rhythm and spirit of African-American music).

A Sidebar on Minstrel Shows:  But this was also the era when the white “minstrel show” came into prominence.  This era is generally believed to have started around 1830, when Tom “Daddy” Rice (a white man), blacked up his face with burnt cork and went on the stage as a comic black man dancing and singing a song called “Jump, Jim Crow” [I own an 1830 copy of the sheet music], a song and dance, some say, Rice learned from a crippled black man in Cincinnati.  (You can guess that the later term “Jim Crow laws,” referring to laws that sought to block African-American civil rights, came from the stereotyping made popular by this song and its successors.)  It was this sort of “happy-go-lucky” (presumably) Negro song that Stephen Foster was picking up and / or imitating on the Cincinnati Public Landing; many of his best-known songs were indeed written for white minstrel troupes.  (One of Foster’s most notable songs, “Old Folks at Home,” a.k.a. “Swanee River,” was commissioned by E. P. Christy in 1851 for his minstrelsy troupe, the “Christy Minstrels” as an “African-American song,” stipulating that his name appear on the sheet music as composer [I own copies of both the sheet music with Christy’s name on it and sheet music with Foster’s name on it]).  This is neither the time nor the place to expound on the appropriations of black music, racial stereotypes, and other such matters that were the essence of the American minstrel show; suffice it to say that “patting juba” and “playing the bones” (rattling bones, sticks, or spoons in rhythm to the music) by the minstrel show “End Men” became a major (appropriated) feature of the music that was central to the minstrel show productions.  In fact, a free-born African-American, William Henry Lane, became a major character in an otherwise all-white minstrel show as “Master Juba,” performing his dance not only in America but in Europe as well.  (And, yes, after the Civil War there did crop up truly black minstrel show troupes as well, which billed themselves as such, presumably to suggest “authenticity.”)  [I will conclude this quick review by mentioning that I saw my first minstrel show circa 1956 at my Presbyterian church in Clifton, performed by, among others, my father and grandfather as “End Men” in blackface; I saw my last minstrel show in the mid-1980s at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, performed by an all-black cast (no burnt cork “blackface” here) in a staged history of the minstrel show.]

Cincinnati as a Music Publishing Center:  From the mid-19th century through to, say, World War II, Cincinnati was a major printing center [see some of the Union Terminal murals, now in Greater Cincinnati Airport], and a significant portion of what it printed was music.  Early on, John McLean published (1815) a collection of tunes and anthems, in order to supply the several musical societies with such, and in 1816 Timothy Flint published the Columbia Harmonist, a similar collection.  A bit later, the Queen City was home to some of the country’s largest music publishing houses:  W. C. Peters & Sons company (1851; Peters published some of Foster’s earliest hits, such as “Oh! Susanna!”); the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company (1856); the John Church Company (1859); and the Willis Music Company (1899; Charles H. Willis began his career as a retail manager for the John Church Co., but branched out on his own; the company is still in business in Florence, Kentucky); even the D. H. Baldwin Piano Company occasionally published sheet music, as did the local newspapers every so often.  Most of these publishing houses were located on Fourth Street in Cincinnati and sold musical instruments as well as sheet music.  And – the important point here – they deigned to publish music by black composers as well as white ones (Wurlitzer published some of the songs of W. P. Dabney [see Installment VI]); however, they rarely advertised the fact that the music was by African-Americans.  [A Flagrant Footnote:  One of Cincinnati’s most prominent white composers, whose music was published in Cincinnati, was Henry Fillmore (1881-1956), second only to John Philip Sousa as the creator of memorable marches, many of them with Cincinnati and Ohio titles (such as “The Cincinnati Post March,” “The Crosley March,” and “Men of Ohio”).  I mention him here because he gained fame as “the Father of the Trombone Smear,” an effect surely derived from the early origins of African-American “jazz” (another white appropriation), for Fillmore’s “smears” have a strong ragtime influence.  In all, he wrote a series of 15 novelty tunes featuring trombone smears which he called “The Trombone Family”; their titles give an indication of how some white composers were “wannabe black composers” at the turn-of-the-century:  “Lassus Trombone (The Culled Valet to Miss Trombone)” (1915, which we played in the WHHS marching band at football games); “Slim Trombone (Sally Trombone’s Cousin – the Jazzin’ One-Step Kid)” (1918); “Hot Trombone (He’s Jes a Fren’ ob Shoutin’ Liza Trombone)” (1921); and . . . but you get the idea.  (Still, his music, marches and rags alike, is good!)]

Black Music Schools and Musicians of Cincinnati:  This fund of published music available in Cincinnati, whether sheet music, classical scores, or volumes of collected songs (both secular and spiritual), made the city a natural place to establish schools of music, as well as independent music teachers.  Wendell Phillips Dabney himself began his career teaching music [see Installment VI] at his studio in the Wurlitzer Company; he taught guitar, banjo, mandolin, and the bandurria.  He also lists many black teachers of music in his survey, Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens.  For example, there was the Cosmopolitan School of Music, established and developed in the early 20th century by Artie and Anna Matthews, two African-American graduates of music colleges; it was described as “a modern school of Music, Expression and Language,” and it included among its offerings (besides what you might expect) “Public School Music,” “Music Theory,” “Band, Orchestra and Ensemble,” and “Natural Dancing" (whatever that may be).  Exams were given semi-annually, and credentials, certificates, and diplomas were awarded on completion of the appropriate level courses.  Others, such as Ann Baltimore, Charlie “Blind” Hawkins, Mrs. Ernestine Nesbit (daughter of Peter H. Clark [see earlier installments and Installment VIII]), and Clarence Jones, not only performed on the piano, but took in students as well, as did Mrs. Fannie Collins, who taught many students the piano from 1879 through 1926 and played piano at the Arlington Hotel.  Among the great African-American singers of the city were Mrs. Martha Mitchell Townsend (before the Civil War); Professor Harry Jackson, a famous basso profundo and choir master; William D. Sulzer, a dramatic baritone, who trained for the operatic stage in Chicago, and founded, with Artie Matthews, the Cincinnati branch of The Negro Musical Association; Leubrie Hill, cabaret musician and stage performer; and Gussie L. Davis, of whom it is said, “in the realm of popular songs he reigned supreme”; he later became famous in New York.

