Hi.

I'm Mark Greer, executive director of the Akron Bicentennial.

And in partnership with PBS Western Reserve, we're pleased to present a forgotten history Forum series.

The Forgotten History forums will explore aspects of Akron's history that, while critical to our development, are not often discussed.

Throughout this yearlong series will highlight seminal points in our history, some undiscovered and others which still challenge us today.

Topics will include women trailblazers in Akron's history, the development of the New Akron History Anthology published by the University of Akron Press, Akron's Native American History, The History of Deaf Rubber Workers, The Impact of Urban Renewal, particularly on Akron's Black community, and the history of the African American Church, among others.

On behalf of the Akron Bicentennial, we hope you enjoy our Forgotten History Forum series.

We're really excited about this first Forgotten History Forum series with the Akron History President, Dave Lieberth, who you may have heard of if you lived here in Akron.

But also, we're going to be- we're so happy that this forum is literally on the formation and the development of the Akron History Center that is just three doors down here on South Main Street.

We're going to be having the grand opening of the Akron History Center on April 5th, that Saturday morning at 11 a.m., and I've already been inside, and it's amazing you're going to want to come and see that.

And again, the grand opening will be April 5th, 2025.

I want to just say a word about Dave Lieberth.

We work rather closely together with the Akron Bicentennial.

I first met Dave when when I was, working at Leadership Akron.

And, Dave has been such a wealth of resources and knowledge not only to this community, you know, the entire the entire city of Akron, and really, really our region.

You know, no one has written more and advocated more for the history of Akron.

And so we're really honored to have him to be the opening of the Forgotten History Forum series.

Just to say a few things more about Dave.

Dave is also the executive secretary of the Akron Bicentennial Commission.

Dave was also from 2002 to 2012, he was the deputy mayor of the City of Akron.

He is Chairman emeritus of the Summit County Historical Society and is a founder of the Leadership Akron Program, and chairs the Community Engagement Committee of Summa Health.

Dave is a founding member of the LeBron James Family Foundation Advisory Board, and in 2019, the Akron Community Foundation selected him to receive the annual Burt Polsky Humanitarian Award.

And I will just also say Dave is a devoted husband, father and grandfather, and we are so glad to have him come and share this Forgotten History Forum series on the Akron History Center.

So please help me give a warm welcome to Akron History Center president Dave Lieberth.

- Thank you.

Let me talk a little bit about the planning for the bicentennial.

When I left the mayor's office in 2012, I knew that we had only 13 years left until the bicentennial would be celebrated.

And so I wanted to be sure that we had our own house in order at the Summit County Historical Society.

We knew that we would need to develop some platforms for the bicentennial on which we could mount, information.

Both historical information and celebratory information.

And the first of those platforms was the Akron History Center.

So what we wanted to do in 2022 was create.

And this is a simple mission statement an enduring free exhibit of Akron's 200 year history.

Now in Akron, we have about 15 organizations, by my count, that I operate some sort of history museum or exhibit in one way or another, but there's no one place where the entire history of the community is told.

That is something that Cleveland has.

Columbus has, Cincinnati has, Dayton has, Toledo has.

But we didn't have.

And so here was an opportunity for us to develop that one place where all the history of Akron could be told.

So let me tell you about the Akron History Center by the numbers.

There are 62 exhibits.

Right now there are 113 artifacts displayed.

There are 30 video flat screens.

There are 22 separate video presentations, PowerPoints and narrated- and several narrated with audio.

Plus, there are 64 video biographies of Akronites who impacted America.

It's one of our exhibits on the Main Street level.

We have selected 64 people who- in Akron's history, who have gone on to have an impact on the country, in sports, in show business, in science, in the professions, in literature in poetry, in acting and the arts and so forth.

And then by the numbers, we have 84 individual corporations, foundations and government sponsors who have given us money in order to carry out this project.

As of today, we've raised $2,200,000.

And frankly, we've spent most of it at this point.

So that's- when you see a world class set of exhibits next door.

That's why.

We've bought and paid for the best that we could, that we could find.

Let me go ahead and tell you what's in the museum so that I can give you a fast tour of what you're going to see.

When I was a kid going to the Akron Zoo, I was always excited about the little natural history museum they had there because they had bones and they had, you know, skeletons and animals and things.

