Gems of Cincinnati’s West End: Black Children and Catholic Missionaries 1940-1970

By LaVerne Summerlin

This project began with my decision to interview and/or read about 100 alumni and/or their parents who were educated in those inner city Catholic schools between 1940-1970. Their personal stories are at the core of this narrative that details the Catholic church’s impact on their lives. In addition, I wanted to write about the collaborative efforts of the members of the many religious orders and lay ministers who were instrumental in creating a disciplined, supportive and productive learning environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984579027

LaVerne Summerlin

LaVerne Summerlin is an African American Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. There, she has been the recipient of a number of awards including the A.B. Dolly Cohen Award for Teaching Excellence. She was educated in Catholic schools in the neighborhood which has been designated by some historians as Cincinnati’s first ghetto.

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Rev. date: 08/06/2020

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Cincinnati’s West End: A Bridge Away from a Slave State

Chapter 2 The Cincinnati Holy Name Day Parade and The Drum Major Instinct 1936-1970

Chapter 3 Practicing the Faith and the Eight Beatitudes

Chapter 4 The Urban Apostolate and the First Five Archbishops

Chapter 5 Saint Katharine’s Fourth Vow: Saving Souls Spiritually and Culturally

Chapter 6 The Saint and the PhD: The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament 58 Years in Cincinnati’s Mission Parishes

Chapter 7 From Verona Italy to the Hood: The Comboni Missionaries, Thirty Years in West End Mission Parishes

Chapter 8 Jack McWilliams: 65 Years in Lay Ministry

Chapter 9 Father Clarence Joseph Rivers: Invitation to the Feast of Life

Chapter 10 The House That Built Men: DePorres High School

Chapter 11 DePorres High School’s Everyman: Franklin Mackenzie Shaands

Chapter 12 Men of DePorres Having Their Say

Chapter 13 Peter J. Randolph: Keeping the Dream Alive

Chapter 14 Summers Remembered at Camp St. Joseph and Franciscan Missionaries of Mary at St. Anthony, Budd Street

Chapter 15 Our Lady of Mercy High School in Racial Transition

Chapter 16 The Era of Father Clem Busemeyer at St. Joseph: The Last One Standing

Chapter 17 My Gems

Chapter 18 In Retrospect It Was All About Social Justice

Bibliography

Preface

TO THE BELIEVERS

My parents, Viola and Willie, who had the wisdom to gift us with a Catholic education

The dedicated nuns and priests of all ethnicities who served in those Catholic schools and parishes

The ever present African American, German, Italian, and Irish lay volunteers whose dedicated work supplemented that of the religious

Those interviewees who so willingly shared their stories

Ronald R. Smith for sharing his wisdom and his archives

Theresa Stavale Bruemmer who is kind, important and smart

The late John Harshaw who attended public schools, but who insisted that I write this perspective of his beloved West End’s history

Christine Pater McWilliams, Kathleen Ware, Patricia Stites, and Professor Patricia Houston who provided invaluable feedback after twice editing the entire manuscript

Professor Michelle Holley whose faith has sustained me through my doubts and helped me keep hope alive

Dr. Joyce Malek who suggested that I take an idea for an article and expand it into this book

Dr. Grace Epstein and Dr. Mary Leech whose insightful questions/suggestions made me think more clearly

My niece, Krystal Muldrow, who provided the insight of a non-Catholic young person

My granddaughter, Isis Symone Summerlin, who also provided the perspective of a younger person

My sister Alberta Brown, my brother Will Outlaw, and friend Phyllis Spaulding whose candor forced me to listen more effectively (that is, see what they were saying) when I thought I was, but they knew I had not

The boatload of relatives who always supported me. I cannot begin naming names because I will omit someone important. Each one of you knows how, through the years, you have encouraged and sustained me with your acts of kindness and expressions of belief

Finally, all of you who kept asking me, When are you going to finish that book?

How you like me now?

PREFACE

I regret the end of an important Catholic presence in the West End.

—Charlotte Hunter August 14, 2015

W ERE THE EDUCATIONAL efforts of the Catholic church in Cincinnati’s West End between 1940 and 1965 worth it to the African American families and to the church officials? The book Gems of Cincinnati’s West End: The Catholic Church’s Work with African American Families between 1940–1970 attempts to answer this question. The focus is on this thirty-year period because it was a time when most of the previously predominant German, Irish, and Italian parishes had transitioned into predominantly African American. During that era, there were nine Catholic schools located in Cincinnati’s West End, a neighborhood that historians have described as the city’s first ghetto. Urban renewal resulted in the closing of eight of those schools. Today, St. Joseph, on the corner of Ezzard Charles Drive and Linn Street, is the only one that survived.

