Hi.

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

And in partnership with PBS Western Reserve, we're pleased to present the 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 happy to also have five of the authors in the Akron History Anthology.

Yeah.

Of course.

Go ahead.

(audience clapping) They deserve that.

Of course, the entire anthology is filled with lots of really interesting and really engaging information that you'll hear a lot more about this evening.

We're, of course, so happy with the Forgotten History Forum series to have our signature sponsor, FirstEnergy Foundation, and in partnership with our exclusive media partners at PBS Western Reserve.

And I say this every time, but I really mean it.

If you have not yet, please do support PBS Western Reserve.

Our local public broadcasting does amazing work here in our region, and so we are so honored to have them as a partner.

And of course, we want to thank our host here at the Akron Summit County Public Library.

Special thanks to Pam Hicks and Stevenson and also, Mary Palazzo, who is also outside in the lobby.

We're really glad to be here.

And we're going to have some wonderful announcements that will come at the end of tonight's forum, including previewing our next History Forum series.

I want to just point out, does everyone have one of these?

So these are your question cards if you want to ask a question and we know you do, I'm sure it's burning right now on the inside of you.

So if you want to ask a question, fill out the cards.

About midway through the forum, myself and my colleague Rose Vance Graham, who's in the back there, who's waving, we're going to be going up and down the aisles will pick up your question cards, and then we will be giving them to Jon Miller, who is going to be our moderator of this evening's forum.

Please write legibly, by the way, because if I can't read it, then I can't pass it off.

So, again, thank you.

Make sure you fill out your question cards.

And we are so glad again to present to you director of the University of Akron Press, Mr. Jon Miller.

- Thank you Mark.

Welcome.

Thank you for coming to our panel for our book.

I'm as Mark introduced me, I'm Jon Miller.

I'm one of the editors of the book.

I'm the director of the University of Akron Press, which is a small nonprofit publisher associated with the university.

And one of the areas in which we publish is Ohio History and Culture.

So, if you like this book, we do many Akron books.

The book took about three years to put together.

It's not a comprehensive history, it's a little bit more of a variety show.

There's something for everyone.

I tell people, if you don't like the chapter you're reading, just skip to the next one.

You'll like that one probably better.

And it's more than 400 pages.

We got 27 chapters, 26 contributors.

And tonight we're going to hear from five contributors.

And if you picked up one of the handouts, they're marked off in the table of contents.

First person we're going to hear from is Eric Olson.

Eric is a professional archeologist with over a decade of research experience in Northeast Ohio.

And he is the author of chapter one about the indigenous history of Akron.

Eric, can you tell us about your chapter?

- Yeah, sure.

The short version is it's 20,000 years of history and about 5,000 words.

So super simple, right?

You know, it's covering basically since the last glacial maximum, where the ice that's about a mile tall recedes and then people start populating the Ohio region.

And then from there, we move forward through archeological time periods.

We don't really have written records or oral tradition that tells us what people were calling themselves at that time.

So I kind of give you the broad brush strokes of, say, the Paleo-Indian period, the archaic, the woodland period.

And then I get to about the 1600s and then really fast forward through like 300 years or so that's really complex.

And if you want to dive deeper into, you know, the contents of my chapter conveniently to plug another UA press book, is it Native Americans to the Cuyahoga Valley, right?

Yeah.

Native Americans of the Cuyahoga Valley, by Linda Whitman and Peg Bobel.

Or do I have the order mixed up?

- Yes, it's Bobel and Whitman.

- Bobel and Whiteman.

There we go.

That dives even deeper into what that chapter is about.

And I hope that's a succinct enough description of it.

- It's pretty good.

Can you tell us a little more?

I think a lot of people are sort of curious about the indigenous people that were here.

Right before all the settlers started coming.

And Akron was founded in 1825.

What would you say to sort of summarize that.

- It's complicated.

Basically, you have a lot of different tribes and a different, 2 major language groups that are in this region, Algonquian and Iroquoian speaking peoples.

Not all of them have a sort of national identity.

You might have Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, to name a few, that you might be more familiar with Iroquois or Haudenosaunee people of the longhouse.

But then you also have Ojibwe, which you might be known as Chippewa, and you can see how already just having multiple different ways of pronouncing tribal names can make it complicated, especially when you have people that don't necessarily spell it all the same.

So Chippewa is spelled multiple different ways when you look at historical records.

And then at this time, right before the canal is being built in Akron is founded in 1825, you've got, a lot of tribes are moving westward to avoid conflicts with settlers in the East.