Then there were the orchestras and ensembles.  Professor “Dave” Hamilton and his singing orchestra performed in many private homes around the city, while Professor William (“Bill”) Johnson and his orchestra not only performed for a number of white affairs, but also provided the dance music for Knights of Pythias balls and those of the Garnett Lodge.  Wendell P. Dabney himself formed two string orchestras, one white and one black, for which patrons around the city paid top dollar; the black orchestra played all of the most exclusive venues, such as the Cincinnati Women’s Club, but the white orchestra was requested for the Gibson House banquet for William Jennings Bryan.  Dabney later went into politics [see Installment VI], giving up music, but when ragtime came in (of which he disapproved), “jazz” ensembles, such as “Pork Chops” band, appeared on the scene.  The choral singing of black spirituals, which had become a national phenomenon following the Civil War with the touring Fisk [University] Jubilee Singers of Tennessee (and other groups [see Gilmore’s Cincinnati High School, Installment V]), gradually evolved into what we now call “gospel singing”; in this mode, the Harper Sisters were popular concert-stage “jubilee” singers, while Professor Ferguson’s great choral society toured to Louisville (and elsewhere).  Currently (that is, today), the “100+ African-American Cincinnati Men’s Chorus” has somewhat reversed this touring tradition of raising funds for colleges:  since 2011, it has been giving concerts to raise funds to take tri-state area African-American high school students on tours of historically black colleges to encourage African-American youth to pursue higher education.

African-American Music at Cincinnati Music Hall:  [N.B.:  Much of the information in this and the following section was provided to me by Thea Tjepkema, architectural historian of Music Hall and wife of John Morris Russell, conductor of the Cincinnati Pops; she currently gives a talk, "Under One Roof:  The African American Experience in Music Hall," for the Friends of Music Hall.]  It is not necessarily known that a fair number of legendary African-American musicians and performers have graced the stage of Cincinnati Music Hall over the years.  Probably the first was Madame Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones (a.k.a. “Madame Jones”), known as the “Black Patti” after the 19th century’s most famous opera star, Adelina Patti.  She was probably one of the most influential African-American musical artists of the 19th century.  In 1888, she had her debut at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia; in 1892-1893, she sang to a crowd of over 75,000 in the “Grand Negro Jubilee” at Madison Square Gardens.  In 1893, having been among the first African-Americans to sing in Carnegie Hall, she made her debut in Cincinnati Music Hall, performing with the all-white cast of the Arion Lady Quartet of Chicago, performing operatic works, including arias from Bellini’s Norma, and singing Bobbie Burns’ “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” as her popular encore.  (Finding public lodging as a black performer was a challenge, so Madame Jones stayed with Dr. Jared Cary, an African-American chiropodist, on Kenyon Avenue.)  In 1894 she returned to perform with Mapelson’s Opera Company.  From 1896 to 1915 she toured with a vocal ensemble, the “Black Patti’s Troubadours,” a vaudeville group that performed operatic songs, spirituals, and popular ballads.  Over her career, she performed for four Presidents at the White House and the Prince of Wales, receiving medals and jewelry, but she only made a fraction of what white fellow performers earned; she died penniless in 1933.  Another early African-American performer was Nadine Roberts Waters, who participated in the dedication in Music Hall of the Stephen Foster statue (1928) which is in the Music Hall Foyer; Miss Waters sang “My Old Kentucky Home” and a series of Negro spirituals.  The “Friends of Music Hall” has been compiling a record of all of the African-American artists that have performed in Music Hall, including Leontyne Price and William Warfield (mid-1950s).  But perhaps the greatest event in this regard was the major world premiere which occurred in 1944 at Music Hall:  to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra held a nationwide competition for composition of the “Best Overture”; the winner would get the Jubilee Prize, a world premiere performance of the piece, and a $1,000 War Bond.  The unanimous winner (the judges were unaware of the entrants’ identities while they were judging) was Festive Overture by William Grant Still, considered at the time as “the Dean of Afro-American composers,” and particularly noted for his Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1930).

The Ballroom in Music Hall:  Originally, the South and North Wings of Music Hall were built and used for the Cincinnati Industrial Expositions [see my Master’s thesis, 1970:  “The Cincinnati Industrial Expositions (1870-1888):  Propaganda or Progress?”].  In 1917-1927, however, the first floor of the North Wing (Machinery Hall) was converted into a dance ballroom called “Danceland,” the largest popular dancing space in the Cincinnati area (it is thought that this probably was a “whites only” venue).  But in 1927-1928 Music Hall was significantly renovated:  the North Wing of Music Hall was converted into a major Sports Arena (especially for boxing), and the two-story South Wing -- first floor and a balcony (originally Horticultural Hall) -- had its glass roof replaced with a permanent roof, a second floor put in, and the space became Music Hall’s Ballroom, its curly-maple floor making it ideal for dancing.  When it first opened, it was called the Greystone Ballroom, heralded as America’s largest dance floor, and it soon became popular.  (During the hot summer months, it continued as the “Greystone Club” on Coney Island’s Island Queen steamboat for “Moonlight Cruises”).  Although these venues were for “all white” audiences, they often featured African-American big-band orchestras and singers, such as “Jazzopathic Melodies” by Alexander Jackson’s Plantation Band from Harlem in 1928, appearing with the Plantation Jubilee Singers, who performed spirituals and modern “blues” songs.  Also performing in the late 1920s was Alphonso Trent and his 12 Black Aces from Texas.  McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, a black band from Springfield, Ohio, appeared several times in the Music Hall Ballroom in 1929.  Also appearing that year was Jordan Embry and his Bluebird Entertainers, with headliner Lillian Thornton and “Trombone Wizard” Sylvester Briscoe (famous for playing the “Tiger Rag” with his foot on the trombone’s slide, one of those “smears,” no doubt, mentioned above!).  Duke Ellington’s Orchestra (he was called in the papers of the time the “colored King of Jazz”) led the Greystone’s 1931 opening, with singer Ivie Anderson, the “mistress of blues,” whose rendition of “Stormy Weather” was famous before Lena Horne’s.  When the Ballroom’s lease expired in 1935, the Music Hall Association (which had acquired the lease) remodeled and redecorated it, and it reopened as the “Trianon Ballroom,” but that closed less than a year later.  Then, in October, 1936, the “Dirigible of Dance” opened, the Ballroom featuring the ballroom decorated as a giant airship.  At this time Earl “Fatha” Hines and His Famous Orchestra performed with the “Enchantress of Song,” Ida James; Jimmy Raschel and the Blue Rhythm Band also appeared (some band members were early pioneers of “Be-bop,” including Sonny Stitt and Howard McGhee).  (The “Dirigible” Ballroom  closed in September, 1937, shortly after the “Hindenburg” airship exploded at Lakehurst, New Jersey; I'll write about my experience with that story at a later time.)  A month later, a newly organized company, “Topper Amusement,” leased the space and it reopened as the “Topper Ballroom,” with a new bandstand resembling a top hat; for a good number of years there was a Top Hat sign on the Elm Street façade of Music Hall’s South Wing.  The name was used until 1974 (many of us may remember it under this name; some high schools had graduation Proms there).  (For the record:  in 1947 a 12-½-ton Sphinx bandstand replaced the Top Hat at the Ballroom’s western end; in 1959, this in turn was replaced by the world’s largest color photomural, one of Hawaii’s Diamond Head.)  But here’s the focus for this piece:  from 1937 until 1956, the managers of the Ballroom changed the name of the ballroom to Greystone when African-American performers were booked for it.  For example, when Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Band were booked in 1937, promoters said “Dancing will be chiefly for members of Calloway’s own race [italics mine], but white enthusiasts for his music will be welcome.”  Billie Holliday, “Fats” Domino, Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, and Lionel Hampton were among the artists who have performed there.  The Ballroom now houses the restored (2009) Mighty Wurlizter Theater Organ from the Albee Theatre (formerly on Fountain Square at Fifth and Vine Streets), on which I saw Gaylord "Flicker Fingers" Carter of Hollywood perform, accompanying silent films in the early 1970s, when the organ, still located in the orchestra pit from which it was lifted by elevator, would rise out of the pit, banked by palms, etc., for its musical performance in the Albee Theatre.  

