Today's Spartan-Municipal Stadium began its life as Universal Stadium in the summer of 1930, when Harry Snyder, the largest share owner of the Portsmouth Spartans, began its construction as part of the deal that brought an NFL franchise to the Peerless City. When a stadium referendum lost for a third time, Harry N. Snyder, owner of Universal Contracting Co., proposed to build the stadium with private funds and profits from ticket sales. Snyder, however, insisted that he could only move forward with the project, as its primary investor, if the Spartans organization secured a franchise from the National Football League.

The Portsmouth Daily Times reported, "The fate of the stadium was hanging in a balance as the Stadium Corporation announced that they would not go ahead with the project unless the Spartans entered the National League. They were of the opinion that without National League teams to play here the Spartans would not be able to draw sufficient of a crowd to support a stadium. As soon as the agreement was made to sign a note as an entrance fee to the league, the stadium people, who attended the meeting, stated that they were ready to go the limit with their plans and that as soon as the city awarded them the lease on the field they would begin work. The granting of the lease on the Labold Field will mark the close of more than a three-year fight for an athletic stadium here. At first popular subscriptions to build a stadium failed, then three bond issues failed when the matter was brought before the voters. A private enterprise has agreed to go ahead with the work and accept the responsibility."

On 23 July 1930, "city officials, officials of the stadium company, heads of the Portsmouth school systems and heads of many other organizations interested in athletics," were on hand when Mayor Robert G. Bryan turned the "first dirt," marking the start of the stadium's construction. Various delays, however, meant that Universal Stadium was largely a "wooden structure" when it first opened in September, 1930. 

Coleman Grimes of the Times reported, "The only concrete that will be poured will be in the box seats and for the footers. Twenty tiers of wooden stands will be erected before the first game, September 14, and the stands will be so erected the super-structure will be turned into forms for pouring the concrete."

Snyder assured the Times that before the next season, baseball diamonds, a track, and an additional ten tiers of seating would be built. For the season opening, Universal Stadium would be ready to hold 8,000 visitors. "The south end of the field will be enclosed and will be reserved for children. Youngsters up to 14 years of age will be admitted to all games for twenty-five cents."

The Spartans made their NFL debut with their home opener and they won, defeating the Newark (New Jersey) Tornadoes. Soon the Spartans would host their first night game, though not the first in the history of the NFL -- that honor belongs to the Providence, Rhode Island Steam Rollers. Nevertheless, Universal Stadium hosted the first night pro football game in Ohio and one of the first in all of the National Football League. And, would be the scene of the greatest football game ever played in Portsmouth, Ohio -- the Iron Man Game of December 4th, 1932.

It was here that Potsy Clark's immortal eleven defeated the Champion Green Bay Packers 19-0 with out making a single substitution. Eleven Spartans played both offense and defense, the full sixty minutes of the game. The Iron Man Game, as it has since become known, marked the largest crowd to ever attend an event at the stadium, with an estimated 13,000-plus in attendance. Such gate numbers, however, were extraordinary.

The well-laid plans of Harry Snyder and the Spartan organization, however, did not pan out as expected. Ticket sales were never enough to cover the team's and the stadium's operating expensives, let alone the completion of the stadium's construction. In 1934, when Snyder explained why he and the board of directors had decided to sell the team franchise to Detroit, he noted that "the team lost $27,000 in 1930, $16,000 in 1931, $5,000 in 1932 and $14,000 in 1933."

On April 5th, 1934, the Portsmouth National League Football Corp. held a stockholders meeting at the Selby Auditorium, where a vote was taken on whether to sell the team's NFL franchise to "a group of Detroit men, headed by George A. Richards." The Times reported that Detroit would pay $10,000 "for the team and all of its equipment." When the ballots had been counted, 49 favored the sale and 31 opposed it.

Snyder explained that $3,000 would be used to pay salaries of the players, $3,300 to pay federal taxes, and $1,058 to pay a debt owed the Chicago Bears for their share of the gate "for what turned out to be the last National league game in Portsmouth." The remainder was "used to pay a few commericial bills and the rest applied to payment of $6,000 in notes held here."

