Black history

The Weekly Wrap: February 2-8

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Black History

I began reading David Greenberg’s John Lewis: A Life this week. It’s my main Black History month read. You might ask why a White guy is reading Black history. To answer that, I will talk about why I wrote on my local home town for ten years. First of all, it helped me understand so much about my background of which I was not aware growing up. I also became aware of how rich the culture of my home town was. And I discovered a number of people I greatly admired who helped build the city. Finally, I learned lessons from that history, such as the folly of a town building its economy around one industry.

It’s like that with Black history. Although I’m not Black, Black history is a fundamental part of my national history. My understanding of where we’ve come from is immeasurably poorer without that history. Likewise, it is such a rich history of spirituality, music art, food, accomplishments, resilience, and the effort to call us to our collective best. There are people (including Lewis) whose lives have inspired me. And, just as Germans aware of the Holocaust remember that history with a resolve to say “never again,” there are sad lessons to learn from Black history to which I want to say “never again.”

None of this is about White guilt or fostering racial divisions. Rather it is learning all I can to foster the “beloved community” Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned. I’m not sure why some want to suppress this history. It seems to me that when you try to suppress or erase the history of someone, it is the first step toward suppressing or erasing them. That is how it would come across to me if someone wanted to erase my family history or the history of my home town.

So, I will keep reading about John Lewis and review the book. And I’ll recommend other books about Blacks, other people of color, women and other marginalized groups. It’s not about politics for me. It’s about being human. And it’s about believing the children’s song I learned in Sunday school: “Jesus loves the little children/All the children of the world/Red and yellow; black and white/Jesus loves the little children/All the children of the world.”

Five Articles Worth Reading

Speaking of Black History Month, JSTOR posted a cornucopia of articles on Black history under the heading, “Celebrating Black History Month.” It was like a crash course in Black history, much of it new to me.

Feel like you have too many choices? You are not alone. The New York Times posted a review this week of Sophia Rosenfeld’s The Age of Choice, asking “Does Having Options Really Make Us Free?“

Cartoonist Jules Feiffer died on January 17. Paul Morton remembers him in “‘This Will Be Fun.’ On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer.“

It’s hard to imagine how those of us who love books might come to fear them. “In Search of the Book That Would Save Her Life” reviews Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, a memoir of how a mental health crisis precipitated a fear of books in a woman whose life was reading.

“Local bookstores, dealt another blow by L.A. fires, become ‘community touchstones’” Bookstores have often been used as examples of “third places.” It appears that this is especially true after the L.A. fires.

Quote of the Week

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.“

Charles Dickens, born on February 7, 1812, made this observation. It seems so important in this time of fake news and the normalization of lying that we refuse to accept deception and keep telling the truth ourselves.

Miscellaneous Musings

When I finished Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Wall I discovered that Murakami has been trying to finish this story for a long time in his postscript to the novel. I have to admit that the story feels like one in search of a resolution. Still pondering whether Murakami landed it.

I’ve found Jill Lepore’s The Story of America a delight. The book is a collection of essays on historiography, following the chronology of American history. Her essay on Noah Webster was absolutely fascinating, and a tribute in a way to this pioneer in creating a dictionary of American English.

Went to my optometrist this week. All in all, the eyes are doing OK. I do have cataract surgery in my future, explaining why I need more light than ever. There is a tendency toward macular degeneration in my family and I’ve pondered what I would do if I could not, or read easily. I guess I’ve read enough that I can savor them in memory…and as long as the hearing holds up, there are audiobooks!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts

Tuesday: Agatha Christie, Towards Zero

Wednesday: M.D. Hayden, Opening the Parables

Thursday: Haruki Murakami, The city and Its Uncertain Walls

Friday: Rhyne R. Putnam, Conceived by the Holy Spirit

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for February 2-8, 2025!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: All God’s Children

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All God’s Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity, Terence Lester. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: A plea that we need to confront the history we try to hide of racial injustice and that real reconciliation can only happen when we stand together in soliarity against racial injustices

Terence Lester leads the Atlanta-based Love Beyond Walls, a Christian community development organization addressing poverty, homelessness, and community development. He’s served as a pastor in both black and white churches and worked in the middle of efforts to address racial inequities and to foster racial reconciliation.