So you have the Lenni Lenape, which you might know as the Delaware, moving from the Delaware Valley over in the Philadelphia area, Manhattan area and moving westward across Pennsylvania.

And by the late 1700s are living in eastern Ohio.

But then you also have, like I said, the Seneca, Cayuga, the Shawnee are also involved.

You may know, a little guy named Tecumseh, you know, that's 1813 is when he dies.

But so you have a lot of tension in the Ohio region, and all eyes are on Ohio leading up to.

Well, I wouldn’t say leading up to that would imply that there's some sort of narrative arc there, but it's in this region around the time of the revolution, you got Washington's trying to speculate for land in the Ohio Valley.

You've got Jefferson's also got his eyes on the Ohio Valley.

You know, you have the Virginia Land Company.

You've got well, a Virginia company.

And then you've also got an Ohio company.

And you can already see how complicated this is to try and squeeze into 5,000 words.

But there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of competing interests.

And Ohio is sort of at the heart of it all, leading up to its statehood in 1803.

- That's right.

Yeah.

That is a theme of Akron history.

How many people moved through.

That's a good way to describe what's going on early.

Next we'll hear from Doctor Christi Blythin.

She wrote a chapter about domestic servants in the early 20th century.

Christi attended the University of Akron from 1998 to 2004, and then went on to get a PhD in English from Michigan State University.

She's currently working as a stay at home mom who writes when she can get a moment.

Christi's chapter is part of a larger book that she's writing on domestic service in Akron.

Christi, can you tell us about your chapter?

- Yeah.

I wanted to look at Akron servants and basically from around 1900 to 1940.

And I found that they didn't just work in the big houses that you would think like Stan Hywet, but more modest houses had them as well.

And that's possible because there were different levels to employing servants.

So at the very top you had the full uniform staff like you would see at Stan Hywet.

And then the middle range would be people would maybe have 1 or 2 maids or a cook.

And then at the lowest level, you might have a washer woman do your laundry a few times a month.

And so and it was once you could get your foot in the door, there was no limit to how much you could spend.

But getting a servant was seen as kind of a marker of, it was a status symbol to be able to pay someone else to do your housework for you.

But an affordable one for a lot of people.

And I wondered why people needed servants so badly.

There was a big demand for them.

And it turns out there was just a lot more dirt in the air.

There was because of the pollution from the factories, and people were using wood and coal to heat their homes and to cook with.

And everything had to be done by hand.

So there were no shortcuts, there were no microwave meals, there were no vacuums until later.

So it was a lot of work and it was a lot for one person to do.

So as soon as people got some disposable income, one of the first things they did was try and get a girl, they called it, or hire a maid to come in and help with the housework.

And so yeah, I looked at their working conditions and they were basically up to the employer because there were no regulations that, that looked at a private home as a workspace.

So everything was at the mercy of the employer with their pay, their working conditions, everything.

So, yeah, I just I tried to take a closer look at what it was like in Akron to be a servant.

- How hard is it to write a history of domestic servants?

It feels like you're writing about people who don't get mentioned often in the newspaper.

Can you say some things about the research involved in putting together this story?

- Yeah, it is difficult to search for people who worked as domestic servants because there just aren't a lot of records.

They didn't leave many records because they didn't have the time to write, or they were illiterate, or they didn't have the storage to keep things.

And writing materials were expensive.

And if there are existing diaries and letters, they're probably in a descendants attic somewhere.

And so if you have any of those in your attic, please talk to me after the presentation, because I'd love to see them.

But yeah.

And there aren't a lot of photos of them where they're wearing their working garb and labeled as such.

So I could identify.

Oh, that's who that person is.

So it is tough to track them down.

And I had to look at a lot of, kind of I had to go, you know, not directly from them.

So I had to get different perspectives in finding their stories.

So I looked at employer documents.

A lot of employers would keep diaries and records.

And one that I looked at a lot was Otis Hower from the Hower House.

He kept a diary that was very helpful.

Stan Hywet has some records that they're still going through, and their curator shared with me some diaries and records and...

So yeah, things like that, when they talk about the servants helps me to get a better idea of what it was like.

But again, this is from the employer’s perspective, and it wasn't always a sympathetic one.

So you have to take it with a grain of salt.

I also used newspapers and books written at the time and census stuff.

And if you've done any genealogy work, you know that it's a learning curve to figure out how to do those searches.

And when you do find the documents, a lot of times they're hard to read.

So it's been a real treasure hunt searching for these people.