King Records:  Probably the least known locally, but most important nationally, of Cincinnati’s black music heritage is King Records (at one time it was the nation’s sixth largest record company).  It was a leading independent record company and label founded in 1943 by Syd Nathan (a white Jewish Cincinnatian).  Initially specializing in country music (known then as “hillbilly music”) – King Records advertised, “If it’s a King, it’s a Hillbilly – If it’s a Hillbilly, it’s a King” – several of the company’s recording artists played a country-style boogie that was similar to rockabilly.  But the company quickly became known for its Rhythm & Blues records, as well as recording soul and bluegrass.  The company owned several divisions, including Federal Records, which launched James Brown; Freddie King was also launched by them.  When the label branched out into Rhythms and Blues, it recorded Hank Ballard, Roy Brown, Philip Paul, Valerie Carr, Champion Jack Dupree, Ivory Joe Hunter, Joe Tex, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and Otis Williams and the Charms.  King mixed the country and the R&B sides of the label.  Many of its country singers covered the label’s R&B songs; some of the R&B artists recorded country songs.  Our classmate Paul Simons tells me that “Big Red and the Comancheros” (kind of a precursor to Parliament Funkadelic) may also have recorded there.

King Records was unique among the independent labels in that the entire production process was done in-house:  recording, mastering, printing, pressing, and shipping.  Thus Syd Nathan had complete control:  a record could be recorded one day and shipped to radio stations the next day.  Nathan died in 1968, and King Records was acquired by Starday Records (circa 1971).  It went through many ownership changes, but, since 2001, Collectables Records has been remastering and reissuing the King Records catalogue.  Preservation status is being sought for the King Records studios at 1540 Brewster Avenue (Evanston), Cincinnati (not too far from Walnut Hills High School); an historical marker was placed on it by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, and the city declared it an historic landmark in 2015.  As of this writing, the Cincinnati City Council has approved a land swap that would allow the city to own the King Records studio buildings, reconstructing the facility to include a museum, memorial space, recording studio, and a visual art studio (cost:  several million).  (More could be said about King Records, but in the interests of length, I'll leave it here.)  Of further note:  Paul Simons also mentions two black jazz bars on Reading Road, Babe Baker’s and another just across the street; he saw, as he says, “two of the greatest jazz guitarists that ever lived at those places:  Kenny Burrell at Babe Baker’s and Wes Montgomery at the other place.”  (Perhaps he’ll tell us more of his Cincinnati musical experiences in his own time on the “Forum.”)

Black Theatres of Cincinnati:  It was only in the early years of the 20th century that African-Americans became the owners and proprietors of theatres in Cincinnati.  The Pekin Theatre, on West Fifth Street, was opened by Ollie Dempsey, a well-known black “sporting man”; it was run by his widow after his death, and later by William Gunn, who grew up in Madisonville.  Major E. G. Gaither also operated a theatre on West Fifth Street, as well as (for a time) the old Lyceum Theatre.  The colored cook of the prominent white businessman Mr. Rebhun, complaining of the racial prejudice that kept African-Americans out of most Cincinnati theatres, convinced him that a theatre for colored people would be well patronized, and so he built the Lincoln Theatre at Fifth and John Streets with his partners, Mr. Morton and Mr. Bruner.  After Mr. Rebhun died, Mr. Bruner became the sole proprietor; he later bought the Roosevelt Theatre as well.  These two theatres not only served the African-American community, but the managers and attendants of the two theatres were African-Americans as well.  It should be noted, as a matter of the historical record, that a number of smaller picture houses (movie theaters) on West Fifth Street (the West End being a major African-American district of Cincinnati in the early years of the 20th century) initially refused to admit black patrons, but, after time produced a scarcity of white patrons, with the subsequent loss of significant box office revenues, suddenly this restriction was removed and black patrons were admitted.  Yeah, money talks.

[See John Lovell, Jr.:  Black Song:  The Forge and the Flame:  The Story of How the Afro-American
Spiritual Was Hammered Out (New York:  The Macmillan Company, 1972; 686 pp.); James H. Cone:  The Spirituals and the Blues:  An Interpretation (New York:  The Seabury Press,1972; Maryknoll, N. Y.:  Orbis Books, 1992; 141 pp.); Wendell Phillips Dabney:  Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens:  Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Cincinnati:  The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926; 440 pp.); Thea Tjepkema:  “Patti, Patti, Patti, and Jones:  Divas in Cincinnati Music Hall,” Music Hall Marks (Winter, 2020), 8-13; Raenosa Onwumelu:  “Still’s Festive Overture Among the Orchestra’s Great Premieres,” Fanfare Cincinnati:  CSO Pops (December, 2019), 21); Thea Tjepkema:  “Greystone Ballroom Part I (1928-1935):  The African-American Experience and the Jazz Age,” Music Hall Marks (December, 2018), 6-9.]

Part VIII:  “Cincinnati’s African-American Reformers” (the final part) will be posted soon. 
[to be continued]

Jeff Daum

Wow, Philip, thank you for another easy to follow and erudite piece.  Exemplary of why, in this case, a picture isn't worth a thousand words.

Jeff

Richard Murdock

I too like Chuck's suggestion.   If it is not possible for all of us to be in Cincinnati in 2021 then let's explore doing a virtual reunion perhaps using something like Zoom.  Then have the in-person reunion in 2022  when I certainly hope we will all have been vaccinated !   I really enjoy travelling to Cincinnati for these reunions and seeing all the places I remember so vividly.  Cincinnati was a great place to grow up.  

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Thanks everyone for weighing in about the virtual and real reunions. We are on it! Time will tell about our 75th Birthday Reunion scheduled for June, 2021. It will be virtual if we are unable to meet in person in Cincinnati. 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I'm for a virtual reunion too if we cannot or don't feel comfortable with traveling  or having large gatherings by June 2021.   The Zoom (or other meeting) suggestion is great. I'm getting pretty good at Zooming.  I have hosted my pet loss support groups with Zoom since March.  I also use Zoom to keep in touch with the WHHS Dining Divas, who used to have lunch together once a month, but have substituted Zoom for the time being. Even my dog calls his friends on Zoom.  