The Works Progress Administration Completes Construction of Stadium

Long before the sale of the Spartans to Detroit, Snyder and Portsmouth officials were pursuing an alternative means to complete the construction of the stadium, one that would not rely on ticket sales, but rather an infusion of Federal moneys via Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA).

As early as June 1933, the City’s Engineering Department began working on a new set of blueprints that would be part of a WPA project proposal — Universal Stadium would be finished as a part of a larger recreational center that could be used by the public and the local high schools, and also serve as the possible home of a professional baseball team. This was a return to the original vision of 1925, when the City first voted down the stadium levy.

The Engineering Department revised Snyder’s original plans for the Stadium and the City Manager submitted the new drawings as part of the larger WPA project. The final design work was all done with the NFL Spartans in mind. The Daily Times would announce in late September 1933, during the last season of the Spartans: “Portsmouth’s municipal stadium project has won the approval of the Ohio public works administration and the plans have been forwarded to Washington for approval or rejection.”

Even though the Spartans met with great success on the field, ticket sales disappointed and Harry Snyder found the Spartans facing bankruptcy. While Snyder was consulting with potential buyers in New York City and Detroit in January 1934, the Times reported that City Manager Frank Sheehan had received word from Columbus that the “stadium project” would be funded through the “public works program.” The Federal government would provide $27,000 and the city, $63,000 for the improvement. To pay for it the city would “issue bonds to cover its portion of converting the stadium into a recreational center and the government would take the bonds under a loan proposition. The city would retire the bonds from the revenues collected at the stadium. City officials said Saturday that no tax levy of any kind would be necessary.” 

WPA construction of what became then known as Portsmouth Municipal Stadium began in December 1935, with a total cost of $99,114. The Times reported, "with the addition of 10 rows, the seating capacity was increased from 4,200 to 6,500. It contains 30 rows instead of 20 when originally built by Harry N. Snyder, former head of the Portsmouth Football Corp."

"The stand is 300 feet long, 72 feet wide and 39 feet high. Materials in the stand included 2,000 tons or 1,481 cubic yards of gravel; 1,200 tons or 889 cubic yards of sand; 2,300 barrels of cement and 350 barrels of prepared mortar; 53 tons of steel and 210,000 brick. The concrete mix was one portion of cement, two portions of sand and four portions of gravel. The stand was designed to carry a load of 3,500 pounds per square inch. The concrete tested 3,850 pounds per square inch. The fence required 300,000 brick. There is a quarter-mile track inside of the stadium. The seating capacity can be increased to 9,000 or 10,000 by erection of bleachers. .... The promenade beneath the stand is so roomy that automobiles and trucks may be driven through it with ease."

The original Universal Stadium was designed by Arthur Wall, assistant city engineer. The Times noted that "a large portion of the plan" was used by the WPA in their final design. Wall had been "commissioned by Mr. Snyder to draw the plans and prepare the estimates." Erik Strindberg, working for the City, would revise the designs in November 1935 and these would be used by C. H. Samson, the WPA's general foreman. 

Thus, thanks to the WPA, Universal Stadium would be completed in 1936, alongside the construction of a baseball stadium, which has since become known as Branch Rickey Park. The new complex and fully-concreted stadium would be dedicated on September 25th, 1936. The ceremony was organized by the Civic Forum and opened with "a concert by the Portsmouth High School State Championship Band." Mayor Joseph L. Kountz and Forest Williams, president of the Portsmouth City School Board, made opening remarks, with Francis Schmidt, the coach of The Ohio State University football team delivering the primary address.

Following the ceremonial opening, the Portsmouth High School Trojans played their first game in the new Municipal Stadium against the Hamilton High School Big Blues, with the teams battling it out to a 7-7 draw. PHS would play their games here until the construction of their new sports facilities, including the Portsmouth Collosium, in 2009. Today, Spartan-Municipal Stadium is home to the Notre Dame Titans, Portsmouth's private Catholic higheschool, and the Shawnee State University Bears NCAA Division 2 football program. It remains a popular venue for public sporting and entertainment events.

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Harry N. Snyder, the largest share owner of the Spartans, was the sole proprietor of the Universal Contracting Company. Snyder had prospered in the 1920s with major road, bridge, and dam construction projects on the Ohio River and in Portsmouth and New Boston. It was Snyder who located the office of Universal Contracting in Room 25 of the Royal Savings & Loan Company Building and thus it was Room 25 that became the official business address of the Portsmouth National League Football Corporation -- the NFL Spartans.