- Next we'll talk to Dr. Megan Shaeffer, supervisor of cultural resources at Summit Metroparks, where she does archeological and historical work.

She wrote the chapter on the impact of citizen volunteers and environmentalism in Akron.

Megan, can you tell us about your chapter?

- Sure.

Thank you.

The most important thing to know about my chapter is that it's chapter 26.

For those of you who want to flip right to.

Now, my chapter is about the impact that Akron's citizens had on environmental issues.

On addressing environmental issues, in their community.

So all kinds of volunteerism are obviously important, but this wasn't the story of, you doing trash pick ups on trails or doing fundraisers for different causes.

This was the story of a very special kind of volunteerism that empowered Akron citizens to engage their their local governments and ask them to address environmental issues through policy, and through other kind of public acts.

So this story I started in the late 1800s with the women of Akron and their attempts to get some kind of smoke abatement or smoke control ordinance passed in the city.

As I mentioned earlier, that was a very polluted city.

It was a very smoky city.

So they wanted to see that cleaned up.

And this was the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's Suffragette Association, that came together in Akron as the Women's Council.

And they worked in order to try to get that kind of smoke abatement.

And then it picks up again.

So that kind of waxes and wanes a little bit in the early 20th century.

And it picks up again in the 1940s, where the League of Women Voters takes up that cause and they were successful in finally kind of getting that enactment to happen.

In the second part of the the chapter is in the 1970s, in 1980s, the Portage Trail, Sierra Club was formed and helped to create what is now Cascade Valley Metro Park.

The checkered areas and oxbow areas of Cascade Valley Metro Park.

So they really worked.

They really spearheaded a campaign to get this neglected stretch of land along the Cuyahoga, made into something for conservation and recreational purposes.

So this is really the story of the Akron citizens coming together in groups and galvanizing together and directing their energy to make these positive changes in their environment.

- The full title of your chapter, it starts with a quote, “You’ll be hearing from us, too.” Is there a story to tell about that?

- Yeah, that was a quote that I came across during my research.

I feel that a lot of the stories that are told about environmentalism are kind of told from a high level.

And this is really a story about individuals, taking these matters into their own hands and just choosing to make a difference and persisting until that change is realized.

So that quote was from I mentioned, the League of Women Voters earlier in the mid 1940s, they were trying to get a smoke ordinance or some kind of smoke control passage, in Akron.

And they finally were successful and Akron agreed to have a smoke ordinance regulator position opened up.

And the League of Women Voters felt that the salary for that position was too low to attract a good candidate.

So they brought this to the city council at a city council meeting.

And there was some back and forth between them and the council members.

And finally, the council dismissed the League of Women Voters representatives and told them, you'll be hearing from us.

And one of the women got up and as she was leaving, she said, “You’ll be hearing from us, too.” And that to me summed up a lot of what I found in writing this chapter and doing the research for it, that it's the story of people who would not be put off, they would not be dismissed.

And they were going to work until what they wanted to be realized about their environment really came to fruition.

- That's such a good story.

Our next contributor, Shaneen Harris, is a much published poet and poetry editor.

She has also served as host of Poetry Unchained and Trinity Broadcasting Network's Joy in Our Town.

Shaneen, can you tell us about your chapter?

- So yeah.

Hello, everybody.

I had the pleasure of doing the 1960s Black Intracity Migration to the Maple Valley area commonly known as Copley Road and you know, it was interesting because I grew up in that area.

And so when this was presented to understand how an area that was often talked about as being, not having a lot of black people in it, how did that happen?

And it was so easy to dismiss it as being as a result of the Inner Belt Project and what happened at Summit Lake and I think so many people thought that was how it happened.

You know, people got displaced in Summit Lake and they just moved up the hill.

And that's not exactly true.

There were so many stops along the way.

There were stops at, you know, Howard, there were stops in the Odom.

But that street, that Copley Road corner, the story there is a little different.

And I think that was what's so surprising to me.

That was a story of community, that was a story of collectivism, that was a story of preservation, that met opportunity.

And I say that to say because at the time it was predominantly Jewish.

And it was very opening and there's a long, rich history between blacks in America and the Jewish population and how they both coexisted and supported each other.

And it was no different during that time.

So when the opportunity came and Jewish families had provide a space for black families to own homes, these were blacks of all groups.

I mean, you truly saw the family nucleus.

You saw where you had moms and fathers, professionals, you had doctors, you had teachers, you had all these different groups that came there in search of the American dream.

And it was a place where Copley Road was called Sugar Hill.

Because it looked like that untouchable place.

