Yes, Kathy Miller, racism does exist

YOUNGSTOWN

In the early morning hours of Oct. 7, 1972, the Rev. Kenneth Simon – then a teenager – thought he heard his family’s furnace explode.

“There was smoke all in the house,” recalled the Rev. Mr. Simon, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church.

What Mr. Simon quickly learned, however, was that the explosion was no accident: Someone had fire-bombed his father’s car while it was parked in the driveway of the family’s South Jackson Street home on the East Side.

The Rev. Lonnie K.A. Simon – Kenneth’s father – was a well-known civil-rights activist as well as a member of the city schools’ board of education, and was facing backlash at the time after being arrested at a football game at South High Stadium while trying to help break up a fight.

The attack, detailed in a front-page Vindicator article, occurred well within the 50-year period during which Kathy Miller, now-former Mahoning County chairwoman for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, maintains that racism was not an issue in the United States.

Miller resigned from the volunteer position Thursday after controversial remarks she made to The Guardian went viral.

In a video, Miller – who is white – told a Guardian reporter “I don’t think there was any racism until [President] Obama was elected.”

She added: “If you’re black, and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity; it was given to you.”

Read more of the story and a list of events involving racial tension, recorded in Vindicator headlines over the years, in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.