This project began with my decision to interview and/or read about one hundred African American alumni who were educated in those schools during the period under consideration. Their personal stories are at the core this narrative that details the Catholic church’s impact on their lives. In addition, I wanted write about the collaborative efforts of many religious orders and lay ministers who were instrumental in creating a supportive and productive atmosphere. The book attempts to answer three questions.

First question. Between 1940 and 1970, what were the advantages and disadvantages of growing up black in the West End, a neighborhood located, literally, the Roebling Suspension Bridge away from the former slave state of Kentucky? To answer this question, I describe the advantages and disadvantages of growing up poor and black before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act in what has been described by some historians as the city’s first ghetto.

Second question. What did the Catholic church officials say and do about the archdiocese’s Negro ministries? To answer this question, I researched the positions of the first five archbishops of the archdiocese: John Baptist Purcell, William Henry Elder, Henry K. Moeller, John Timothy McNicholas, and Karl J. Alter. In addition, the roles of the following religious orders were examined: the Jesuits; the Italian Comboni Missionaries and their founder, Saint Daniel Comboni; the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and their foundress, Saint Katharine Drexel; the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary; the Sisters of Mercy; and a number of archdiocesan Irish, Italian and German priests. Most had volunteered to work with black folks.

Third question. What response did some of the African American alumni give to the question Was the education you received in Cincinnati’s West End Catholic schools between 1940 and 1965 worth it to you and your family? Answers to this question were obtained by conducting interviews with alumni or their relatives, reading autobiographies, biographies, articles, and obituaries. Alumni from each of the schools were interviewed. I wanted to know of specific experiences they had encountered with their teachers and priests. I also wanted to know if they believed that these schools provided the foundation for success at the next level.

Sequencing. I decided to begin with a chapter describing the neighborhood because the Catholic church did not operate in a vacuum but in the midst of the good and not-so-good influences of the West End. It was equally important to see what the church leaders had to say because without their moral, political, and economic support, we would not have been welcomed into the fold. Finally, leaders have goals, but they are not always realized. What better way to see if those goals have been realized than to see, hear, and read what the African American alumni had to say about the role those childhood experiences with the nuns, priests, and lay ministers played in the development of their character?

Argument for the Book’s Importance

as a Rationale for Publication

This subject matter is of local, regional, and national importance. In the book are stories of the positives and negatives of growing up in a poor neighborhood, stories of ways in which the first five archbishops of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati made a moral commitment to help African Americans achieve social justice, stories of ways in which Catholic charities helped our parents find jobs, stories of the Jesuits, the Comboni Missionaries, the Franciscans, and the archdiocesan priests who provided spiritual sustenance, stories of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Sisters of St. Francis, Oldenburg, who taught us stories of parents (many of whom had very little formal education) who turned to the Catholic church to provide their children with a religious-based education; stories of how some of those children used that educational foundation to achieve and to give back to their families, to the churches, and to the secular community; and stories of how urban renewal resulted in the demolition of all but one of these buildings; and the end of an important era in the education of African American children. These narratives are indicative of experiences that have been repeated locally, regionally, and nationally.

To date, I have been unable to find a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of the Church’s education of African American students with focus on the students’ words at the core of the narrative. Nor have I been able to find a book that identifies some of the teachers, administrators, and lay ministers who were responsible for the education of these children. Finally, in listening to and reading about the alumni, I have been able to observe ways in which specific nuns, priests, lay teachers, and volunteers worked in concert with parents to provide a foundation that enabled these children to survive, and, in many ways, thrive.

Many of the alumni have gone on to gain meaningful employment and to engage in substantive community service (some serving in the trenches and some serving on boards). Many others have become leaders of their churches, both Catholic and Protestant. Their occupations vary: educators, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, mayors, researchers, postal workers, attorneys, police officers, realtors, social workers, engineers, factory workers, artists, musicians, Catholic nuns and priests, religious brothers and deacons, Protestant ministers and deacons, university administrators, actors, businessmen, and businesswomen from entry level to top-level executives in major corporations such as Procter & Gamble, General Electric, and AT &T.

Of those whose lives I have examined thus far, some transferred to public schools and/or dropped out of high school. Most earned their high school diplomas. Many of the men served in the military. A number received scholarships to college, did not finish, but decided to work at jobs from which they are now retired. Others earned baccalaureate degrees. Some earned master’s degrees, and some earned PhDs. In addition to being educated and gainfully employed, most of those whose lives I examined have been giving back to the Catholic church and/or to the larger community by engaging in a variety of community service projects ranging from tutoring, to visiting the sick, to volunteering in the homeless shelters, to fulfilling ministries in their parishes, to serving on the boards of directors of religious organizations, school systems, civic organizations, and businesses.

Why is the book needed?