So for them, it was the place.

If I could make it to Copley Hill, then I know I have achieved my version of what the American dream is.

And I say that again, that that relationship between the Jewish community wanting to preserve some of their history as time change, we can talk some more about that if we have time.

You might have to read the chapter.

I don't want to take up too much time with this.

But that desire for preservation opened the doorway for so many Black Americans to— excuse me in Akron to move to that area and call it home.

And it still has a very rich history to this day.

I mean, you cannot, and I'll talk about this again.

You cannot talk about Copley Road without talking about 1040 Copley Road, Buchtel High School.

And that played an intricate part, intricate part in how that community evolved.

- I'm glad that you mention it.

Do you want to say more about Buchtel High School?

Let me say this first of all, I am a Firestone Falcon graduate.

So to have to give this much credit to both of high school is really kind of irking me a little bit, but that's okay.

No, but I say that because if you look at how it evolved and you think about what was going on in the 60s and how turbulent it was, you know, I use not just historical accounts in terms of the library.

I went and look through all their yearbooks.

I said, who's still living?

Who was living in here at that time that can tell me what it felt like to be a part of Buchtel High School.

Some of the things I heard, for instance, with Carla Moore, was that even though it was turbulent outside, whites and blacks came together and we formed a community and we supported each other.

This is the 1960s when things, there's wars going on, people were killing folks, you know, you got all kinds of chaos.

But at Copley Road 1040, we came together and we stood by each other.

I had Elder Josephine Wilson who said, hey, I was always taught you don't communicate, you know, you kind of keep this line between blacks and whites.

But she found community when she went to Buchtel High School.

So I say that to say in a lot of ways, this is one of those things where they say that the children will lead the way.

This is where I feel that Buchtel High School and those students in that time frame, they lead their community, they set the standards of how we should exist together and then how blacks can excel even in turbulent situations with the right circumstances.

So to me, it's impossible to talk about Maple Valley and Copley Road and how it evolved without talking about Buchtel High School.

- I enjoyed reading that part of the chapter quite a bit.

Fran Wilson is our next contributor.

Fran’s a fourth generation Akronite and queer community organizer.

Fran, please tell us about your chapter.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for everybody coming out.

Happy to be a part of this beautiful book.

My chapter is about LGBTQ and plus history, queer history here in Akron.

And I took a long time to write this.

Jon sent a lot of emails over the year.

I was a little late, significantly late by, like, I think eight months.

- It was fine.

- But, you know, I'm not a historian I'm just a community organizer.

I'm a lay writer.

Maybe.

And I had a really enjoyable time learning about my own community's history here.

Something that honestly isn't written about in a lot of places.

And it's being worked on right now and archived.

But my chapter goes over last 70 years and highlights from kind of a broader level, some different stories that I pulled from public archives and different news sources and a couple different interviews.

And I highlight a lot of different aspects around criminality, because queerness and being present in this world, as a queer person is criminalized in a lot of ways today and has been.

And I'm very fascinated with that kind of topic.

So that was really interesting connecting to the local issues around policing and the criminal justice system.

And also about drag culture locally, highlighting a couple of the wonderful establishments that we've had over the years.

And also how the Inner Belt Project destroyed a good community and social hubs for queer folks on Howard Street.

And, yeah, I think, you know, it was a beautiful time writing it.

Very challenging.

But, I hope you pick up a copy and enjoy it.

- Is there, in the time, you know, since you finished it and it got published and, you know, is there any takeaways or any details that you find yourself thinking more about?

- Yeah, absolutely.

During the late 70s, 80s, and the 90s, during the HIV Aids Crisis, there was a story that I found in the news about Frank Vitatoe, who was a local gay man.

He was diagnosed with HIV, and he was out cruising in Grace Park.

Cruising ia finding pleasure for the— You know, this is public radio or, you know, whatever we're on right now.

But finding pleasure in public and he ended up stumbling and encountering a man who ended up being a police officer, with the Akron Police Department's vice squad.

And I've been very interested in policing issues here in Akron.

And I think that's a really interesting topic that I'd like to dive more into is, you know, we used to have a police squad that went after gamblers and prostitution.

And I think that's a very interesting topic.

But, we also had a condom ban for 20 years here in Akron.

But I think more people should learn about from the 40s to the 60s.

- Which was ironic because all the condoms were made in Akron.

- Yeah.

I read somewhere that were, like, the top producer in the world.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Rubber City.

- Yeah, actually, one of the subheadings is Rubbers City.

