Alumna looks at the past

The local woman takes pride in being the school’s first black majorette.

By HAROLD GWIN

VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Jeanette Rogers Belt didn’t think it was particularly racially significant when she was selected as a majorette at The Rayen School as a junior.

After all, she was already a majorette with the Buckeye Elks Lodge band and had the experience.

Some 50 years later, at age 67, she looks back on the accomplishment of becoming the first black majorette at Rayen with some pride.

“I was the first one ever,” said Belt, who grew up on Arlington Street on the city’s North Side and now lives in Amedia Plaza in downtown Youngstown. She was the only black majorette on the squad during her junior and senior years, graduating in 1956, she said.

Belt said she doesn’t know if any other young black women tried out for the squad before her.

No racial tension

There was no racial animosity shown toward her, nor did anyone try to discourage her when she went to her first tryout and won a spot, she said.

“I enjoyed that,” she said, pointing out that her success in achieving her goal was never a racial issue for her.

Making the squad “meant a lot to me,” she said, adding that she felt accepted by her white peers on the squad.

Her baton-twirling days ended with high school, she said.

Within two years of graduation, she had married Kenneth Belt and then moved to Cleveland, California and finally to New York City where she worked with a senior citizens program.

Along the way, she had two children, Kenneth Jr. of Youngstown, who died in 1994, and a daughter, Rochelle Belt, who lives in Philadelphia.

A different town

She moved back to Youngstown eight years ago to be close to her mother, Gertrude Rogers, who died two weeks ago at age 95.

She came back to a much different town, Belt said.

“There were a few things to do around here. The work was better then,” she recalled, referring to a more prosperous Youngstown in the 1950s. Still, it wasn’t easy putting food on the table for a large family, she said, noting she was the seventh of 12 children in her family.

There seems to be more racial animosity in the city today than there was 50 years ago, she said.

“It doesn’t affect me because I ignore it, but I hear about it,” she said.

She was gone from the city a long time, but her part in The Rayen School’s history remains a part of her life.

“Oh, yes. No one lets me forget it,” she said.

gwin@vindy.com