This book reflects the continued polarization in the United States around matters of race. The first part addresses our long-standing and currently increasing effort to suppress the history of racial inijustices and the contributions of Black Americans to our country’s history. Lester experienced this in his own education and it was only through reading and learning on his own that he understood more deeply the history of racial oppression beginning as early as 1619, running through the system of slavery in which both South and North were implicated, contributing to our young country’s economic prosperity, and continuing to control lives and livelihoods of Blacks through Jim Crow, lynchings, redlining, school-to-prison pipelines, voter suppression efforts, and continued concentration of economic resources within powerful interests.

It’s a history many do not want to acknowledge or understand. Against the arguments that teaching this history only perpetuates racial division, he contends that only understanding can lead to Whites and Blacks joining in solidarity to advocate for more just policies and practices. He argues that God is not colorblind but likes gathering those of every color around his throne. It is folly to pretend that we are. He contends that we cannot have racial reconciliation without racial justice.

Solidarity is a key idea for Lester. Solidarity is more than posting a black square or “Black Lives Matter” on social media. It means that we arrange our lives to be in proximity with people of color. It means supporting businesses of people of color. It means recognizing bias, including the skepticism of the competence of leaders who are people of color (he recounts having to provide far more evidence of credentials and competence than White peers, for example). Solidarity means doing, volunteering alongside others and accepting their leadership. Solidarity means speaking up on behalf of the other as Mr. Rogers did with Officer Clemmons, sharing his wading pool, both in 1969 and 1993 as a powerful statement of racial solidarity. Solidarity means not just making space at our tables, it means truly letting it become their table. Token presence is not inclusion.

Lester describes the pain of those who have walked away from him as he spoke about racial justice. Yet this is a book filled with gritty hope, encouraged by friends, both Black and White, who have stood and worked in solidarity, who have stopped theorizing and temporizing and waded in with him to tackle challenging problems. It is also a hope nurtured through the way of the cross, that realizes that only the seed that dies bears fruit, that we only save our lives by losing them. Terence Lester’s passion, pain, and persisting hope in gospel-nourished solidarity in pursuit of justice reverberates throughout the pages of this book. One senses his deep longing that we not miss this moment as the people of God to seek the shalom of all God’s children.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Alfred L. Bright

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Alfred L. Bright, Youngstown Vindicator, August 15, 1971 via Google News Archive

I was reminded of Al Bright about a year ago when reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. In the book she tells the story of a city championship Little League team that celebrated with a picnic and swimming outing at one of Youngstown’s pools. One member of that team was Black. He had to remain outside the fence, with teammates bringing him food. They couldn’t bring him the pool. After parents argued with the pool management, the boy was allowed to sit in a raft to be pulled around the pool by a lifeguard. For a few minutes. Everyone else had to exit the pool. The lifeguard whispered to him, “Whatever you do, don’t touch the water.” That Black Little Leaguer was Al Bright. The year was 1951. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald).

That was racism in Youngstown in 1951. That would have discouraged many others. Not Bright. The picture above is from a 50 year old news story in The Vindicator on August 15, 1971, noting that Bright was going to be the featured speaker at the National Junior Achievers Conference and was going to be awarded Speaker of the Year Award. The article also notes that he had joined Junior Achievers in 1958, was president of the chapter in 1959, and won the Achievers of the Year Award that same year. At the national conference in 1959, he was persuaded by the president of Colgate-Palmolive, S. Bayard Colgate, to go to college instead of barber school. He won a scholarship at Youngstown University and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science. A year later, he added a Master of Arts in painting from Kent State.

He taught art and painting at Youngstown after graduation. Louis Zona, executive director of the Butler was one of his students! Then, in 1970, he established the Black Studies program at Youngstown State and directed it for 18 years. He was the first full-time Black faculty member at Youngstown. During this time, he hosted Alex Haley, Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou, and Shirley Chisholm at the university. Marvin Haire, one of Bright’s first students in the program, wrote:

“[The black studies program] sought to infuse the systematic study of African people into university curriculum and do that in a way that provided exposure to a wide range of what we would call the black experience, including music, art, history, politics and education. So the original vision was to build a program that offered that kind global awareness to students who took courses.”