That's one of the subheadings in my chapter.

But I think, you know, during the HIV crisis, you know, the city council had to, you know, realize that we had to overturn a ban locally, on contraceptives.

To be able to help the community.

So I think that's something I've been reflecting a lot about especially with everything that's going on in the world today.

- Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about local history is sort of closer you look at it, the stranger it gets sometimes.

Just so many details.

Christi, you had a question.

Do you want to ask your question to Megan?

Your chapters kind of intersected, and we were talking.

- Yeah.

You talked about the pollution and how there were so many— It took like, what, over 40 years for the city to actually do anything meaningful to contain that smoke.

And I just wondered if you had any thoughts on why it didn't take sooner, like they kept saying, oh yeah, yeah, we'll we'll talk to the manufacturers, we'll get them to stop.

And then there were no consequences or no laws.

So why were they dragging their feet and what changed in 1946 I think it was.

- Yes.

So there's a lot of parts to that answer.

But kind of the bare bones of it is that for a very long time, the city of Akron didn't want to put any kind of restrictions on its manufacturing because it was so important to the growth of the city.

It was such a rapidly industrializing city.

And when the Women's Council took on the smoke abatement issue, the city's solution to it was to ask manufacturers to voluntarily curb their pollution.

Because they didn't want to place any restrictions or anything that was seen as a restriction, because then those manufacturers would just go over to the next town where there was no such thing as smoke abatement or any kind of ordinances that they had to follow.

So that was why that was very difficult for the Women's Council to get there.

And then the two main groups that were really pushing for this were the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who were part of their, you know, the things that they tried to accomplish in the city had to do with sanitation, pollution, public health, and it kind of was part of that looking at pollution issues was part of that.

And they really turned their attention at the turn of the 20th century to prohibition that became their major issue.

So that all the other issues took a little bit of a backseat.

And then the Women's Suffrage Association was the other major group that was fighting for this.

And of course, they ramped up their push for the women's right to vote, which came in 1920.

So you had those kind of competing interests among these groups.

And, of course, in the early 1900s, women didn't have the right to vote, so they weren't seen as being something that would be an impediment to any kind of governmental official.

If they didn't do what women asked them to, it wouldn't have a lot of blowback to them.

So I think then the reason that there's a gap is also because it really took until after the Depression and after World War Two, before the issue, before the League of Women Voters really came back to the issue and brought it back to the forefront.

So I think that's sort of why there's that gap.

And by that time, of course, the League of Women Voters, which makes a bit of a difference at that point.

And they had enough clout, publicly and politically, in order to really push for it.

- Thank you.

And then, finally, we thought we'd talk a little bit about our experience, you know, writing, local history, gathering local knowledge.

And could you all say a little something about your thoughts on the value of of it, and maybe we'll start... Shaneen, you want to go first?

Shaneen’s ready.

- I remember drawing straws earlier, so I’m going to put us out of our misery, and I'll go first.

No, you know, there's this thought that came to my head that if you don't record history, then you don't record stories, and then you forget the stories.

And if you forget the stories, you start to forget the people.

So for me, this was really, really a valuable experience because I got to learn and remember the people of that area.

And when I tell you I didn't have enough time and I felt so horrible, I had to cut people off.

Because there were so many stories that were wanted to be captured and be told and be remembered, and it just added a little bit more to it.

So for me, it was overwhelming.

It was so, enlightening.

I actually, and I shared this with the group I originally I said I wasn't going to share it here, but I found out, y'all that my mom was a baller, okay?

My mom, I give her— I didn't realize how dope my mom was.

My mom was a single mom who managed to move on Copley Hill, off Copley Road as a single mom with four kids on her home, and maintain her home at a time when mostly only two family homes could do it.

So mad respect for my mom.

So I say all that to say, I learned that that came out of that.

I would have never discovered that had I not learned the history.

So I say local history again is important because if you forget the history, you forget the stories, you forget the people.

- Can I just... - I don't know if we're just free form at this point.

I feel like I'm on the opposite end of the coin as, like the first chapter, that's like covering 20,000 years, where, like, it becomes a challenge to getting those narratives in.

And we have more of that recency bias.

But I think from my perspective, the local history is sort of like a fact finding mission where you have these stories, especially about indigenous history, that once you start researching and looking into them and John and I were talking about this right before we started the panel tonight.

A good example that didn't make it into the book was, the Village of Silver Lake and Chief Wagmong, where it's this sort of local lore, but then when you actually go and do the archeology and you start doing more research, you realize it's not based on anything.