Here, from their office in The Royal, Snyder and Harold Griffen, the Spartans’ business manager, would run the back office of the Spartan organization. And, ultimately, it was not victories on the playing field, but rather gate returns that would determine the fate of the NFL franchise in Portsmouth.

Ever since the sale of the team to Detroit in 1934, residents of the city and sports historians have speculated as to the causes of the Spartan's business failure. There have been those who point to Green Bay and the Packers' ability to survive in a small town environment, suggesting that it was the Packer's national championships that ensured their financial success. Spartan fans would like to believe that history would have turned out differently, if only the Spartans had won the Championship in 1931 and 1932.

Others blame the Great Depression for driving down attendance and ticket sales, ensuring that smaller towns and ticket markets simply could not turn a profit, especially as the cost of fielding a team of top notch professionals became only possible in the larger cities, where tens of thousands of tickets could be sold for each game. The Spartans needed to sell between 6,000 and 7,000 tickets at their home games in Universal Stadium to ensure profitability and the completion of the stadium's construction. This, however, was rarely ever the case, with more typical attendance hitting the 3,000 to 4,000 mark and sometimes significantly less.

In 1934, when Snyder explained why he and the board of directors had decided to sell the team franchise to Detroit, he noted that “the team lost $27,000 in 1930, $16,000 in 1931, $5,000 in 1932 and $14,000 in 1933.”

In the end, as the National Football League matured in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the smaller cities that had once been so common in the League were giving way to the larger cities, where the ticket sales could support the rising cost of star player contracts. In the end, the success of the Spartans on the field was testament to a time in the NFL's history when places like Portsmouth, with some 40,000 residents and a dedicated group of boosters, could put together a team capable of dominating the league. But the story of the Spartans' struggle to break a profit and complete the construction of Universal Stadium is one that foretells the emergence of the modern NFL, where only the largest cities (with Green Bay as the exception that proves the rule), with large ticket and media markets, can turn a profit.

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As early as 1912, Frank Stanton and George McMahon, co-owners of the Smoke House (a popular Portsmouth tobacco shop), had sponsored an amateur football team that traveled the Ohio-Kentucky-West Virginia Tri-State region, playing its home games at Millbrook Park in nearby New Boston, Ohio.

Regarded as “one of the finest ‘weed dispensaries’ in the state," the Smoke House had originally opened in 1906, under the ownership of Pete Schilling and Chalmer Davis, who sold the business to Stanton and McMahon in March 1912. The shop was located inside the Grand Opera House on Chillicothe Street, but following a fire in September 1914, Stanton and McMahon re-located to what was known as the Richardson Block, on the northwest corner of Fifth and Chillicothe Streets, overlooking the city’s Esplanade (what was then known as Government Square).

The new shop included a major expansion, with the cigar store on the ground floor and a second floor set up as a "pool and billiards hall." The Times reported that "the handsome fixtures down stairs are of the very latest design, the show cases are of an unique and attractive make, the plate glass front is counstructed along new lines and the poolroom with its 12 tables on the second floor is ideally equipped. .... The Smoke House is a veritable club house and is sure to be well patronized by lovers of the weed and those who like to show their skill as a pocket billiardist."

The Smoke House also provided its patrons with the latest sports news and scores for baseball and football games from across the nation, which they pulled from the news wires and radio. On election night, the Smoke House would also be the first place to post returns on local, state, and federal races.

The Emergence of Semi-Professional Football

In the region’s smaller industrial towns, as well as its larger cities, former high school stars (now making a living in their hometown factories and businesses) joined with recent college graduates to form the first semi-professional teams. They worked their regular day jobs and during their free time, they practiced and played ball, traveling to nearby cities to do battle on the gridiron.

The teams attracted commercial backers including members of the chamber-of-commerce and other city-boosters (whom themselves were fans of the game). Team sponsors helped offset the cost of fielding a traveling team and local rivalries helped fuel the competition as teams vied for both financial backing and regional league championship titles.

City boosters came to view successful professional sports teams and associated sports infrastructure — playing fields and stadiums — as key elements in their city’s economic development. Civic and business groups, such as Kiwanis and the Rotarians, backed ballot initiatives to build stadiums and youth sports complexes.