Richard Murdock

Ann:

The Dining Divas ??  Sounds both interesting and fun.   Can you tell us more or am I the only one in the dark on this   ?

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

The Dining Divas is a group of women with only two things in common: They graduated from Walnut Hills and they like to dine. I wasn't an original member of the group, which was created in 2001 by Sarah Stots Davis, Carol Taylor, and Janice Gentry Smith, all class of '65 and very close friends back in high school. Janice's identical twin, Genie, had passed from breast cancer. Rather than get together due to a sad occasion, they set one Saturday each month just to get together to eat!!! The initial core group reached out to others and over the years, women dropped in occasionally, or if they happened to be in town. Raquel Dowdy-Cornute, our social butterfly, invited me in 2003. At one time, there were almost as many class of '64 regulars as '65, including Debbie Carrol Long, Suzetta Yates, Joyanne Page Christian, and Birdie Johnson. There is never any obligation to show up on any given Saturday, but that core group has continued!  I have been a semi-regular since 2008. We have had Baby Divas, daughters of Divas, come from time to time. In recent years, I have held the distinction of being the elder at most lunches.  However, Yvette Casey-Hunter, class of '65, has started bringing her mother, Liliane Winkfield Casey, class of '43. She's 95 years old, and still amazing. Liliane and Yvette are front row center. Sarah and I are front row left and right. Back row are Janice, Sharon Hubbard McKenzie '65, Carol, and Kathy Hoard Burlew '66. 

Jerry Ochs

Ain't it the truth.

Marijuana is legal and haircuts are against the law.

Philip Spiess

Jerry:

Marijuana legal? -- weed 'em and reap.

Haircuts illegal? -- that's barberism.

Hippies have won?  Ha!  At our age, it's more hippie replacements.

Chuck Cole

Hippie replacements?  In more ways than one.

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Thanks, Jerry, Phil, and Chuck for the entertaining dialogue (or should I say trialogue?) Becky

Philip Spiess

CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY:  Part VIII:  “Cincinnati’s African-American Reformers”

[Note:  Again I apologize for the length of this piece, which I’ve tried to keep as short as possible, but it was hard to edit out information which I thought was important, this being possibly the most important piece of the series, particularly in these current days.  However, it is also the last of the series.]

Cincinnati’s African-American Reformers:  The cause of political and social reform, African-American or otherwise, never did run smooth, as this record will attest.  Attempts at reform also engender reactions, sometimes very negative ones, and so this history will include some ups and downs, a situation which has not ended yet.  But I hope to offer some highlights, that is, a brief record of the major players and their successes and achievements.  Along the way, we will be discussing civic organizations, white and black, and local African-American political and sociological organizations specifically.

Peter H. Clark:  I have mentioned Peter H. Clark in passing several times in previous installments [Part II, as the source for the history of the Black Brigade; Part V, as a school principal; and Part VII, as father of a musician and music teacher].  Let me now address him directly, as one of Cincinnati’s earliest and major African-American reformers.  Peter Humphries Clark (1829-1925) was born in Cincinnati in 1829.  His father was a successful local barber, who sent his son to private schools, simply because – well, because there were no public schools; nevertheless, he attended the early Gilmore High School [see Part V].  In 1849, when his father died, Peter took over his father’s barber shop for awhile, and he also served as a “conductor” on the “Underground Railroad” (he married Frances Ann Williams in 1854).  He apprenticed as a printer, but 1849 being the year that the Ohio state legislature authorized the creation of black public schools [see Part V], due largely to the efforts of Peter’s uncle, John Isom Gaines, a prominent Cincinnati black merchant who supplied provisions to Ohio River steamboats [see Part V], by 1852 Peter became the first teacher in Cincinnati’s first black public school.  However, he was fired in 1853 by the white Board of Education for publicly praising Thomas Paine (!).  He then became an abolitionist publisher, editor, writer, and speaker, editing and publishing, in 1855, his own newspaper, Herald of Freedom, which did not last very long.  He then edited a Free-Soil Party journal in Newport, Kentucky, but by 1856 he was on the staff of Frederick Douglass’ Paper.  In 1857 he was hired by the black trustees of the new colored schools in Cincinnati and made principal of the Western District School; at some point, he apparently founded a union for black teachers (how long this lasted, I do not know).  In 1866 Clark became principal of Gaines High School [see Part V] and remained there until 1886, training many black teachers, when he was forced to resign on political grounds (this was the year before separate black schools were abolished by the state of Ohio [see Part V]).  Thereupon Clark left Cincinnati in 1887, moving to Alabama; in 1888 he moved to St. Louis, where he died in 1925.

But Clark’s educational activities are only part of the story; he was also heavily involved in politics.  He participated in the Ohio Conventions of Colored Men, and in 1853 he was appointed by Frederick Douglass to be secretary of the National Convention of Colored Men in Syracuse, New York, where he drafted the constitution of the National Equal Rights League.  Also in 1853, Clark was involved in the first fugitive slave case in Ohio:  a freed black man was taken into custody by men claiming he was an escaped slave; Clark obtained a writ of habeas corpus from Judge John McLean so the case could go to court.  Unfortunately, the case was unsuccessful and the man was forced back into slavery.  Clark was a member of the Republican Party from about 1856 (that’s near its beginning in 1854) to 1872, but in 1876 he joined the Workingmen’s Party of the United States, forerunner of the Socialist Labor Party of America.  In 1877 he spoke in Cincinnati to a crowd of thousands in support of strikers in the “Great Railroad Strike,” denouncing the suppression of the strikers by the state.  Although the local press condemned the speech, it was well received by the Socialists, and so Clark ran as a Workingmen’s Party candidate for state school commissioner that same year, becoming the first black Socialist to run for office in the United States.  He was not elected, but he did win about 8,000 votes!  The following year Clark ran for Congress in Ohio’s 1^st Congressional District on the Workingmen’s Party ticket, one of the party’s first Congressional candidates, getting 275 votes.  But he left the Socialist Labor Party in 1879, stating “The welfare of the Negro is my controlling political motive”; he doubted that the Party he was leaving felt the same.  But before he left Cincinnati (1887), in 1882 he aided Hamilton County Democrats in drawing up a civil rights bill, which, in due course, was passed into law.