It is a true story of the ways in which a religious-based education is one of the keys to success. This is needed because in the era where ethnic divisiveness seems to be the norm, it is also a testament to the beauty of diversity, as there were so many from different ethnicities who were working for the greater good.

What will it contribute?

We are inundated with studies about the problems with the education of African American children. My focus is on how the effectiveness of a religious-based, disciplined-centered approach to academics can result in achievement.

How does it compare with other literature on the subject?

There are so many books that have been written about the negatives of growing up poor, the education of African American children in poor neighborhoods, and the contributions of other religious denominations to the education of African American children. Few books detail the role of the religion of Catholicism in the education of African American children.

Three publications referencing the West End have certainly pointed out the negatives/dangers of the neighborhood of my youth. In talking about the West End in his book Cincinnati: From River City to Highway Metropolis, Dr. David Stradling of the University of Cincinnati’s Department of History, uses phrasing such as chaos, slums, and accompanying immorality (98), housing density, coal which resulted in undue filth which resulted in lung ailments" (79), brothels, saloons, Sunday liquor and gambling, and the reign of the realtor and gambler, George Boss Cox. John Harshaw, an African American banker who grew up in the neighborhood between 1940 and 1970, has written two books that include information about the crime in the area. His Jazz on a Broken Piano is a whodunnit novel about a murder that it took years to solve. His book Bankers, Writers and Runners provides an entertaining and insightful look into the illegal numbers racket’s employers, some of whom used their earnings to support their families, and one of whom was John’s grandmother, a writer who employed him as a runner when he was a youngster. The third observation is made in the Mission Fields at Home magazine published by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament missionaries, who, for fifty-eight years, taught African American children in four of the West End Catholic schools. In the April 1932 issue of Mission Fields at Home is the following observation:

Madonna High [the first Catholic African American high school in the state of Ohio], conducted by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, is situated in the overcrowded slums of the notorious West End of Cincinnati. Surrounding it on each side are the old, miserable houses which were the original residences of the early settlers in the Ohio basin. When built, these houses were sufficiently large to accommodate the single families who purchased and lived in each one. They are pitifully inadequate to house the ten, twenty, and twenty-five families who now endeavor to make each room a home. Lacking all the ordinary essentials of human life; such as running water, a means of sanitation, proper ventilation, sufficient and nourishing food, the residents of this district are necessarily handicapped.

Everything Dr. Stradling, John Harshaw, and the person who wrote the article for the Mission Fields at Home magazine say is true, but what they say is not everything. For in the midst of all this bleakness and darkness, there were many glimmers of light—light reflected and refracted by, in, and from the gems of the West End.

In addition, a number of books have been written about Cincinnati’s West End before the urban renewal of the mid-fifties, and some about the deleterious effects of urban renewal’s displacement of more than 25,000 Negroes. However, my analysis is different. For while acknowledging the impact of the neighborhood negatives, this book’s focus is on the positive influences of the Catholic parishes on the lives of African American children who were educated in those schools. Unlike other publications about my old neighborhood, at the center of this book are the words of one hundred African American alumni telling of the ways in which their experiences in those schools provided the foundation for access to achievement.

CHAPTER 1

Cincinnati’s West End: A Bridge

Away from a Slave State

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T HE WEST BOUNDARY of the West End. The Museum Center, formerly Cincinnati Union Terminal train station, provides the west boundary of the West End. The photos were taken by Melvin Grier an award-winning photojournalist of the Cincinnati Post newspaper. He is also an alumnus of four Catholic West End schools. Why four? Because urban renewal resulted in each of them being closed. However, his father had promised his dying mother that he would keep their son in Catholic schools. Melvin became an award-winning photojournalist of the Cincinnati Post newspaper.

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The West End has been dubbed by many historians as the first ghetto of Cincinnati. In so doing, they reference the period when the neighborhood transitioned from predominantly white to predominantly black. I do not recall if, as a child, I ever wondered why there were so many iconic buildings surrounding the century-old dilapidated rundown buildings or the overcrowded projects of the Lincoln Court and the Laurel Homes. I did not even think about the irony of the situation. I just enjoyed. Three of the many iconic buildings that were important to me were St. Peter in Chains Cathedral, the Union Terminal train station, and Music Hall. Experiences in these three buildings were central to my development. Attending religious ceremonies in the cathedral provided spiritual sustenance. Visiting the Union Terminal Train Station (now the Museum Center) during the World War II era and beyond provided me with the opportunity to witness the comings and goings of the over 34,000 travelers who passed through daily. What caught my attention more than all those people was the ceiling of the rotunda. The mosaics of the laborers who had built this city fascinated me. As a black person, I was happy to see the two black laborers representing those who had worked on the steamboats.