And I thought, is there something we can do to connect kids with their natural history?

And, in 1966, when I was working at the University of Akron as a college junior, I, ran into Dr. Paul Wingard in the geography department, and he was up to his, knees in muck at the, excavation site of the Billow Funeral Home in Fairlawn.

And in that hole, they found the skeleton of a juvenile mastodon.

And so those bones have been at the university ever since.

So when you walk into the Akron History Center, you're going to see the vertebrae of a juvenile mastodon that actually once trod the grounds here in, Summit County.

We couldn’t exhibit the original piece.

And so in a number of cases, what we've had- Thank God for modern technology.

We have had a 3D printer, using polyurethane materials to reproduce with great precision.

Some artifacts that we wanted to display but we didn't want people to hurt.

They can touch them.

And that is the juvenile mastodon vertebrae.

Also, we have a blade that was found, on the estate.

We now call Stan Hywet along the Portage Path about 100 years ago.

We acquired it in an auction about 20 years ago.

And that blade is touchable by the kids so that they can see- Touch exactly what- Something that relates to our history of indigenous people, in this area.

So then you walk up the steps, You can take an elevator, too, but take the steps, because there is 40 steps in the building between the three floors.

And 20 of those steps have been labeled.

We call them the 20 Steps to Social Justice.

These are topics that are harder to exhibit.

Not to tell in a narrative form, but to exhibit.

So what we've done is that we've labeled 20 of those steps.

That starts with the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 that protected civil liberties and, outlawed slavery.

John Brown, Sojourner Truth, president Lincoln's call to arms are all mentioned on those steps, the founding of Wesley Temple.

The attempted lynching, in downtown Akron in 1900.

The chartering of the NAACP in 1917.

Both good and bad.

The dominance of the Ku Klux Klan in 1926, where it pretty much controlled local government.

The mayor was a member of the Klan.

Several judges were most of the Akron school board was.

And, a lot of people just saw them as another political party.

And so they did not, take into account the hatred that they spewed.

And it wasn't so much for Black residents because we only had a couple thousand Black residents in the 1920s.

But what they were mostly against, the Klan, were the Papists and the Jews.

And by the Papists, of course, I mean the Italians and the Irish, who they hated along with the Jews and also the Blacks.

And so the Ku Klux Klan dominated, the area until, as Claire Dickinson writes in his chapter of the new anthology, Wendell Wilkie provided great assistance in, demolishing, the Ku Klux Klan’s power in Akron, along with C.L.

Knight, who was the publisher of the, Akron Beacon Journal and hated the Klan himself.

In 1946, Akron was the intersection of the deaf.

We had the largest, in their words, Deaf colony in the United States.

So that's one of the steps as well, as we worked our way towards social justice, recognizing the rights of people with disabilities.

Certainly, we also talk about the development of the fair housing contact service in the 60s and the founding of America's really first sustainable victim assistance program in the country by the Reverend Bob Denton.

It goes all the way up to 2011, when LeBron founds his I PROMISE program, and 2014, when Akron played host to the International Gay Games.

All of those events are are listed on the steps.

And our hope is, is that we will be then able to provide a QR codes and access to the full stories behind them on the website that we will be developing, as well.

Lauri asks, what about Akron is it that allows us to punch above our weight?

It is our strongest asset and I would tell you it is our size.

We are well proportioned and well sized for success.

David Giffels put it another way He said Akron has everything.

We only have one of everything, but we have everything.

And so here we sit, 30 miles from Major League Baseball, basketball and football.

Here we sit, an hour away.

A half hour away from cultural attractions that can't be duplicated anywhere in the world.

The symphony orchestras that we have, the art museums that we have.

But Akron remains the largest small town in America.

Lauri, our size is our biggest advantage.

The sense of collaboration.

When we employed a consultant in the mayor's office, back in about 20 years ago, he said Akron is unique among American Midwest industrial cities in that you can go from your thought process of an invention you'd like to see, right up to getting the prototype off the line right here without ever leaving town.

We have been an amazing concentration of talent over the years that we want to exploit in this museum by, encouraging young people to think beyond themselves.

You know, Jon Meacham, the historian, and many of you have read his book Soul of America.

I suspect he talks about the fact of what the value of history is.