Robert James Harlan:  Colonel Robert J. Harlan (1816-1897), a civil rights activist and politician in Cincinnati, was, it seems, of mixed ancestry, being born a Southern slave but with a white father.  He was probably born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, his father being the slave owner of his mother (Mary Harlan) and him as well.  As his mother was also of mixed race, Robert was not easily identifiable as being black (a quadroon, as the phrase used to be).  Somewhere between the ages of three and eight, Robert and his mother were sent to Cincinnati, this journey being made on foot.  When they reached Danville, Kentucky, they learned that Robert’s father had died, and they were seized as part of his property (somehow bad news travels fast, doesn’t it?).  Robert was purchased by James Harlan of Danville, a man who dealt in dry goods and was a lawyer and politician, serving Kentucky in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1835 to 1839; it was then that Robert took the name of Harlan.  (James Harlan’s white son, John Marshall Harlan, served as a U. S. Supreme Court Justice from 1877 to 1911 and was known as the “Great Dissenter” for his support of civil rights against the majority segregationist court.)

Robert was unique among James Harlan’s slaves, in that he was sent to school in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, along with Harlan’s own sons, but a black janitor notified the school that Robert was black, and he was sent home (why, you might ask, did he "notify the school"?).  Nevertheless, Robert was close to James’s older sons (Richard and James), and when they came home from school he would study their lessons.  Later (I condense his career here), he began buying and racing Kentucky racehorses and gambling on horses throughout the South, and he had great success in this endeavor.  When his “father,” James Harlan, moved to Frankfort in 1840 to become Kentucky’s Secretary of State, Robert moved to Lexington, where the records state he was a “free man of color.”  But about this time the Rev. John Tibbs was tarred and feathered and run out of Kentucky for his work educating black children, and so Robert Harlan decided Lexington was not a safe place to live, and he moved his family (which he had by this time) to Louisville.

But now it emerged that Robert’s de facto “emancipation” was illegal, and so, in 1848, his “master/father,” James Harlan, went to the Franklin County courthouse and freed Robert.  (Later, uncertain about his freedom, even though he was now wealthier than his former slave owner, he paid James Harlan $500 for his freedom.)  Although James died in 1863, Robert and James’s white sons continued to be in close contact (James Harlan, Jr., sought financial assistance from Robert in the 1880s).  Robert continued to deal in racehorses, being very successful in California at the height of the Gold Rush (making much money), but he moved back to Cincinnati sometime after 1849.  There he began working as a philanthropist for Cincinnati’s African-Americans, becoming a trustee of the city’s colored schools and negotiating with Nicholas Longworth for the building of the Eastern District School [see Installment V].  Speculating in Cincinnati real estate, he earned enough to purchase Ball’s Photographic and Daguerreotype Gallery [see Installment III], where he employed a number of well-known (white) photographers, including Charles Waldack, James Landy, and Leon Van Loo (I have several of their original photographs of Cincinnati landmarks in my collection).  In the interests of space I won’t go into Harlan’s horse racing career in England (one of his winning horses was named “Cincinnati”); I’ll just note that his American investments lost most of their value during the Civil War, and so he returned to Cincinnati in 1869, quickly becoming an important figure in Cincinnati politics.

In 1870, for the first time, blacks were elected as delegates to the Cincinnati Republican Convention, Robert Harlan being among them.  That same year, Cincinnati black citizens formed the 2^nd Ohio Militia Battalion, Harlan gaining control of the regiment (after some in-fighting), as well as the title “Colonel.”  By 1872, when the presidential campaign of General Ulysses S. Grant (an Ohioan) on the Republican ticket was in full swing, Harlan served on the Finance Committee of the Grant Club.  Harlan had become a friend of Grant through Ohio Congressman John Sherman (brother of Civil War General William Sherman), with whom he shared a love of horses.  At the State Colored Convention in 1872, Harlan and Peter Clark [see above] were strongly divided over whether black Ohioans should support Republican efforts for civil rights, or if the Republican leadership was taking advantage of the black support; Harlan spoke strongly in support of the Republicans.  As a result, he was elected a delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention.  In December of that year, he was also a delegate to the National Colored Convention in Washington, D. C.  Therefore, in 1873, President Grant appointed Harlan mail agent at large, and Harlan continued to support the Republican Party, calling on former General Benjamin Butler, as author of the Civil Rights Act, to clarify its scope; this became a national story (Harlan’s half-brother by "adoption," Justice John Marshall Harlan, being the lone Supreme Court Justice to support various civil rights cases in 1883).

Harlan usually served as a prominent member of many Colored National Conventions, such as those in 1876 and 1879 in Nashville, Tennessee, and that in Chicago in 1890, called the “Colored Congress,” which became the founding meeting of the National Afro-American League, as well as the one in 1892 in Cincinnati.  Besides all that, Harlan was elected an alternate delegate for the Ohio delegation to the Republican National Conventions in 1884 and 1888, led by his friend (and future president) William McKinley.  In 1881 Harlan ran for the Ohio State House of Representatives from Hamilton County, but lost; his statement afterwards was that “while blacks in Cincinnati voted for the white Republicans in the race [giving them the victory], white Republicans did not vote for him [leading to his loss].”  But in 1885, he ran again for the same seat, and again lost, but the Democrat winner, A. P. Butterfield, was ousted by a House committee, and Harlan was given the seat in 1886 [sounds like “Musical Chairs,” doesn’t it?].  As a state legislator, Harlan opposed segregated schooling [see Installment V], and he was defeated for the seat by William Copeland [see below] in 1887.  Nevertheless, despite being out of office, Harlan was an outspoken critic of Southern lynchings.  In late 1889, Harlan was appointed an inspector of U. S. Customs, and later was special inspector for the U. S. Treasury Department (until 1893, when President Cleveland, a Democrat, removed him from office).  Finally, it might be mentioned that Harlan occasionally wrote poetry.

William H. Copeland:  “Bill” Copeland (1848-1931) was born in Columbus, Ohio, and, while still a teenager, joined the Quartermaster Department of the Union forces during the Civil War; he was a messenger of the Union forces to General Grant at Vicksburg.  After the war, he became a porter and then a brakeman on the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad; he is generally believed to have been the first African-American parlor car conductor.  Later, in Cincinnati, he owned and operated a popular café and opened an undertaking establishment.  Entering city politics [see Installment VI], he served as assistant market master of the city, as a surveyor in the city waterworks, and he was deputy sheriff of Hamilton County for twenty years.  A member of the Episcopal church, he rose to be a 32^nd Degree Mason, and became a Past Commander of the State of Ohio Knights Templar.  During the Chester Arthur administration, Copeland became the first African-American to serve as a U. S. Gauger (exciseman).  In his political career in Cincinnati, he was one of the four founders of the Young Men’s Blaine Club, a Republican organization; he was elected to the State Legislature of Ohio, serving his Cincinnati district in the General Assembly from 1888 to 1889.

Wendell Phillips Dabney:  I wrote at length about Wendell Phillips Dabney, major African-American reformer in Cincinnati in Installment VI, so I won’t repeat it here.  “Machine politics” may not sound much like “reform,” but the fact that the Republican Party was taking into its fold Cincinnati’s African-Americans, even though it may have been exploiting them, was giving the city’s blacks a new power in politics that they had not had before.  Wendell Phillips Dabney apparently knew how to mold that power to serve the people of his race (largely through his newspaper, The Union).  In order to understand the political discussion ahead, you may wish to review the sections in that installment on the (basically white) political history of Cincinnati, especially the parts on “machine politics.”