The second building is the St. Peter in Chains Cathedral. For it is where Catholics celebrated important religious milestones such as First Communion, Confirmation, and Holy Week. It is also the church where my mother’s homegoing Mass was celebrated. During my youth, there were other West End Catholic churches that were architectural wonders. However, I reference St. Peter in Chains Cathedral because it is the Mother Church of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. St. Joseph Church is still on Ezzard Charles Drive, but that is not the original building.

The third building is Music Hall. It was there where we were introduced to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Opera. Classical music was not new to us, because as members of the choirs, we had already we been introduced to classical music in our Catholic schools and churches. The major difference was listening to that type of music in that building performed by professional musicians. It was there where I heard my first opera, Porgy and Bess. The thrill of seeing black folks on that stage still results in chills caused by racial pride. It was there that the African American composer R. Nathaniel Dett’s opera was first performed in the thirties. It was also there where we were allowed to sit downstairs instead of the balcony where most of the theaters forced us to sit in the thirties, forties, and midway through the fifties.

We have often heard the expression, It takes a village to raise a child. I agree. This book is about the work of the Catholic Church with African American families. However, the officials in those West End Catholic churches and schools did not operate in a vacuum. There were so many factors in the neighborhood, our village that directly impacted our lives. Thus, this chapter.

My family and the people in the West End gave me a strong sense of self, and it is this sense of self that has sustained me through the peaks and valleys of life. The West End was like a cocoon. I felt safe, protected, and important. We could do everything we needed to . . . right in our neighborhood.

—Reverend Deacon Raphael Simmons

St. Joseph Catholic Church

We didn’t lack for anything if we had the money because there were businesses, churches, and entertainment activities to fulfill all of our needs. Even though there were the lack of money, the overcrowded conditions, and the other discomforts that accompanied poverty; we, as kids, felt safe, because we had it all.

—Joel McCray

Retired Teacher

The greatest gift my mother gave to me is the gift of Catholicism.

—Mary Payne

Xavier University alumna, who reared all of her children Catholic

For me, the knowledge of Kentucky’s slave state designation was real. At Holy Trinity, located on Fifth and Mound, we could look out the window of our third-floor classroom and see it. Its closeness was ever present in my mind because I was well aware of its designation as a former slave state, and of its then-present Jim Crow laws that relegated us to inferior status. To my dismay, our fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, Sr. Mary Regina Pacis, loved our annual trip to Devou Park in Covington, Kentucky. She wanted us to enjoy the trees, grass, and flowers. Natural beauties that were nonexistent in our section of the West End. However, I hated those trips as much as she loved them. Why? Two reasons. Reason 1: I thought drowning was imminent as we crossed the bridge. When I looked down, I could see the water through the holes of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. Reason 2: I had heard stories of Kentucky bounty hunters coming across the Ohio River to reclaim slaves such as Margaret Garner. The adults had often told us stories of Kentucky still being a slave state because of the Jim Crow laws. In my mind, going on a field trip to that state placed me in danger of never seeing my loved ones again. In my young mind, I reasoned that if I did not drown, the former slave catchers would get me.

These previous four observations, to an extent, capture the environment/circumstances that impacted the lives of the Negro kids who attended the West End Catholic schools in the forties through the sixties of the twentieth century. From each of the quotes above, one can infer that there were downsides to living in the Hood. However, there were numerous upsides as well. For despite the challenges of extreme poverty, there were many adults who helped us work around the seemingly insurmountable limitations of poverty so that we could develop strategies that would lead to a better life. The many were actually an ethnically diverse community of Negro, Jewish, Italian, Irish, and German lay and religious adults.

I love revisiting the neighborhood. When I sit in front of what is now known as the Museum Center (to me that place will always be Union Terminal train station), I see, in the distance, the back of Music Hall. In my childhood, the street that connects Music Hall and the Museum Center was called Lincoln Park Drive. The ten-acre Lincoln Park was developed in 1858. It was eventually replaced by the Union Terminal train station in 1933. In 1935, the street leading into the park was named Lincoln Park Drive to honor President Abraham Lincoln, and it was called Lincoln Park Drive because it was the driveway that led to Lincoln Park. In 1976, the name was changed to Ezzard Charles Drive to honor the African American heavyweight champion of the world who had grown up in the West End, and who had also attended St. Joseph School. So, throughout this book, it will be referred to as Ezzard Charles Drive.

