href="#u82365b6c-512c-50a4-92a3-7c4929243d72">Conclusion
“A Rugged and Controversial Existence”
Illustrations
1. Robert Stargel, Marshall Bragdon, Eugene Sparrow, S. Arthur Spiegel
2. Danny Litwhiler and Jackie Robinson at a 1948 MFRC promotional event
3. David McPheeters, assistant director, executive director of the CHRC
4. Virginia Coffey, assistant director, executive director of the CHRC
5. Virginia Coffey speaking to the 1968 Cincinnati Police Division recruit class
6. Thomas Garner, Judge S. Arthur Spiegel, Virginia Coffey, and Judge Robert Black at the 1972 CHRC annual meeting
7. Thomas Garner with Virginia Coffey at the 1973 CHRC annual meeting
8. Stevie Wonder at a 1986 CHRC Get Out the Vote event
9. Dr. W. Monty Whitney, executive director of the CHRC
10. CHRC executive director Arzell Nelson
11. Susan Noonan, CHRC staff member and acting executive director
12. CHRC executive director Dr. W. Monty Whitney, Cincinnati mayor Charlie Luken, CHRC board chair Mark A. Vander Laan
13. One of the CHRC Study Circles organized after the 2002 riots
14. Judge S. Arthur Spiegel swears in the 2003 CHRC board
15. Michael Maloney, Virginia Coffey, Stuart Faber, and Louise Spiegel at an Urban Appalachian Council recognition event
16. CHRC executive director Cecil Thomas
17. CHRC board chair Arthur Schriberg, Cincinnati mayor Charlie Luken, and CHRC executive director Cecil Thomas
18. Judge S. Arthur Spiegel, Sister Jean Patrice Harrington, and John Pepper
19. Cincinnati council member Paul Booth with the 2002 Elthelrie Harper Award winner, Sgt. Sylvia Ranaghan
20. CHRC executive director Ericka King-Betts
Foreword
Understanding the history of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission requires understanding the emergence of Cincinnati’s entire civic structure. The city’s civic institutions are rooted in the Progressive Era, which lasted from the 1890s well into the twentieth century. Progressivism included the following characteristics:
• An affirmation of urban life and the belief that whatever ails the city can be fixed through planning and good government. For Progressives and their descendants, intergroup relations was just another problem such as overcrowding, substandard housing, poor health conditions, street maintenance, or waste management. Each could be fixed through civic dialogue and the intentional efforts that emerge from trust. Perhaps the clearest example of Progressivism in the city is the United Way of Greater Cincinnati (formerly the Community Chest and Council), where all problems are considered amenable to solution through rational policies, skillful administration, and strict budget accountability. Another example is the Charter Committee of Greater Cincinnati, a local good-government group that initiated home rule, civil service, and community planning.
• The belief that action at the neighborhood level is essential to the physical and social health of the city.
• Recognition of the impulses that drive women and other minorities to seek recognition and inclusion in the life of the city.
• The impulse of noblesse oblige, which says people with education and wealth have both the right and the obligation to help shape the life of the community.
Although Progressivism produced many local benefits, it was not an unalloyed good at the national level. Many Progressives believed in the primacy of science, the state, and their own superiority, and so backed policies such as eugenics and immigration restriction. Nevertheless, the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (CHRC) is the creation of the Progressives and their mid-twentieth-century successors. Some of its founders and later leaders have been associated with the Woman’s City Club, the Charter Committee, and the Cincinnatus Association, for example. Some of the perennial tensions that beset the CHRC reflect the conflict between noblesse oblige and the popular impulse to organize into political parties. Because the CHRC is ultimately subject to the mayor and city council, these officials can either champion or try to eliminate the commission based on their ideology and political needs. Hence, some mayors and council members have tried to replace CHRC functions with projects of their own creation and control.
The CHRC not only has been influenced by Cincinnati’s traditional civic leaders and their associations but is also the product of the civil rights movement of the mid-to-late twentieth century and of the African American leaders that movement brought forth. This book gives voice to their struggles, to their contributions, and to their allies of all political stripes. During the 1960s and 1970s the CHRC also drew energy from the new activism that emerged from Cincinnati’s thriving neighborhood movement.
The CHRC is both a product of these movements and, in varying degrees, an incubator of new organizations such as Housing Opportunities Made Equal, the Urban Appalachian Council, and People Working Cooperatively. The commission has also nurtured local manifestations of the women’s movement and the organizational efforts of the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, and Hispanics. It has aided and been aided by the movement of Jews and Muslims for recognition and inclusion in the life of the city. Thus the CHRC is an integral part of the city’s civic infrastructure. Put simply, over the years the commission has provided a doorway into city hall for groups in the community that have in one way or another been marginalized. Its internal and external conflicts reflect the tensions among the various impulses described above, most notably the clashes between self-made citizens, elected officials, and city elites.
With this background in mind it may be instructive to examine how the CHRC History Project got started, was implemented, and resulted in this volume.