Jennie D. Porter:  I have already written a bit about Jennie Porter at Posts #4691 and #4696 on the WHHS Forum, but let me now expand on her role as an educational reformer.  Jennie Davis Porter (1876-1936) was a native Cincinnatian, her father being Cincinnati’s first African-American undertaker (the first of many); her mother was a school teacher.  Graduating from the old Hughes High School in the West End in 1893, she herself went into teaching.  She ran a private kindergarten for African-American children (supported by Annie Laws – see Installment V) in the old Hughes High School (the new Hughes High School had opened in Clifton Heights in 1910).  Later she became a teacher at the Douglass School [see Installment V].  During the great Ohio River flood of 1913, when she tried to find a temporary school for African-American children whom the flood had displaced (you can imagine that many of Cincinnati’s African-Americans lived in the low-lying areas along the river), she discovered that many of the children had no school to go to in the first place!  So in 1914 the Cincinnati School Board allowed her to open the Harriet Beecher Stowe School with 350 students (she was its first principal, and remained so until her death); by 1923, the school had grown so rapidly (1,300 students in 1922) that she opened a new building for the Stowe School [see Post #4696 for the very interesting physical details of the school, which closed in 1962, but which continues to be used as the local Fox 9 television station].  It became 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).  

While principal of the Stowe School Porter pursued her college education, enrolling at the University of Cincinnati in 1918 as one of a very few African-American students, gaining her Bachelor’s degree in 1923, her Master’s degree in 1925, and her doctoral degree in 1928, becoming the first African-American woman to earn the Ph.D. degree at the University of Cincinnati.  But in her day Jennie Porter was a very controversial figure in the Cincinnati 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.)  According to Wendell Phillips Dabney [Post #4696], 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."  Despite much criticism, Jennie Porter created one of the most important educational opportunities for African-Americans in Cincinnati.

African-American Reform Groups in Cincinnati:  Among the first of such groups was the “True Reformers,” which (according to Dabney) “sprang up almost in a night,” being founded in the Dabney Building on McAllister Street [see Installment VI], and which attained a membership of about two thousand; it later bought a hall on West Sixth Street.  Aiming at political and social reform, it then had a dramatic failure when its national office in Richmond, Virginia, defaulted on its funds.  The Cincinnati branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established in 1915 (Wendell Phillips Dabney was its first president) with 15-20 members, because, at the time, the organization was considered radical and its members were often afraid of losing their jobs if it was known that they were members.  As a result, the group met in members’ homes.  Originally it had, in its early days (according to Dabney), “a large and loyal membership,” but interest in it gradually died, as “the fight for race rights and against race abuses generally appeals only to those who realize the value of such action.”  Nevertheless, among its early successes was the abolishment of a segregated school system; it also achieved breakthroughs in employment and public accommodations by using the power of the courts and public persuasion through publicity.  I might also add that twice (in 1913 and 1925) interracial marriage bills were brought up in the Ohio State legislature; Wendell P. Dabney, among those leading the NAACP delegation opposing the bills, got them defeated in committee.  Despite the early decline in membership, by the mid-1960s membership had grown into the thousands, and (as some of us may recall), demonstrations and “sit-ins” had become established ways of accomplishing the association’s goals.  The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA, 1914), commonly known as the “Garvey Movement” (after Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican black who came to the United States in 1916, and through mass meetings encouraged African-Americans to develop a separate society and stand against racial injustice; his radical ideas fueled controversy in the 1920s), had a large following in Cincinnati, having a headquarters on George Street.

When in 1896 the U. S. Supreme Court approved segregation in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, the theory of “separate but equal” (though in most cases we know it was not equal) spread throughout many aspects of American society, especially in the South, causing the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities.  In order to assist these migrant citizens in finding economic opportunities and to reduce discrimination, in 1910 the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded in New York City; this later became the National Urban League.  A similar agency, founded in 1917 (known by several names over time; from 1936 to 1948, it was known as the Negro Welfare Division, Cincinnati Community Chest) was a predecessor to the local chapter of the National Urban League, known today as the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati (established 1948).  Its stated mission was “to plan for, assist, encourage and engage in the improvement of economic, social, educational and cultural conditions of the Negro population.”  Two of its early trustees were Ted Berry [see below] and William McClain [see below]; now a United Way agency, it continues to serve the whole Cincinnati community.  

A Brief Note on The Cincinnatus Association and the Charter Party:  I wrote in Installment VI of Cincinnati “machine politics” in the Gilded Age of the latter half of the 19^th century, particularly of the “Boss Cox machine.”  But by 1916 George B. Cox was dead, and his Republican political “machine” was in the less capable hands of his two lieutenants.  By 1920, the Cincinnati Times-Star, the Republican newspaper controlled by the Taft family (Charles P. Taft, the President’s half-brother, and Charles P. Taft’s nephew, Hulbert Taft Sr.) was calling for the reform of Cincinnati’s government.  Victor Heintz, a Cincinnati political organizer for the Republican National Committee, concerned about the corruption he saw in Cincinnati, in 1920 brought together a group of reform-minded businessmen, who called themselves The Cincinnatus Association (after the ancient Roman general, Lucius Cincinnatus, a statue of whom stands on the Public Landing at Sawyer Point).  This organization began to push for civic improvement, politically and economically; it continues to do so today.  It helped form the City Charter Party, founded in 1924, which in 1925 enacted a new municipal charter, establishing the city manager form of government and a nine-member City Council; it also replaced political patronage with a civil service bureaucracy.  It is under these circumstances that the later reformers were able to take action.

Theodore M. Berry:  Ted Berry (1904-2000) a distinguished reformer in Cincinnati through the Charter Party, a national leader in the Civil Rights movement, and eventually the first African-American mayor of Cincinnati, was born into poverty in Maysville, Kentucky, and graduated from Woodward High School in 1924, where he served as class valedictorian, the first African-American to be so honored in Cincinnati.  In his senior year, he won an essay contest with an entry submitted under the name of Thomas Playfair (note the meaning of the last name in this pseudonym), after an all-white panel had rejected his initial essay.  Graduating from the University of Cincinnati (paying tuition by working in the steel mills of Newport, Kentucky), he then attended the University of Cincinnati College of Law, being admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1932.  From 1932 to 1946 Berry served as president of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP [see above], and in 1938 he was appointed the first black assistant prosecuting attorney of Hamilton County.  During World War II, Berry worked in the Office of War Information in Washington, D. C., at which time he changed from membership in the Republican Party to membership in the Democratic Party.  In 1945, Ted Berry defended three black Army Air Force officers, members of the Tuskegee Airmen, who had protested a segregated officers’ club in Indiana, winning acquittal for two of the men (the third was pardoned in 1995).  Berry also served on the Ohio Committee for Civil Rights Legislation of the NAACP, working on fair housing and equal employment issues; in such work, he connected with the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati [see above].