When I sit on the steps of the Museum Center, I not only see what is on Ezzard Charles Drive, I also see the streets that provide the boundaries of the West End: Bank Street to the north, the banks of the Ohio River to the south, the back of Music Hall to the east. This comparatively small area is the neighborhood where I first believed. In the midst of the two historical/iconic Cincinnati landmarks of Music Hall and the Museum Center, there is St. Joseph Catholic Church and School. Through the years, I have enjoyed listening to concerts at Music Hall, watching trains coming into and departing from the Union Terminal train station, doing research at the Cincinnati Historical Society and marveling at the Museum Center murals. Murals that feature the laborers who built this city. However, what takes me back to the place where I really first believed is St. Joseph. Why? Because it is one of the six Catholic churches and nine Catholic schools that were a vibrant part of the neighborhood’s fabric when I was growing up in the 1940s through 1960s.

So when I revisit the West End, the place most important to me is St. Joseph Catholic Church/School which bears the proclamation, A Tower of Faith Since 1846. It seems as if it was also situated sort of in the midst of the six Catholic churches and nine Catholic schools that were a vibrant part of the West End’s fabric.

Also, when I attend Mass there, my mind wanders. For I have so many pleasant memories of our parental figures (mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, foster or adoptive), neighbors, teachers (nuns and lay), priests, community activists, friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors, and former West End (black and white) residents who came back to help. Some who had our backs were Negro, Jewish, Italian, Irish, and German. These were a few of the ethnicities we could immediately recognize. Diversity? I do not recall ever hearing that word back then. However, upon reflection, it is obvious that we were reared in a diverse community. Our elders and other black folks wanted the best for us, and many caring and talented non-blacks from a variety of ethnic backgrounds were there to help them help us to a better life.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, some of our West End elders had come here to escape the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the South that had replaced its institutional slavery laws—Jim Crow laws that were not legally obliterated until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts. These laws, at least formally and on paper, recognized us coloreds/Negroes as 100 percent human, entitled to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that the all-men-created-equal document so eloquently articulates. For some who tried to escape, the West End was their first stop.

Isabel Wilkerson and Jacob Lawrence

Two nationally prominent African Americans who have provided us with memorable images of the mass migration of coloreds/Negroes from the South to the Midwest, North, and West are the artist Jacob Lawrence and the Pulitzer Prize awardee journalist Isabel Wilkerson. Both focus on black migration from the South to the Midwest. Both picture and help us contextualize the mass migration of the close to thirty thousand blacks who settled in Cincinnati’s West End.

Isabel Wilkerson, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, in her 600-page thoroughly researched literary nonfiction work, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Mass Migration (1915–1970), details the migration from the South of 6 million blacks, and the impact of that migration on the urban areas in the Midwest, North, and West. Her skillful mingling of the personal stories with historical events definitely helps us see where our stories and those of our family members fit into the grand scheme of things.

The context for our West End ancestors’ migration is captured in Wilkerson’s introduction, wherein she explains,

Their migration was a response to an economic and social structure not of their making. They did what human beings have done for centuries when life became untenable-what the Pilgrims did under the tyranny of British rule, what the Scotch-Irish did in Oklahoma when the land turned to dust, what the Irish did when there was nothing to eat, what the European Jew did during the spread of Nazism, what the landless, Italy, China, and elsewhere did when something better across the ocean called to them. What binds these stories together was the back-against-the-wall, reluctant yet hopeful search for something better, any place but where they were. They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have done.

They left. (14–15)

This mass exodus is also portrayed in the African American artist Jacob Lawrence’s The Great Migration: A Story in Paintings. His drawings give us visuals of that mass migration of Southern blacks to the North, West, and Midwest.

Wilkerson’s skillful integration of personal stories with historical events definitely helped me understand where our stories and those of our family members fit in the grand scheme of things. That is, how the decision to move affected the complex intermingling of setbacks and accomplishments of individuals in our race, as well as that decision’s effect on the country’s urban areas.

Tom Brokaw and Jon Meacham, two highly respected historical/ political analysts offer praise for the depth and accuracy of Wilkerson’s work. Tom Brokaw writes,

The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America’s hidden 20th Century history, the long and difficult trek of Southern blacks to the northern western cities. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand the making of our modern nation.

Jon Meacham has concluded,

With compelling prose and considered analysis, Isabel Wilkerson has given us a landmark portrait of one of the most significant yet little noted shifts in American history: the migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South to the cities of the North and West. It is a complicated tale, with an infinity of implications for questions of race, power, politics, religion, and class implications that are unfolding even now.