He says that the the crises of our own times when we feel overwhelmed by world events and things that are out of our control, we should be able to look back and understand that people who came before us with measured, attendance to these problems found solutions to the problems.

That's the value of history.

It's to provide perspective.

And so, as desperate as people sometimes think things are today.

We've always been there.

A riot on our main street in 1900 being overtaken by a mob.

And- of 3000 men and women walking down Main Street, we have pictures of it in white hoods and white gowns for the Ku Klux Klan.

We've been here before.

We had protests, during the Vietnam War.

We had, what some would call a riot in 1968 on Wooster Avenue.

Although the men who were on the street in that riot said that it didn't become a riot until the National Guard showed up.

In one of our programs that we did here to commemorate the 50th and year anniversary of that.

We've had problems, and we've overcome them.

You know what city in America lost 30,000 well-paying jobs over a decade and bounced back, no pun intended, to a polymer industry that today just, recognized, this past summer, collecting $100 million to develop new technology around polymers here in Akron.

Okay.

So that's what the Akron History Center in a very serious way, I hope will accomplish.

- Thank you again, Dave, for that You know, just just a wealth of information.

We're really looking forward to the opening of the Akron History Center again, April 5th.

Please save the date.

Saturday morning at 11.

It's going to be a, really a packed day, which will also include, by the way, the Akron Sakura Festival.

And in the evening, just after sunset, we're going to have our Light the Locks festival down here on the canal.

I wanted to recognize, last but certainly not least, our small but mighty staff at Akron 200.

Jasina Chapman, who was our operations manager here.

Really thankful for her.

And Rose Vance-Grom in the back there who is our historic research and program coordinator.

Really happy, with these two.

I think it's Rose's third week, and I don't think we scared her off yet.

And it's Jasina’s, going into her third month and and I think I've almost scared her off, but, thankfully, they're they're still here.

We're really grateful to have all of you here with us.

We're looking forward to this entire series.

Thank you for coming out.

And thank you again to our signature sponsor, FirstEnergy Foundation, and of course, to PBS Western Reserve, our exclusive media partner.

We look forward to seeing you throughout the year.

Welcome to the Akron History Center.

I'm Dave Lieberth, president of the Akron History Center that is governed by a volunteer board of directors that has been at this, for about 40 years.

It was in 1983 that we first envisioned a single museum that would tell the history of Akron and the time seemed to be right during this bicentennial year for us to open the Akron History Center and have that one place where 200 years of history is showcased.

We have other museums in Akron, other historic houses, other examples of exhibits about single purpose aspects of history.

But this is the one place where all of Akron's history, is kind of contained and told.

And it's definitely a work in progress.

On the lower level of the Akron History Center, where Akron begins, really, we start with what is underneath us, the, Berea Sandstone base and, examples of how it has been used in the construction of the city.

Interestingly, there's a lot of wood behind me here in these panels and wood used in the first floor.

And the source of that wood, is the Simon Perkins Stone mansion and John Brown House.

We had a storm there about 20 years ago, and we, milled some of the lumber that came out of those trees that had been a century old.

And that lumber is what we've used in creating these exhibits.

So there's a real connection to the Perkins family here on this first floor, the floor of the, the museum, contains a map, that was hand-drawn by Charles Perkins, the canal engineer, and it shows the route of the Ohio and Erie Canal through downtown Akron and some of the streets of downtown Akron that have been long forgotten.

We do profile the history of the Perkins family here.

We talk about the founding of the city and how it came together first as two Akron's and then later joined together.

We feature John Brown here, Akron's most consequential citizen ever.

He lived here from 1844 to 1854.

We talk about in video, his life in Akron and his assault on the armory at Harpers Ferry, in 1859.

Akron played an important role in the American Civil War.

So there is a display case here featuring the artifacts that were collected by, Colonel George Tod Perkins, who fought in the Battle of Chickamauga.

The rally stunt that he brought back with him that actually has Union and Confederate bullets in the stump itself, along with other artifacts that explain how Akron provided men for the Union Army, to fight the war against slavery.

We have the [unintelligable] of the statue of Sojourner Truth created by Akron artist Woodrow Nash.

She is sort of looking right at John Brown, who's on the wall across from her.

And it's relevant because in 1851, Sojourner gave her famous “Ain’t I A Woman speech, as it's been called.