But Ted Berry is also known for his political career in Cincinnati.  This began in 1947 when he ran for a seat on the Cincinnati City Council; although he lost then, he won in 1949.  By 1953 he was chairman of the Council’s finance committee, where he led a battle to create a city income tax.  In 1955 he was elected Vice Mayor of Cincinnati.  When he created the Community Action Commission of Cincinnati, he caught the attention of Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law and one of his advisors.  Thus in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Berry as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s Community Action Programs, which included the Jobs Corps, Head Start, and Legal Services.  In 1969, Berry returned to Cincinnati and regained a seat on the City Council in 1971.  In 1972 he was elected the first African-American Mayor of Cincinnati, in which post he served for four years.  He later sought to return Cincinnati to its earlier political election system of proportional representation, believing it gave more power to black voters.  Berry received the William Howard Taft Americanism Award of the Anti-Defamation League in 1990.  He died at the age of 94; both Theodore Berry Way and the Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park (on Riverside Drive east of downtown) in Cincinnati are named for him.

William A. McClain:  A graduate of Springfield High School in Springfield, Ohio, William Andrew McClain (1913-2014) later earned professional degrees from Wittenberg University and the University of Michigan, receiving LL.D. degrees from Wilberforce University and the University of Cincinnati.  He was best known as Cincinnati’s City Solicitor (from 1963 through 1972), being the first African-American in the United States to attain such a significant municipal legal office.  He became a judge, first in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (1975-1976) and then in the Municipal Court of Hamilton County (1976-1980).  Judge McClain also served as a trustee of the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati [see above], and he was known as a lecturer on legal and urban matters.  He was elevated to the 33^rd Degree of Masonry and became the Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Ohio (the African-American branch of the Masonic Order), founding the Progressive Black Masonry Movement within the Masons and the Order of the Eastern Star.

Lawrence C. Hawkins:  Born in South Carolina in 1919, the son of a sharecropper, Lawrence Hawkins moved with his family to Cincinnati in 1926.  Becoming a student at the Frederick Douglass School [see Installment V], he later graduated from Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati.  World War II saw him joining the Army Infantry, where he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant; he then transferred to the Army Air Force Navigation School and then to bombardier school.  There he was assigned to the famous Tuskegee Airmen, the first unit of African-American fliers in World War II.  After the war he became a teacher in the Cincinnati public schools, but he continued his studies, eventually earning his Ph.D. degree from the University of Cincinnati.  In 1957 he became principal (still at that time one of the very few African-American ones) of Samuel Ach Jr. High School in Avondale, which by that time had predominantly black students.  He became a mentor to his teachers, eight of them eventually becoming principals.  (His son, Lawrence "Lonnie" Hawkins, was in the WHHS Class of '62.). In 1964 he established the Cincinnati Public School Division of Educational Opportunity, and in 1967 he became an assistant superintendent of schools in his district (a district where the 1967 Cincinnati race riots occurred [see Installment I]).  In 1969 Dr. Hawkins was appointed Professor of Education and Community Services at the University of Cincinnati, becoming the founding Dean of the College of Community Services and the first African-American dean at UC.  Here he became “embroiled in questions of Women’s Liberation,” as the administration of UC thought that “women’s studies” should be in the College of Community Services.  Nevertheless, Dr. Hawkins was appointed Vice President for Continuing Education and Metropolitan Affairs, shortly being elevated to Senior Vice President of UC in 1976.  However, by the early 1980s the College of Community Services was abolished and UC still had only one African-American dean – in the two-year University College, which itself was abolished in the next decade.  Dr. Hawkins was moved to emeritus status in 1984.  After his retirement from UC, he served as chair of the Mayor’s Police Community Relations Panel, and he served on the boards of the Cincinnati branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, the Ohio Citizens’ Council for Health and Welfare, Bethesda Hospital, WCET television station, and the Western and Southern Financial Group.  He also played a major role in the creation of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati (founded 1994; opened 2004), and, shortly before his death in 2009, the Western and Southern Group created an award in his name to honor an educator in the Cincinnati public schools.

Marian A. Spencer:  Born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1920, Marian Regelia Alexander Spencer and her family lived with her grandfather, a freed slave from West Virginia.  She became a member of the NAACP at the age of 13, thus beginning a long career as a civil rights activist.  In 1938 she moved to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati, graduating in 1942, and campaigning for the prom to be open to all students.  Marrying Donald a. Spencer, a Cincinnati school teacher, she had two sons.  In 1952 her sons heard a radio ad inviting children to Coney Island Amusement Park to meet a local television personality.  Calling the park to ask if all children were invited and adding, “We are Negroes,” she learned that African-Americans were barred from the park.  (Mrs. Spencer was turned away from the park’s front gate by a guard brandishing a gun on the Fourth of July, 1952.)  Mrs. Spencer immediately filed a civil rights lawsuit (NAACP Legal Action vs. Coney Island, Cincinnati, Ohio) and ultimately won the case, which eventually desegregated Coney Island in 1955.  [This date sounds way too early to me, as I seem to recall from my youth that this segregation continued in some fashion into the 1960s; I have written briefly much earlier on this Forum about Coney Island’s barring blacks, so I may do a longer piece on this subject at some point.]  She also successfully desegregated the YWCA, for whom she helped raise $3.8 million dollars.  Spencer continued her civil rights activism over her entire career, working to desegregate the public schools, becoming a life member of the NAACP, and, in 1981, becoming the first female president of the NAACP’s local chapter.  She also served as chairperson of the Community Steering Committee for Indigent Defense and of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.  In 1983, she was elected to the Cincinnati City Council as a Charterite, being the first African-American woman to be elected to the Council, serving one term and serving as Vice Mayor.  She also served as president of the Woman’s City Club and on the University of Cincinnati’s Board of Trustees.  Receiving many awards for her activist work, in 2010 the Cincinnati Public Schools renamed an elementary school in Walnut Hills the Donald A. and Marian Spencer Education Center; in 2016 the 100 block of Walnut Street between Theodore Berry Way and Second Street at The Banks was named “Marian Spencer Way,” and in 2018 the University of Cincinnati named a new residence hall “Marian Spencer Hall.”  Marian Spencer died in 2019.

A Final Summation:  To sum up this series, let me quote NAACP Cincinnati president [in 2003] Calvert H. Smith, who said, “[I]f the deceased warriors in the fight for freedom for African Americans could return to this city today, they would literally be amazed to discover that we are still confronted with some of the very same problems they thought they had conquered some 40 to 50 years ago” (– and so we end this series on that exclamation point!).