In February 2016, the Women’s City Club of Cincinnati sponsored Wilkerson’s lecture at Memorial Hall, adjacent to Music Hall. In her lecture, she stressed the fact that during World War I and World War II, because of the shortage of men, recruiters had gone down South to get black workers for the Midwestern and Northern factories. So, in addition to family members telling them things were better here, there were also recruiters who promised better. This is true of most of those I interviewed for this book. A few examples follow. The Spauldings came from Danville, Kentucky. The Allens came from Brenan, Georgia. The Simmons came from Birmingham, Alabama. The Summerlins came from Register, Georgia. The Muldrows came from Muldrow, Mississippi. They all came for one reason, freedom from the oppressive Jim Crow laws—more specifically, the freedom to get a decent-paying job. For they had heard, from the recruiters during World War I and World War II and/or from their relatives, that they could get decentpaying jobs in Cincinnati. When the war ended and the soldiers came home, some blacks kept their jobs. However many were in the last hired first fired category. My cousin Gloria Hardy told me that her father, Jerimiah Berry, came here from Jackson, Mississippi, to work in one of the factories in the valley during World War II; and when the war ended, he returned to Mississippi because he had been laid off.

While our ancestors’ hope was escape from the suffocating limitations of the prejudices of the South, this did not necessarily materialize. For, as West End kids, we were surrounded by the vestiges of a racist society. It was most evident to us because we knew that the integrated society that surrounded us had relegated us to positions of second-class citizenship. This relegation was apparent in the schools and churches that we were not allowed to attend, the neighborhoods in which we were not allowed to live, the unions which we were not allowed to join, the many jobs for which we were not even allowed to apply, the restaurants in which we could not eat, the movie theaters (we called them shows) and live theaters, some in which we were not allowed, and others that, if they did allow us in, only permitted us to sit in the balcony.

For some of us, Central Avenue, Bank Street, the Eighth Street Viaduct, and the Ohio River or First Street were the points of discomfort/ disenfranchisement because we knew that once we crossed those points of intersection, we were crossing over into an area where we were not welcomed by those in control.

Cincinnati’s West End

Most of the West End that we knew between 1940 and 1970 has now been replaced by the Liberty, Ezzard Charles, Fifth Street, and Seventh Street exit ramps of Interstate 75 South, and by the Queensgate I and II small business districts. Interestingly, it is still bordered by Music Hall to the east and the Museum Center to the West. The Ohio River to the south and Bank Street to the north still complete its borders.

Many referred to our neighborhood as the Bottoms. On one level, it can be assumed that the Bottoms referred to its location at the bottom of the seven hills of the city. At that time, it was a neighborhood in a state of transition. It was still populated by a number of whites. However, the white exodus had begun, and by the 1960s, it had transitioned into a predominantly black neighborhood. So on another level, although it was still populated by a number of whites, some of our armchair historians speculated that it was referred to as the Bottoms because most of us were at the bottom of the economic ladder, a rung that was made even worse by the residual effects of the 1930s depression.

Most of our West End elders had migrated and decided to stay in the Queen City because it was the first city in the free state of Ohio. They were intent on escaping the Jim Crow laws of the South; and Cincinnati, at least on paper, was a city that promised escape to freedom. For them, Cincinnati offered an escape from those stifling and humiliating laws of segregation, laws which legalized segregation in most matters of everyday living: employment, education, transportation, housing, entertainment, marriage, and, although not written, in religious denominations.

Our parents and grandparents had come here from such places as far away as the Delta region in Needmore, Mississippi, from Waycross, Georgia, and as close as Covington and Newport, Kentucky, because they had heard that they could be free once they crossed over one of the bridges connecting Kentucky to Ohio, believing that the Queen City was definitely the city of hope. For them, Cincy, nicknamed the Queen City, was definitely the city of hope, or as some city planners called it, a Model City. Ironically, after living here for a while, some of our parents and grandparents sardonically and, at times lightheartedly, referred to it as up South because of its de facto segregation practices, particularly in employment, housing, and education. De facto refers to the practice of institutional racism that is not protected by the law but by the practice of official segregation. They were unwavering in their hope for a better life. Despite living under the practice of those laws, they and we were able to survive.

Sandwiched between W. E. B. DuBois

and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Historically, we were sandwiched between W. E. B.’s 1908 book Souls of Black Folks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 I Have a Dream speech and Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Both men eloquently identified and offered solutions to race-related issues.

Our living conditions were, in some cases, similar to those detailed in chapter 9, Of the Sons of Masters and Slaves, of The Souls of Black Folks. Its author, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, was a sociologist, the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and editor of the organization’s Crisis magazine. In this chapter, he describes the life in the South for the freed slaves of the Reconstruction Era, the life controlled by Jim Crow laws. His analysis was mainly the result of what he had personally witnessed, and what he had studied about the often inhuman living conditions of many blacks who remained in the South. Much of what he observed also applied to us in the North. He also predicted that the race problem would be one of the major domestic problems of the twentieth century because it was a multifaceted one, which resulted in systemic inequities in education, housing, enforcement of the laws, and opportunities.

In that chapter, Du Bois begins, In the civilized life of today, the contact of men [blacks and whites] and their relations to each other fall in a few main lines of action and communication. His five points of racial intersection are listed below.