And so sometimes you have stories that if you don't look into them, the story itself is just being carried on without any actual connection to real people.

And I think it's important to do that sort of like sifting fact from fiction in some cases as well.

But now granite that's, you know, from my end of the spectrum of things.

But like I think there's value in that as well.

So then when you have things like statues of, you know, Chief Logan throughout Northeast Ohio and then you have no way of connecting of the Chief Logan, it becomes sort of like a well, then why did we build it?

- That was Jon's job to fact check me.

So if there's anything non factual, blame him.

- It's all him.

- Yeah all the facts were checked.

We even paid a student to look up everybody's name and make sure they were names are spelled correctly.

- And as a person whose name is often spelled wrong, I thank you very much for that.

But I'll take a kind of middle ground between both of you, and say that, working for Summit Metro Parks, I do a lot of presentations on local history and on the history of the parks.

And what I find is very much what Eric was talking about, that we have a lot of local lore that has kind of become history.

But I also find you were talking about where that history connects with people and it becomes part of their identity.

And people have very big feelings about the history that they see is relevant to them and as part of their identity.

So the more local history that we learn about and that we present and that we value, the more the people in our communities feel respected and seen because their histories are being told and are being incorporated.

So even when you have to take, you know, to take on some complex narratives, and even smash some lore, or mythical thinking related to history, there's always going to be value to it, and people will take that going forward into the next generation.

- I agree.

Fran?

- Yeah I think, you know, when I was first sitting down, I was writing like major events related to the LGBTQ plus community in Stonewall, you know, the Stonewall Uprising, you know, police coming to a bar in New York to raid an establishment turned into bar patrons fighting back to preserve the space.

It got me really curious about, you know, what was the environment here.

And learning about the different police raids that happened here and, you know, the seclusion of life here.

But also, you know, people still coming together in community amid, you know, a health crisis and overpolicing and lack of community resources and investment and violence in a lot of ways.

Seeing accounts here and hearing from people and reading in the news over time, I was like, you gave— I think local history gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves in this place and realize that we belong here in different ways.

All of us belong here.

And I just, it filled me with a great sense of pride and sadness as well, but also, you know, sense of purpose to work on things for the future too.

- Yeah, I love that recognition and how there's local versions of sort of national stories and knowing the local version of the national story really makes both stories so much more meaningful to, you know, to... Christi, what do you have to say about this?

- Well, the bigger version of my project, the book that I'm working on.

I'm writing the biographies of all of these unknown maids and cooks and chauffeurs and people have commented like, wow, this is a real labor of love, like, who cares?

And these people and, the point is, is that when all the history is about wealthy people and successful people, I think part of the problem is it sets up this false narrative that bootstraps narrative where, you know, work hard and you'll succeed.

And, you know, look what these people did.

And and that's still in the air today.

But when you start looking at the stories of regular people and, you know, tracking their history, you see all of the different things they're up against and the racism, the sexism, the laws that were preventing them from making a living or just living sometimes.

And it gives you a new appreciation for difficulties that people work through, like you were saying with your mom.

If you hadn't appreciated just how difficult it was for her to achieve what she had done until you dug into that local history.

And so I feel the same way that it gives us a better appreciation for what shapes us and and where we end up, where we do.

- Yeah.

It’s good.

And I think I would add to that, when I think of local history, I often think of books.

I mean, quite to be honest and reading material and how it can make such good reading material and how it, you know, reading a sort of granular history of a place.

How reassuring that can be in the sense that it sort of opens your eyes to how there are these stories everywhere else, you know, and so it's almost like the more local history you read, the more you wish there was.

And, you know, the more you write, the more you understand, could also be written, so.

Just a roundabout way, maybe of saying that, you know, we have this book and it's 27 chapters, it's over 400 pages, and it kind of leads you to understand how many more chapters there could have been.

You know, how many other neighborhoods there are that, you know, have stories that someone could write up.

So, please do that.

Write your local history.

We'd like to read it.

Got a good first question here.

Did any of you have particularly memorable interactions with locals while researching?

- So a lot of mine was hearing stories.

And the memorable— There were a couple of them, some good, some not so good.

There were some that I found that were really good where I think were hard because it brought back painful memories, and I found myself almost being a conduit of trying to move them forward from a point in time.

I think those were the hardest ones.

The ones that were kind of funny because I had certain people, to your point, who argued that certain things happened, and I remember telling them, if I can't prove it, I can't write it.

But they were adamant that Uncle Joe owned this on the street on that corner I'm like, if I can't prove it, I can't write it.

