executive director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, in August 2012, she became curious about the agency’s history. Who were its past directors and what was their legacy? she wondered. After being told there were dozens of CHRC file boxes stored floor to ceiling in an obscure room in City Hall, and later discovering another large cache of file boxes in a storage facility in a neighboring city, she decided it was time to act.
With the encouragement of Dr. King-Betts, I developed a proposal to recover the agency’s history. It stated in part:
For the past 70 years the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (CHRC), preceded by the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee (MFRC), has been a vital part of Cincinnati’s social fabric. It has sought to ameliorate racial tensions and serve as a focal point for intergroup relations. It has served as an important incubator for emerging constituency groups, including Appalachians, women, LGBTQ advocates, and people with disabilities. It has also been present to celebrate the work of human rights leaders and to inspire new leadership.
The proposal went on to point out that “the compilation and organization of these materials will benefit the CHRC in assessing its past and working with city leadership to plan its program for the future.”
Dr. King-Betts saw the project as enabling an understanding of what worked well for the agency and what did not, as well as providing insights into current community conditions and the CHRC’s responses. Community funders agreed: project grants were provided by Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal), the Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, and the Stephen H. Wilder Foundation. The CHRC provided both monetary and in-kind support in the form of staff assistance and materials.
With this encouragement and financial support, I set about forming a group to carry out the CHRC History Project. The initial project team consisted of me serving as project director; Dr. James Carson, archivist; Jeffrey Crawford, librarian/data base manager; Jeffrey Dey, data consultant; and Geoffrey Daniels, University of Cincinnati intern. When Dr. Carson withdrew for health reasons, Dr. Fritz Casey-Leininger, head of the Community History program at the University of Cincinnati, became the project archivist. Nathan McGee, a University of Cincinnati graduate student in history, compiled the newspaper index and organized the eighty boxes of new material Dr. King-Betts had found and directed to the University of Cincinnati archives. Drs. Phillip Obermiller and Thomas Wagner agreed to write the history.
The team first set out to locate all repositories of materials relating to the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee and the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. Interviews with people who were a part of MFRC/CHRC history were conducted to supplement the written documentation. We also expanded the project to include an index of newspaper articles referencing the MFRC and the CHRC for the seventy-year period. We then developed a comprehensive database and finding aid, updated the agency’s timeline, and subsequently produced the book you have in hand.
At times, team members felt like detectives. Some useful collections outside Cincinnati were identified. For example, the estate of MFRC director Marshall Bragdon selected Tulane University to house his papers, while the files of the Urban Appalachian Council, including material on the CHRC, were located at the Berea College Archives, in Kentucky. Locally, the Community Relations Collection at Hebrew Union College housed related material, as did the University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Rare Books Library, and the Cincinnati History Library and Archives. Dr. King-Betts discovered a photo of Jackie Robinson holding a CHRC poster and Janet Smith’s history of the first five years of the MFRC in one of the many boxes stored at City Hall. Marshall Bragdon’s 1945–65 manuscript history of the agency was located by Obermiller and Wagner, as was the first CHRC director’s controversial report on the 1967 riots. Finding these key documents added excitement to the project as we became convinced that, without our work, some of these materials might have been lost or remained undiscovered.
On behalf of the project team, I invite you to share our excitement as you consider the lessons the CHRC’s history has to offer for the practice of human relations in the city and the nation.
Michael E. Maloney
CHRC History Project Director
Acknowledgments
Ericka King-Betts, CHRC Executive Director
James Carson, Archival Consultant
Charles F. Casey-Leininger, Historian*
Jeffery Crawford, E-Resources Cataloging and Database Management Specialist*
James DaMico, Curator of Photographs and Prints, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Geoffrey Daniels, Graduate Research Assistant*
Jeffrey Dey, Data Consultant
Christine Schmid Engels, Archives Manager, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Kevin Grace, Head and University Archivist*
Michael E. Maloney, Project Director
Nathan McGee, Graduate Research Assistant*
Danilo Palazzo, Director, School of Planning*
Suzanne Maggard Reller, Reference/Collections Librarian*
Claire Smittle, Librarian, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager* *at the University of Cincinnati
COOPERATING INDIVIDUALS
Helen Black, wife of Judge Robert Black
Tedd Good, LGBTQ community activist
Rev. Robert Harris, advocate for disabled people
Charles Judd, civic leader
Rev. Damon Lynch II, civil rights leader
Scott McLarty, LGBTQ activist
David McPheeters, first CHRC executive director
Cheryl Meadows, former CHRC executive director
Judith Bogart Meredith, former CHRC communications director
Rev. Arzell Nelson, former CHRC executive director
Susan Noonan, former CHRC acting executive director
Barbara Smitherman, civic leader
Marian Spencer, civil rights activist
Judge S. Arthur Spiegel, former CHRC board president
Louise Spiegel, former CHRC member
Sen. Cecil Thomas, former CHRC executive director
COOPERATING INSTITUTIONS
Cooperating institutions include the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Library, Berea College Library and Archives, the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, the Klau Library at Hebrew Union College–Cincinnati, and the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
FUNDING
This publication was made possible by grants from the