There is first, the physical proximity of homes and dwelling places, the way in which neighborhoods group themselves, and contiguity of nomic-relations, the methods by which individuals cooperate for earning a living for the mutual satisfaction of wants, for the production of wealth. Next, there are the political relations, the cooperation in social control, in group government, in laying and paying the burden of taxation. In the fourth place there are the less tangible but highly important forms of intellectual activity and commerce, the interchange of libraries; and above all, the gradual formation for each community of that curious (third something) which we call public opinion. Closely allied with this come the various forms of social contact in everyday life, in travel. Finally, there are the varying forms of religious enterprise, of moral teaching and benevolent endeavor. These are the principal ways the races interact with each other. It is my present task, therefore, to indicate, from my point of view, how the black race in the South meet and mingle with the whites in these matters of everyday life. In theatres, in house gatherings, in marrying and giving in marriage." (Du Bois 30)

Note: He mentioned religion in which there were also systemic exclusionary practices which denied access to the church, or at least to a seat in the front of the church. His solution to the race problem was equal access to education, jobs, decent housing, entertainment, to practice religion, and to communicate on a personal level with people of different ethnicities.

Sixty years after Du Bois’ book was published, in his 1968 I Have a Dream speech to the nation and the world, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the same issues W. E. B. addressed. In his I Have a Dream speech, Dr. King eloquently spoke of the Negroes’ dreams deferred because of the effects of segregation. These segregation practices were protected by the Jim Crow laws of the South or the de facto segregation practices of the North. In greater detail, in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. King cited the same issues that Du Bois had identified over half a century prior. He alluded to the lives of such highly conservatives as Jesus in the Bible, Thomas Jefferson et. al. in the Declaration of Independence, St. Augustine, and Mahatma Gandhi. King reminded his readers that Jesus was a rebel whose action precipitated violence, that the Declaration of Independence was based on the premise that according to the laws of God and nature, all men are created equal; that St. Augustine had concluded that an unjust law is no law at all, and that Mahatma Gandhi had successfully led a nonviolent civil disobedience revolt against unjust laws.

When we were growing up in the West End, most of us had never even heard of W. E. B. or his book. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., born in 1929, was a child like we were. Neither were we aware of the state of Ohio’s Black Laws that outlawed integration. However, we were aware of the issues on which they focused. Some of us and our parents experienced them in living color. Although we had not seen copies of the sundown laws that were in effect here in Cincinnati, we knew by word of mouth that we were not allowed in many of the predominantly white suburban neighborhoods after 6:00 p. m. or after the sun set. We also knew when we caught the bus in Cincinnati to Covington or Newport, Kentucky, and were traveling on any train from Cincinnati’s Union Terminal to Kentucky, that we were required, by law, to ride in the colored/Negro car, a practice for which the 1964 Freedom Fighters were incarcerated, brutalized, and, for some, killed. In addition to our parents drilling us on the dangers of traveling south of the Ohio River, some of us also believed that we were not welcomed when we walked east of Central Avenue, west of the Western Hills viaduct, or north of Bank Street.

Of course, we could travel beyond these points of intersection. In fact, it was during this same period that some African American families had begun the trek up the ladder of upper mobility, to the suburbs. However, we were also aware of the many spoken and unspoken restrictions placed on us because of our color.

Again, as kids, we had not even heard of the term Jim Crow or the sundown laws. However, we did experience the restrictive effects of those laws.

Jim Crow Laws and Our Ancestors

The term Jim Crow, originally used to ridicule blacks, was popularized by one of the Black Face white comics whose acts depicted us as ignorant, subhuman, and incapable of moral judgments. In reducing them to their irreducible essence, Jim Crow laws prevented integration and equal access. To make the practice more acceptable in the North, the term separate but equal came into existence as a result of the Supreme Court finding against Plessy, who went to court to challenge the interstate transportation laws regarding segregation on trains. To come up with some semblance of fairness, the court inserted the expression separate but equal into the mix. The Jim Crow laws’ disenfranchisement or racial apartheid not only affected public transportation, but housing, employment, voting, education, public facilities, and, although not specifically mentioned, religious institutions.

These laws were in effect until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Gerrymandering, redlining, and government backed racially restrictive covenants in which builders could insist that homeowners sign a statement that they would not sell their homes to African Americans. All three of these subjected/ subjugated most Negroes to life in the ghettos. As a consequence, many African American businessmen, doctors, attorneys, and other professionals lived in the West End.

Another example of how the Jim Crow laws affected us is the experience of Ronald Smith. He talks of having to sit in the colored car of the train when he boarded it at the Union Terminal to take his annual trip to Louisville, Kentucky, to see his godmother, Lula Belle Wright.