So I think those were the interactions that became kind of challenging because now to your point, you are questioning someone's version of their story and their history, and most people don't take to that very well.

So, those were the challenging moments.

But there were a lot of fun moments too.

A lot of enlightening moments and a lot of moments where people are like just hearing their memories get jarred about their neighbors and their community and picking apples or picking things.

So, I think that's what I remember the most how diverse there were, how literally vigilant people held to their stories.

I mean, to your point they were their stories and I had to be the voice of reason, saying, okay, well, if I can prove it, I'll write it, but if I can't prove it, I can't write it.

And that was the hardest part.

- I actually have to say that I work in the conservation department at Summit Metro Parks.

So some of my colleagues were people that actually were these activists in the 70s and 80s.

They were in the Portage Trail Sierra Club and actually did things like cut in trails in those early days of that park.

So learning that people that you know casually or from work are really these people who were just heroes, basically, who just, you know, did these amazing things was really eye opening.

So you never know what stories are lurking beneath.

- While we're waiting on that, that's a good point, that one of the things that was interesting is finding out about other heroes.

And forgive me, my brain is foggy right now, but like learning about other boxers or athletes or people who were famous, that was just, you know, their normal day to day was, oh, they were practicing jumping rope in the neighborhood and we practiced by, you know, engaging with them and counting.

You know, you don’t think about— And I'll use Michael Doss as an example.

You don't think about, oh, I'm seeing you're watching Michael Doss, you know, jump rope and counting his ropes as a kid.

So just hearing all these famous people and very normal day to day settings which was cool.

- Yeah.

We run into, as a book publisher, you run into problems with people's memories not being factually correct because you can open yourself up to, like, libel.

You know, if you print things that are like literally not true.

I think I've learned over the years to expect people's memories to be a little mixed up.

But I think the thing you can focus on is what's probably right is they remember how they felt, right?

They remember how they felt.

And then even when there is local history, sometimes that we might call like wishful thinking.

And then it's a sort of question about like, why did people want to believe this?

Those become interesting questions to pursue.

We have a specific question here I think this is for Christi.

Somebody wants to know were the servants paid and were they ever punished severely?

- Yes, they were paid.

They were regular employees.

Their pay scale, it fluctuated.

It really depended on the house and the experience of the servant.

I didn't find any good juicy news stories about servants being punished.

I'm sure they were.

And I'm sure there was a lot of just inappropriate behavior in general.

A lot of female servants would not work in a house that had men living in it for that reason, because they just didn't want to deal with the chance that they could be assaulted.

And then if that did happen, they would probably just be fired.

They didn't really have any way to go up against the powerful people that were employing them.

So yes, they did get paid and their one power they had— I said the employer had all the power in determining the pay and the conditions, but they had the power to leave.

And they used that when they needed to.

So, they moved and employers they would complain about finicky servants like, oh, yeah, we can't get them to stay as like, well, because they’re always looking for something better.

So they did chase that better pay or better quarters to live in or better treatment by someone, so.

So yeah, they did— It wasn't completely... Yeah.

- It looks like it was mainly like, I think you may call it contingent labor.

Like, people would work someplace for a while, maybe not as full time as they would like, maybe not as continuously as they they would like.

Reminds me of other sort of part time jobs that people have today.

It's sort of difficult to make a steady living in.

- Well, thank you to all of our panelists and our wonderfully esteemed authors here on stage where we're really happy about the Akron History anthology, which, of course, I'm holding here and is on sale in the lobby.

Wanted to make sure that you pick up your copy.

Here's our shameless plug.

You do have a promo code that is in effect until the end of this year.

And so if you want to pick it up for 35 bucks, then pick one up in the lobby, the authors will be available.

Jon Miller will be available to actually sign copies for you.

And then I also, fail to see in the audience, but, was pointed out that we have a few other authors of the Akron History Anthology, including, Melanie Mohler, who wrote the chapter on the neighborhood development of the twenty-first century.

And also, Karla Tipton, who wrote the chapter on the wonderful African American composer Julia Perry.

And I don't know how I didn't say this the first time, and Akron 200s own Rose Vance-Grom, who wrote the chapter on the rise and fall of Howard Street as a black business district.

So we're really happy to have so many of the writers here and Jane Gramlich.

Okay, so I thought Jane was actually in the audience, and I was going to say, oh my gosh, I missed her.

So she's upstairs, but she's here too.

So, we are really excited about this anthology.

It's such a great read.

So many hidden gems, some more risque than others, as you heard earlier.

