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Clarence Boles, Youngstown community activist, urged listeners to scrutinize their candidates for public office
alcorn@ vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
– Frederick Douglass
Clarence Boles of Youngstown, community activist and managing editor for The Buckeye Review, the Mahoning Valley’s weekly newspaper that focuses on issues that impact black Americans locally and nationally, used the above quote and others by Douglass, a black social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman of the late 1800s, to make his points during his address Saturday at the Feast of Salads Black History Month event at Wick Park Pavilion.
The event, attended by about 100, was organized by Annie Hall of the East Side Crime Watch at Oak and Fruit streets, and Robert Burke, director of the Youngstown Parks & Recreation Department.
Boles urged people to make sure candidates for public office are strongly vetted.
“They have to have a record of community service. Ask them questions. Make them prove they are worth your vote,” he said.
He also challenged the black community for not doing enough to educate their children about black history.
“Teach your kids black history the way you teach them the Gospel,” Boles said.
They need to know about people like Douglass, who was speaking out about slavery and giving women the vote in the late 1800s; Booker T. Washington, who founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; and George Washington Carver, a prominent black scientist and inventor best known for the many uses he devised for the peanut, Boles said.
“You need to share these stories with your white friends,” he said.
Douglass has more quotes that are relevant today than does the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Boles said.
Here is one, said Boles: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”
“America is in trouble, and a lot of it has to with racism, its most horrible societal disease,” Boles said.
He challenged department heads to take employees to lunch and talk about race.
Betty Stanford of Youngstown, originally from West Virginia, said it was “very inspiring to learn about people from the 1800s and what they accomplished.”
Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally described Boles as a “truly genuine guy.” If people read his columns in the Buckeye Review, they will recognize him through his words and writing style, the mayor said.
McNally said Annie Hall is an “angel for the city. When she calls, it’s not to complain. She invariably asks for things to make the city better.”