The N & W Smoke House Football Team

The first truly semi-professional football team in Portsmouth can be traced back to 21 September 1920, when the Smoke House hosted a meeting of interested players and boosters. August Putzek would manage and coach the team, which was co-sponsored by the Norfolk & Western Railway. The N & W was a major local employer, managing the city's railyard and running the company's repair shops. As in other cities, Portsmouth's early semi-professional teams were often named after their primary business sponsors.

Coach Putzek and the new N & W Smoke House team would establish the longstanding footbally rivaly with the Ironton Tanks, with the two teams playing their first contests in 1920.

After the Tanks won the first game, the Times reported "the rivalry was so intense that the game will be an annual affair in each city, in fact negotiations are already on for the Tanks to play in Millbrook next fall and the Smoke House team to play a return engagement in Ironton." (29 November 1920).

From 1920 to 1925, the Smoke House teams enjoyed moderate success, with an overall record of 19-16-8. And, while they won against teams from Wellston, Chillicothe, Jackson, Ashland, Columbus, Lancaster, and Huntington, they could never defeat their greatest rivals - the Ironton Tanks. In October 1925, the Smoke House suffered a humiliating 34-0 loss at the hands of the Huntington Boosters and the team fell apart, disbanding after playing only two games of the season.

Jacques 'Jack' Creasy

According to football historian Carl Becker, author of Home & Away: The Rise and Fall of Professional Football on the Banks of the Ohio, “no one in Portsmouth mourned the passing of the team. They never held the heart of Portsmouth, emotionally or materially, never came near becoming a team of the town. The community had to await the coming of a new venture in football for that to happen.” A new football venture was indeed on the way. And it was spearheaded by twenty-five year old Jack Creasy.

William Jacques Creasy was born on October 9th, 1901, the son of William L. Creasy, who worked as the Assistant Superintendent of the Pocahontas Consolidated Coal and Coke Company. Jacques attended Portsmouth High School (PHS) and graduated in 1922. While at PHS, he worked on the school newspaper and served as senior class president. He made a name for himself as an excellent athlete and team leader, having been chosen captain of both the football and basketball teams.

His senior Yearbook notes: “As captain of last year’s varsity (football squad), Jack finished up his fourth and most successful season for P.H.S. His defensive and offensive work was excellent, and his passing sure and swift.” Creasy was a local football star and, by all accounts, he was fun-loving and well-liked by all who knew him.

After his high school graduation, Creasy took a job with the Portsmouth Daily Times circulation department and eventually found work as a clerk in the Department of Public Service. In his free time, Creasy trained as a boxer and refereed bouts, while also playing center and serving as the captain of the Smoke House team.

In the fall of 1924, Creasy left Portsmouth, hitch-hiking his way to the University of Arizona, where he hoped to play ball under Coach Pop McKale. Creasy, however, never made the team and returned home to Portsmouth in June of 1925 after completing one year of study.

“Look Who is Here!” read the headline in the Times. “No it was not a senatorial candidate nor a beer baron from Canada that was drawing crowds last night. The center of the handshaking group was one Jacques Creasy, brown and smiling with his broad sombrero suggesting the far southwest. For Jacques has just returned from a winter in Tucson, Arizona where he attended University…Buenos dios, Jacques.”

Creasy would join the Smoke House roster for what would be its last season in the fall of 1925. But while the Smoke House team collapsed, he would go on to greatly impact football in Portsmouth helping to form the Portsmouth (Studebaker) Presidents, the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels, and then setting the stage for the creation of the Portsmouth Spartans.

The Studebaker Presidents vs. the Portsmouth Merchants

In the summer of 1926, Portsmouth football fans and backers formed two separate teams, each competing for local talent and financial backing. Jack Creasy would join the squad organized with the primary backing of W.R. Fundenberg, owner of the Scioto Motor Company, a local Studebaker auto-dealer. Creasy was chosen as captain of the new team, which took the name of the Studebaker Presidents. Jack Walters of the Hurth Hotel served as business manager, handling contracts and booking games.

