Blacks struggled but gained a lot from 1950s on

The period marked change nationally and on a local level.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The second half of the 20th century for most blacks in America was marked with struggles against racial injustice and a fight for recognition in political, educational and social arenas.
Blacks in the Youngstown area faced many of those same struggles. Those struggles were, at least in part, offset with gains in virtually every aspect of life in the black community.
Episode of unrest
One of the first episodes to involve racial unrest in the city in the second half of the century started with a group of young people trying to stay cool at a pool on a warm summer day.
According to Vindicator files, three blacks went to the Lincoln Park swimming pool on the city's east side in July of 1951. The group swam without trouble for several minutes before being surrounded and threatened by a group of whites. Police shut the pool down to avoid violence.
Vindicator files show a similar occurrence at one of the city's pools a month earlier. Black swimmers were pelted with "stones the size of hens' eggs."
A study was eventually done on building a swimming pool closer to the northeast for those living in the Sharon Line area -- one section of the city where a lot of blacks lived. Other areas were the Monkey's Nest and Smoky Hollow.
Population grew
The black population in Youngstown by 1950 had grown to about 21,400 and continued to grow by about a 1,000 a year over the next decade. Many blacks wanted to branch out beyond areas typically considered "black."
In December 1959, the Gillam family was one of the first to move into a predominantly white neighborhood. Councilman Artis Gillam is in his second four-year term as a member of city council, but he was a 17-year-old boy when a brick crashed through a window of his parents' Colby Street home in January 1960. On a note attached to the brick was a racial slur and the letters KKK.
Gillam says it wasn't the immediate neighbors that took issue with the family moving to the neighborhood. Many of them, in fact, helped stand guard on the house alongside the NAACP, members of the Urban League and police.
Another black family threatened at home in an episode seeming to have racist ties was the McCullough Williams Jr. family.
Williams, a longtime area political figure and civil rights advocate, has been in the local funeral home business for more than 50 years. He has been a member of the Park and Recreation Commission and Junior Chamber of Commerce, and he served on the board of neighborhood centers.
Williams was the first black person to hold several local offices. He was the first black to serve on the board of the North Side Kiwanis Club, first black Democrat to be elected as 3rd Ward Councilman, first black director of the Youngstown Automobile Club and the first black to serve as president of the Youngstown Board of Education.
Bomb under porch
In December 1970, a bomb exploded under the porch of Williams' home, blowing out windows and doing extensive damage. Williams, his wife and three children were not injured.
Vindicator files mention other bombings, arson and threats that were racially motivated. One of the most memorable incidents of racial unrest in the city, however, was the riot of 1968.
What happened
In April 1968 in an otherwise quiet section of the South Side, two police officers and a city man were shot, stores were looted, fires broke out, the Ohio National Guard was called in and a citywide curfew was imposed.
Twenty-seven-year-old Jonathan Barrett was a witness to the riot's beginning. Barrett, now 62, spends his days cutting hair and chatting with customers at Mays Barber Shop on the North Side, where he is employed.
Barrett said he remembers the day clearly. About 50 members of the black community had gathered at a Hillman Street business called the Grape House, he said, to watch the unfolding news after the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. A good many people, he said, were standing outside the business.
Barrett said police came to disperse the crowd, particularly a more vocal woman standing in a nearby park. He said several of the men believed police were manhandling the woman and tried to intervene.
Within minutes shots rang out, leaving two officers and a city man, Carl Madison, wounded. All three men eventually recovered from their injuries, but, Barrett said, from the moment of the shooting, everything was out of control.
"It was basically an overreaction on both sides," he said.
Barrett said a second event during those few days fueled the unrest. He said Ohio National Guardsmen called in to help calm the situation found themselves surrounded by a crowd of blacks and tried to move their jeep forward. One man was struck, and the unrest intensified.
Several days would pass before order was restored. Members of the black community staged several peaceful marches and gatherings afterward.
Many gains
Racial tension and unrest do not solely define the second half of the century. There were many gains by blacks in education, business, politics and civil service.
Youngstown saw its first black police officer in 1909. By the mid 1970s, that number crept up to 19. Today, there are 35 black men and women on the police force.
Robert Bush Jr. now serves as Youngstown's chief of police -- the first black in the position.
Blacks did not join the fire department as early. The first black firefighter, Jesse Carter, did not make it onto the force until the 1960s. By 2003, black firefighters made up about 10 percent of the firefighters in the city.
Mary Lovett Belton was the first black schoolteacher in the area at the Butler School in 1939. Several others followed in the next decades, but it wasn't until the 1960s that blacks became administrators.
Dr. James Ervin became the principal at Hayes Junior High School. The first superintendent of schools was Robert Pegues Jr. in 1972. Wendy Webb will soon be the first black woman to become superintendent of schools.
James Fortune is serving as the first black elected as president of city council. Charles Frost had been appointed to the position by then-Mayor Jack Hunter in 1971. There are now four other black members of council.
jgoodwin@vindy.com