He never stopped painting and his works are part of permanent collections at The Butler Institute of American Art, the Kent State University Gallery, the Harmon and Harriet Kelly Collection of African-American Art, Canton Museum of Art. Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts and Northeastern University. He exhibited his art in more than 100 solo exhibitions over his career. In 2012, he painted “Portals in Time” to a live jazz performance at the Akron Art Museum.

He was awarded the the Distinguished Teaching Award from YSU in 2006. He died October 28, 2019 at age 79. For my last two years at Youngstown State, I worked in the Student Development Program. Bright spoke for the program regularly and helped open the eyes of this white guy from the Westside to the beauty of black culture and the outlines of black history. I was struck that I never was diminished in my own racial identity but enlarged in my appreciation of the culture and history of Blacks in Youngstown. He built bridges with people rather than walls. He could have been bitter. Instead, he was better, as a program founder, an artist, as a mentor to younger Black leaders. He was born and died in Youngstown. His life was a gift to the city.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — P. Ross Berry

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68-41-1 P Ross Berry sepia

P. Ross Berry, Courtesy of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society

It seems fitting during Black History month to talk about one of the most distinguished Black residents of Youngstown, Plympton Ross Berry (usually know as P. Ross Berry, having dropped his full first name for the initial). It has been said that at one time, he was involved in building most of the buildings in downtown Youngstown. Berry was born in June 1834 (some accounts list 1835) as a free person of color in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. His family moved to New Castle where he was trained as a bricklayer, becoming a master bricklayer and stonemason by age 16.

One of the first projects on which he worked, in 1851, was the Lawrence County (PA) courthouse, which is still standing. A letter to the New Castle News documents his role in contributing to the architectural design of the Greek Revival facade. He married in 1858 and he, his wife, and four children came by canal boat to Youngstown in 1861.

The project that brought him to Youngstown was a contract for the brick work at the Rayen School. In short succession he received contracts for work on the second St. Columba’s Church, the Homer Hamilton foundry and machine shop on South Phelps, the new jail on Hazel Street, the First Presyterian Church, the William Hitchcock and Governor Tod homes, the first Tod House on Central Square, the Grand Opera House in what was known as the “Diamond Block,” where the Huntington Bank is now located, and the 1876 Mahoning County Courthouse at Wick and Wood. According to the research of Joseph Napier, Sr., Berry built 65 structures in the area, as well as the brickwork on many Youngstown streets.

His stature in the community was such that a number of white bricklayers worked under his direction, something very uncommon in the day. As black soldiers migrated to the Mahoning Valley after the Civil War, he also trained many of them to work as bricklayers and was responsible for founding the Brick Masons Union, Local 8. Berry own his own brick foundry and made a reddish-orange colored brick, and example of which you can see in the Rayen Building. Because of his success and prominence, he was involved in a number of philanthropic causes and helped with the founding of the St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church.

Berry is described by Howard C. Aley as a handsome man, six foot six inches in height. His wife, Mary Long, eventually bore him eight children, four boys and four girls. Several sons worked in the business and his offspring were successful doctors, attorneys, musicians, and leaders in the community.

Berry worked until age 82 and died on May 12, 1917. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. The P. Ross Berry Middle School was completed in 2006, named in his honor. The school was closed as a middle school in 2012 and now serves as the site of the Mahoning County High School.

P. Ross Berry’s story was one I had not heard until recently and is one that deserves to be much more widely known. He is one of the outstanding citizens, builders, architects, and philanthropists Youngstown has produced.