[See “Guide to African American Resources at the Cincinnati History Library and Archives,” Cincinnati Museum Center, for many of these individuals; see also “Walnut Hills History,” Walnut Hills Historical Society (the suburb, not the high school).]

[This is the final part of this 8-part series, “Cincinnati’s African-American History.”  (Mr. Lounds, I hope I have done your request justice.)]

Steven Levinson

Phil, have you consolidated your opus into a single or multiple transmissible documents?  I'd love to make a copy!

Steve

Philip Spiess

Steve:  i can easily transform the eight parts into a single document.  Send me your e-mail address at pdspiess@verizon.net, and I will send you a copy.

Ira Goldberg

Phil, same request. I'd like to share it with Joan Stanley, who was Wendy's favorite teachers she's 93 and sharp!

Philip Spiess

Ira:  I am currently getting requests from several classmates (here and on my e-mail) for copies of the eight-part series compiled into one document, so I am now editing and proofreading it (I have added several relevant posts on the subject from the Forum that were not included in the series-- including yours -- to make it a complete record); I expect to be done with that effort this weekend and will be glad to forward an electronic copy to anyone who requests it.  Just send me your e-mail address.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Thanks Phil, for your Black History (as Steve says) opus. I appreciate the effort you put into its research. 
I recognized many of the names and the events but learned so much too. 
Going back nearly twenty years, during the civil unrest here in Cincinnati in 2001,'over the shooting by police of young Timothy Thomas, an unarmed 19 year old African American, having been racially profiled, stopped, then arrested for outstanding non-violent traffic violations, the was considerable destruction in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood after a peaceful demonstration, beginning at Fountain Square. Long story short, the protests continued, especially after the white officer who was involved in the shooting, was tried, acquitted and hired by a police department in a Cincinnati suburb. Black/police relationships were fractured and businesses and events in the Cincinnati were boycotted by well-known African American entertainers. The city suffered a huge downward economic impact during that period. An independent Citizen's Complaint Authority was developed to review excessive use of force by police officers and the PD received training. 
Periodically, over these nearly twenty years, the black community has continued to protest the deaths of  dozens of unarmed black men by police, in solidarity with other communities across the country. 
The death of George Floyd, filmed by a young 17-yr old girl, sparked an outrage that I personally have never felt before. As a cop's daughter, and also as a POC, living in my own "bubble" of friends and family, I haven't picked up a protest sign since August of 1963, when not being allowed to go to Dr. King's March on Washington, marched on Union Terminal with thousands of other Cincinnatians for racial justice.  
The initial protests for George Floyd and for Breonna Taylor, the young EMT who was killed during a middle of the night "no knock" raid in Louisville, have now become a worldwide movement, not only for criminal justice reform but for antiracism. It will take more than marching with a sign, but truly believe that there is hope that these are the first steps to a better future. 
Pictures of my (step)daughter, me, grandson (honors 2020 high school graduate on his way to University of Cincinnati DAAP) and his girlfriend, also on her way to UC. 

Jerry Ochs

I remember the march in 1963.  A policeman "accidently" whacked my kneecap with his nightstick.  I've been in countless marches since then and I have yet to understand why peaceful protesters infuriate the police.

Paul Simons

Great work Phil, great looking family and photo Ann, and Jerry I’d like to see cops and courts enforcing equal justice for all too, which evidently they aren’t. Like when they find Robert Fuller hanging from a tree they could put 2 and 2 together and come up with lynching, not suicide, and start looking for evidence and perpetrators.

But maybe the cops and courts are suffering duress what with all the farm workers they have to arrest and deport. And depending on which way the Supreme Court swings they might have to haul in and deport those DACA people, many of whom are doctors and nurses, just what you need to deport during a pandemic when your country leads the world in cases and deaths. But maybe the penal system just needs more time. Maybe they need something like an additional 400 years. I’m sure that’s all they’d need to get it right.

Philip Spiess

Paul (and others):  I think the problem is that too many police officers throughout the country are former military personnel, retired from the military and looking for new jobs in their area of expertise, and thus are hired as policemen.  Many, I dare say, are suffering from PTSD (as is my son, a former firefighter, who witnessed some dreadful things in his career), a situation not always recognized either by the individuals in question or by their superiors or departments -- or, if recognized at all, are not acted upon or treated.  Add to this the accumulation and distribution of military weaponry from the Iraq and Afghan wars that have been supplied to our domestic police forces (to what purpose?), and you have a tinderbox of a mess waiting to happen.  (And it has.). Thus we cannot just blame the police for their actions, but we need to examine and understand why these actions are occurring as they are -- and then take responsible steps to deal with that situation and reduce the tensions and interfaces with the public that result in the turmoil we have seen over the past two weeks.  The stresses on both sides, I am sure, are great.

Jerry Ochs

To avoid straying too far from the purpose of this web site, but to continue the conversation about racism, does anyone recall the presence of a teacher who was not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant?  I remember an art teacher who was a black man, from whom I learned about the practice of shifting worn-out desks and books in white schools to the black schools in the West End etc..  Separate but equal with a nasty twist.  I don't think he taught at WHHS for the full six years we were there.  Anybody?

Paul Simons

Jerry you must be having a momentary episode of forgetfulness or maybe you never had the Mr. Lounds experience. Without a doubt the coolest science teacher that ever imparted cool as well as science to his lucky students. Rather odd that in the country that gave the world both Miles Davis and R/C vehicles with TV cameras on Mars both cool and science are reviled by many. Anyway my dad also taught there for a while, and he was Jewish and despite the ‘60’s lure of Kundalini yoga, Zen Buddhism, and a concerted effort to convert me by some very fine Christians - really, although the term “very fine” has been turned into an insult by its misuse they really were - I still am a Jew.

Phil I absolutely agree that we can’t vilify cops in general. If we look carefully at the video of the several cops around Mr. Gugino when he’s pushed to the ground you’ll see the one who pushed him appearing ready to smack him again and another cop pushing him away and getting on his radio.https://youtu.be/FoFFUlAWr50 

One more thing about ethnicity - not race, we’re all the same race, the human race - this goes to both Jerry’s and Phil’s comments - there’s a bar in South Avondale on Reading Rd called Babe Baker’s. When Kenny Burrell played there in maybe 1963 or 1965 of course I had to go. I got there early enough to get a seat right in front of the small stage, the only white in the place. I was treated like any other customer. It was one of the memorable experiences of my life in terms of learning what class and professionalism are. That’s the way it is in jazz bars. Color is irrelevant.

Jerry Ochs

I had Mr. Welsh for science.  He wasn't cool but he was wacky.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

I remember Mrs. Powell, science teacher, not only black, but a black woman. I think 9th grade? Very soft-spoken, but no pushover. I best remember discovering in her class that I am A positive blood type. That was a really cool lesson. She had this odd way of pronouncing letters not usually heard, like the "th" in "clothes". Anyone else remember her?