And we are just really happy about the Akron History Anthology.

It's also available for sale at the Akron History Center.

How many of you have been to the Akron History Center?

Okay.

It's getting better.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

So make sure you go and visit 172 South Main Street, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m..

I've said that so many times, and I still get it wrong sometimes.

So 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Also, we want to remind you to please visit our website Akron200.org.

A new anthology is an important thing because, there's so...

There's so much history to tell.

There's so many stories worth writing down and reading about and Akron has a pretty rich history.

And so this anthology has, you know, 27 chapters on different subjects, and they're all very interesting.

Sort of just elevates our awareness of local history and how it matters.

And, you know, how we matter, and how the, you know, our children in this sort of future of the city sort of matters.

So I think it's...

I think it's important we are always looking for more books about Akron.

- My name is Karla Tipton.

I wrote about the black composer Julia Perry.

Julia Perry was a brilliant black composer who is virtually unknown outside of classical music circles.

She even pioneered minimalist techniques years before Philip Glass made them famous.

She was born in 1924 to an upwardly mobile family in, segregated Lexington, Kentucky.

But her talent really flourished after they moved to Akron in the 1930s.

I've always been fascinated by how a person's early life leads to their success later in life.

And when I discovered that there was a close knit, black community in Lexington that emphasized upward mobility and education and integrated art into their daily lives.

That's what surprised me is that it was so supportive.

There are so many artists that are overlooked because they don't fit into a specific mold of the establishment.

And, I'm hoping that this article will help fill that gap.

- My name is Melanie Mohler, and my chapter is titled Neighborhood Development in the Twenty-First Century.

I've been involved with the West Hill Neighborhood Organization since 2021.

I live in the West Hill neighborhood, and I've just been really interested in kind of neighborhood history and how community development organizations, also known as CDCs, help with neighborhood development and kind of their history.

I think that they have highlighted some economic opportunities.

They've kind of helped put some different neighborhoods or parts of neighborhoods kind of on the map, or brought people to those places and activated those spaces.

And also provide just a programing and opportunities to get to know their neighbors.

- My name is Rose Vance-Grom.

My chapter is, the Rise and Fall of Howard Street as a Black Business District.

When I was at the University of Akron working on my master's in Applied History and Public Humanities, I had the opportunity to work on the Cleveland Green Book Project.

That is a restorative history project by Cleveland State University and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park that explores locations in Northeast Ohio that were published in Victor Green's Green Book Guides.

Which were used by black Americans to be able to safely navigate the country throughout the 20th century.

And in doing that research, we found that a lot of these locations here in Akron were on Howard Street.

The section of Howard Street we're talking about is no longer existing today.

It's through a section of downtown that was wiped out by the inner belt.

So finding information and things on it was really difficult because it doesn't exist at this point today.

Everyone talks about the big names that came through.

You know, we all know Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway and you know, all the big names that came through, but what do we know about the actual day to day on Howard Street?

The folks that lived there.

George Matthews, who owned the hotel and the J.C. Wade Dance studio, all of those, like, actual business owners who made their entire livelihoods on this stretch of Howard Street that no longer exists.

- My name is Jody Miller Konstand.

The title of my chapter is, The Evangelists from the Tenderloin to Television.

I was working with another writer by the name of Jane Gramlich.

and we were going to cover religion for the Akron Bicentennial Book.

But when we got into it, we realized that the evangelists were a separate entity from the mainline Protestant, Catholic, Buddhism, you know, Judaism religions.

So I opted to write a chapter on the evangelist, starting with the Reverend Bill Denton and his relationship with the for what turned out to be megachurches in Akron.

That would be the Akron Baptist Temple, the chapel, the Cathedral of Tomorrow and Grace Cathedral.

But it was mostly about the people in those churches.

I think this chapter really does a good job of maybe leaving the foundation for what the Akron community is.

This is a community where we work together, we collaborate, we build for the better.

And frankly, you can't do that without some religion in your life.

And whether it's an Akron Baptist temple and their beliefs or whether it's the healing of an Ernest Angley and what he is able to do.

I think it spoke to the collective consciousness of the people in this community that have made this community great.

- Akron as a city is kind of a big deal that people should be proud of Akron and should be aware that they live in a historically interesting place where a lot of different kinds of things have happened.

And we've got a wide range of people and events.

Things that are important just locally, but the sort of role that Akron has played in, sort of national and world history is also significant.

And if people read the book and feel better about the city of Akron, I think that's a great takeaway and an appropriate one.

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