De Facto Segregation and Us

Although the Jim Crow laws were not on the books in our Midwestern city, as a consequence of gerrymandering and redlining, our lives were, to an extent, controlled by the practice of de facto segregation. Actually, these were implementations of the Jim Crow laws. They just were not laws, just practices. As children, we could empathize with our ancestors who saw Cincinnati as an escape from second-class citizenship because we were not aware of, or assumed that we were not officially controlled by the Jim Crow laws of the South. However, the unofficial control was still there. Moreover, we were also living under the rule of the Ohio Constitution that forbade integration, and the Black Laws that affected our participation in the judicial system. According to Stephen Middleton, in his book The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio, the Black Laws were on the books from1803 until 1869. They evidenced the power of the state to limit enslaved and free African Americans’ access to total freedom, specifically in the right to vote and to serve on juries when whites were accused. In neighborhoods like Reading and Cheviot, former Caucasian residents tell of laws that forbade the presence of Negroes after dark. All of these impacted what we read, saw, and experienced. Recently, one of my white friends who is just a year younger than me, assured me that the sundown laws were in practice in Cheviot. For she knew that we were not allowed in that neighborhood after dark.

Examples of de facto segregation practices can be seen in the classified ads of two of the local newspapers, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Post. These ads were replete with reminders of our second-class status. Daily, when hunting for jobs and/or a place to stay, by scanning the ads in these papers, our elders and we had to put up with the Colored Need Not Apply and For Whites Only ads.

To counter the Whites Only and Colored Need Not Apply ads, enterprising African Americans would place their own ads in the local papers. Ads in which they would say such things as Colored man or colored woman seeks employment. This was true of my neighbor Servelman Kenney, a 1938 graduate of Withrow High School and World War II army veteran. After receiving an honorable discharge for his four years of service, he decided to place an ad of his own: Colored Veteran Needs Employment. He was hired by the Young and Klein printers, where he was eventually promoted to lithographer. In his home hangs a framed picture he created. It is a fake front page Cincinnati Enquirer lead story headline that reads, kenny joYoung and Klein, dated August 1, 1947. He worked there for thirty-nine years. At the time of this enterprising veteran’s death, his employer wrote that Kenney was one of his most outstanding employees.

As a result of the work of Dr. DuBois and Dr. King, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enabled the NAACP to file and win de facto segregation suits in the north. Two of those suits were against the Cincinnati Board of Education. In fact, my brother Norris Muldrow was one of the NAACP’s civil rights attorneys who won a number of de facto segregation suits against the school systems, landlords, and the railroad systems.

De Facto Segregation and the Cincinnati Public Schools

Routinely, when making decisions about which schools to enroll their children, our parents were told that their children could not attend many of the suburban public schools (kindergarten through university) in the city. This does not mean that no Negro children were allowed to attend some of the schools. There were a few. However, there were very few. A classic example is the fact that the Negro children in the Steele subdivision of North College Hill had to walk past the predominantly white school to attend the all-black school. The de facto segregation practices such as this resulted in the NAACP suing the Cincinnati Public School Board of Education twice, in 1966 and 1982.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Cincinnati public high schools such as Hughes, Withrow, Woodward, and Walnut Hills admitted a few students of color. However, they would only let them swim on Fridays. In 2014, so many of the alumni angrily recall that demeaning practice. As they saw it, they were forced to swim in the pool after the white kids had been swimming in it all week, and before the weekly draining. This humiliation was coupled with the fact that in order to get the necessary credit for the physical education class, they had to get in the dirtied water before the pool was emptied over the weekend. A Walnut Hills High School father complained so often and so vociferously that the officials eventually relented, and compromised by waiving the swimming requirement for his daughter.

The swimming pool situation was not the most important of the de facto segregation practices of Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). There were academic issues that affected the hiring of teachers and support staff. There were also issues that controlled the students’ assignments to schools and to tracks. De facto segregation suits were brought against the Cincinnati Board of Education of the Public Schools. There was the Tina Deal v Cincinnati Board of Education suit filed by the NAACP. One of its local leaders, my brother, attorney Norris Muldrow, worked with a team of attorneys from the national office in New York. He did most of the in-house research. As the local attorney, Muldrow had access to the school system’s records of its hiring and student assignment practices. In our discussions about his fact-gathering sessions, he said he was amazed at how the officials allowed him access to their records. It seemed as if they were confident nothing would change. These records showed how widespread the segregation policies affected black students, prospective black teachers, and clerical staff. Spending years analyzing the Board of Education’s records, he would often express shock at how unapologetic the officials were about their discriminatory practices (Tina Deal).

Information accessed by the NAACP attorneys provided evidence to bring the 1966 Tina Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education suit to federal