At the second annual National Women's Rights Convention, at the North Street Church, and across the wall is the, poster advertising, an anti-slavery meeting and convention in Akron, in 1844.

We also have the only photograph here that was taken of John Brown, in Akron by the photographer [unintelligable], who had a studio in downtown Akron.

here on the second floor, the middle level of, the Akron History Center.

We have called it Boomtown, emphasizing Akron's history, in the early 20th century and very late 19th century.

Here we tell the story of and the importance of whiskey and alcoholic beverages in Akron's history, both whiskey and beer.

And that leads to Akron's thirst for sobriety and the telling of the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935.

One of the artifacts that we are proudest of is the door to Dr. Bob's office at the Second National Building, where he had an office from about 1915, when he was a young physician, right up to 1950, when he died.

We also tell the story of the founding of AA with artifacts from the Mayflower Hotel, and, from, Saint Thomas Hospital.

We tell the story of labor in Akron, the founding of the United Rubber Workers at the Portage Hotel, with John L. Lewis in 1930s, and the story of the big strikes, the sit down strikes at General Tire and Goodyear that led to the formation and eventual certification of the United Rubber Workers Union as a representative of the hundreds, thousands of men and women who worked in the rubber industry in the city of Akron.

The other part of the Boomtown exhibit is about the, manufacturers in Akron.

We have one display case, called Akron Originals, which talks about everything made in Akron that was not made of rubber.

That includes the cereal industry, the clay products industry, the fishing tackle industry, the publishing industry.

Just to name a few.

But of course, the principal focus is on the rubber companies and, the making of rubber products and tires.

During the 20th century, when Akron was the rubber capital of the world, we have a display of tires that were made in Akron of all sorts, along with a lot of non tire rubber products.

That Akron made by the millions and distributed throughout the 20th century.

in Akron.

We have one exhibit about lighter than air using, girders that were made for the USS Akron.

These girders frame are lighter than air exhibit, which includes a working model of the famous Goodyear air dock that was distributed by the company to its tire stores in the 1950s.

We, focus on the Guggenheim Airship Center, Institute that, did research and had at one point the largest vertical wind tunnel in the United States.

And we have the actual model that Dr. Carl Bernstein had made for the USS Akron to test the dynamics in that wind tunnel.

Mrs. Herbert Hoover, was the person who dedicated the USS Akron and reminiscent of that moment in time, in 1930, we have the actual flag that was being flown on the USS Akron that day.

And when she pulled that rope to reveal a panel that let loose, homing pigeons, we have the actual rope that she pulled thanks to the lighter than Air Society, our partner in harvesting these artifacts and putting them on exhibit here today on the street level of the Akron History Center.

We, tell the stories about Akron innovation, Akron music history, and we sort of bring the city up to date in the 21st century.

Our largest exhibit on this floor, is Rhythms of the Rubber City, which talks about the history of music in Akron from the 1880s and the founding of the Tuesday Musical Association right up to today's Black Keys.

In between, the largest part of the exhibit is devoted to the Akron Sound, that group of musicians that created something called industrial rock between roughly 1975 and 1985, most prominently known by the group Devo, but also including Tim Huey, The Waitresses, The Unit 5 and the Numbers Band, and others.

So we tell that story both in video and with a selection of artifacts, that come from the Akron Sound Museum collection, which has been given to the Akron Summit County Public Library, one of our partners in the operation of the Akron History Center and the Akron Innovation exhibit.

We will talk about the start of Gojo, industries.

And we have the actual, first dispenser hand machined by Jerry Lippman, the founder of Gojo.

And it's mounted right next to a 2025 version of a Purell dispenser, which continues that legacy all these years later.

But kind of the star of the show in this level is Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

We wanted to have on display a NASCAR tire made in Akron.

And so we have one that kids can touch and feel and see right next to an interactive game on a screen that they can use to select a car, a race track, a weather condition and a tire, and then race around the track to see how well that they do.

And they can change the variables to determine if they can do better the next time.

That's, the Akron History Center, because history is happening every day, including today.

We hope that you enjoyed this Forgotten History Forum and that you learned something new and exciting about Akron and the people who shaped it.

If you're interested in watching more from this series, or attending a Future Forum event, please visit Akron 200.org.

or pbswesternreserve.org Thanks for watching and celebrating Akron’s Bicentennial