Sources:

Howard C. Aley, A Heritage to Share

All Things Youngstown

New Castle News

Mahoning Valley History

Joseph Napier, Sr, The P. Ross Berry Story (video)

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Rev. Lonnie K. A. Simon

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Reverend Lonnie A. Simon

Reverend Lonnie K. A. Simon in his office. Source unknown, accessed from Delta Heritage Project at YSU Digital Archives

As I look over the posts in this series, one of the things I’ve realized is that it is a pretty White account of working class Youngstown. The truth is, that is where I grew up. The West Side was among the least integrated parts of the city. As I’ve worked on these posts, one thing I’ve become aware of is how much Blacks contributed to the working class history of Youngstown. In the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North, Youngstown was one of the destinations, particularly in the war years of the 1940’s as they filled jobs in the steel industry.

The purpose of these posts has not been to argue about things like politics, race, unions, sports, or religion, but to explore something of Youngstown’s distinctive history through the lens (in many cases) of my own early years in the city. My own thought is that to remember who we were helps us understand better who we are and what we bring as we move into the future.

One of the figures I remember who played a significant role in the Black community in Youngstown during the years I was growing up was the Reverend Lonnie K. A. Simon. Rev. Simon was born in East Mulga, Alabama March 23, 1925. His family moved to southwest Pennsylvania where his father worked in the coal mines. His father also pastored a church. In 1946, after serving in the Navy during the war, he moved to Youngstown to work at U. S. Steel while working his way through Youngstown College, majoring in Philosophy and Religion. It was during this time, in 1951 that he heard a call to the ministry. He began working for the Post Office (where federal laws better protected minorities) in 1955. In 1954, he accepted a call to Elizabeth Baptist Church in Youngstown., where he served for five years followed by two year at a church in Canton before returning, in 1962 to accept a call to New Bethel Baptist Church, where he served until retirement in 1995. He resigned from his position with the Post Office in 1965 to devote his full time to the ministry of this growing church. The church moved into larger facilities on Hillman, purchasing their building from Highway Tabernacle which eventually re-located to Austintown.

It was during this time that the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr rose to prominence. Reverend Simon marched as one of the chant leaders in the March on Montgomery with Dr. King in 1965. In 1968, rioting occurred in Youngstown after the assassination of Dr. King. The causes of the riots have long been disputed (something we won’t do here) but Reverend Simon was firmly committed to Dr. King’s principles of peaceful advocacy and helped restore peace in the community while advocating for civil rights. He paid heavily for his advocacy, facing personal threats, and in October 1972, in typical Youngstown fashion, had a car bomb explode in front of his home.

In an interview for Youngstown State University’s Oral History Program, conducted by Michael Beverly, Reverend Simon described his “conversion” to advocacy work:

A lot of us pastors went to Montgomery and we participated in the Montgomery March. But it wasn’t until 1967 when I went to Chicago and was given a grant by the Ford Foundation to attend the Urban Training Center; we had to deal with urban problems and social problems in depth. This is what I have come to call a new conversion experience, where I felt that my role as a pastor was not just behind the pulpit, it wasn’t all preaching. Prior to that time the traditional pastor was always taught to tell your people to be patient, and wait on the Lord and pray, and things would turn out all right. But I discovered while I was going through urban training that unless you got up off your knees and started doing something, challenging the institution nothing would happen.

He served on the Youngstown Board of Education from 1972 to 1975 and attended my Chaney High School commencement. He was appointed to the Governor’s Commission on Socially Disadvantaged Black Males of Ohio, and received the National Leadership Award in Denver in 1991. He served in a number of church leadership roles and made several mission trips to Africa, including one to the All-Africa Council of Churches where he met Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

He retired from the pastorate in 1995, becoming Pastor Emeritus. His son, Kenneth, continues to lead the church. His office in the church has been preserved as a memorial and an archive, and the church hosts an annual dinner that honors and raises funds to continue to extend its legacy.

Reverend Lonnie K. A. Simon was both a spiritual and a community leader who gave crucial leadership in Youngstown at a racially volatile period of our history. Like many in Youngstown, his father worked in coal mines and he worked in steel mills before his call to ministry. The character of his leadership is evident in the enduring presence of the church he pastored and a son who is carrying on that work. He pursued peace, but not at the expense of justice nor without personal risk. He is among the many through Youngstown’s history whose presence and leadership made a difference.