The second team was fielded by members of the Portsmouth Retail Merchants Association and given the uninspired name of the “Portsmouth Merchants.” Pat Shoemaker served as coach and manager. Their uniforms and equipment were donated by various local supporters, including the Dunham Meat Market, Taylor Universal Motor Company, Service Drug Company, Harley Davidson Motorcycle Shop, Ferrell Bros. Confectionery, the Senate Cafe, Gibson Music Shop, Kings Lunch Room, Home Vulcanizing Company, Cannonball Company, Terminal Lunch Room, Horchow Furniture Company, the Play House, Glockner Chevrolet, and the McDonnell Buick dealership.

The Merchants would complete the season with a mixed, but losing record, which failed to rally local fans and financial boosters. Both teams would play on the new Labold Field, which the city had acquired by donation in 1925 from one of the city’s most wealthy businessmen and most generous philanthropists -- Simon Labold. Located at the foot of Brown Street on the banks of the Ohio River, behind a newly constructed floodwall in the city’s East End neighborhood, Labold Field was to be used by the city schools and general public, as well as professional sports teams.

Previously, the Smoke House had practiced at Mound Park and played their home games in New Boston’s Millbrook Park. But in September of 1925, local Boy Scouts and city workers cleaned up and leveled the ground for football and baseball fields. These improvements were spearheaded with $7,500 in donations from area businesses, and included the erection of temporary bleachers, steel wire fencing, steel goal posts, and a new paved city street to the field.

Jack Creasy and the Studebaker Presidents would win their home-opener at Labold on September 26th, 1926, defeating the Ironton Panthers, 7-0. The Times coverage of the game was surprisingly critical, perhaps hoping to goad the team to improve their play. “Although the Presidents opened their season with a victory,” reported the Times, “they should not feel very elated over the game as they outweighed the Panthers considerably and should have had no trouble in beating them to a standstill.”

Like Portsmouth, Ironton sported two football teams in 1926. The Ironton Panthers were considered the B-Team and derisively described as the “Junior Tanks.” H. Coleman Grimes, the City Editor at the Times, who wrote much of the paper’s coverage of local football, concluded: “All in all, the game was very disappointing, instead of working like a well-oiled machine as they should, the Presidents showed up poorly, their line failed to hold when it should have, only one [pass] was thrown and received and the backfield men received little or no interference from their team mates.”

For all the criticism, the Presidents, it turned out, were just getting warmed up. Their win over the Panthers at Labold Field kicked off a run of six victories, including a 12-0 defeat of their Portsmouth rivals, the Merchants. The weather for the game was awful. “A small crowd of spectators paid their admission, but several hundred sat in their cars outside the enclosure and viewed the game,” reported the Times. “The sparkling red jerseys of the Presidents were in contrast to the brand new gray ones of the Merchants as the first whistle blew, but within five minutes there was little difference in the colors.” The game had been “a titanic struggle in the mud” whose results ensured the Presidents would “retain the right to use Labold Field for Sunday games for the remainder of the season.”

Local interest reached a fever pitch after the Presidents vanquished the Merchants. Captain Jack Creasy and team boasted an undefeated record (6-0) heading into the next away game against the Ironton Tanks, the city’s biggest and longest standing rival. “The locals are eager to get into the battle, which will either make them or break them,” reported the Times. “The team went through its last workout last night on the Mound Park. …. Indications are that close to a thousand Portsmouth fans will make the trip with the team to the Iron City. Enthusiasm here is at a breaking point. Fans have been talking about the Presidents-Tanks game for the past month and within an hour after 250 tickets for the game arrived at the Smoke House to go on sale most of them were sold.”

Unfortunately, the Presidents lost the grudge match, 0-to-9. It was certainly disappointing to Portsmouth fans. Local press coverage was muted, focusing on interviews with Ironton football fans who only praised their defeated river city rivals. One commentator opined that “the Portsmouth club has really developed remarkably this season. They organized early in the fall with no thought that they soon would be in position to meet with the leaders of valley football and play them almost on even terms.”

Creasy and the Presidents rebounded for their next two games, with two shut out victories over the Columbus Bobbs (12-0) and Cincinnati Friars (31-0). They dropped their next match (0-6) to the Armcos in Ashland, Kentucky, before preparing to meet the Tanks for one last game before the season’s end.

Again, the Presidents would travel to Ironton to play at the Tank’s Beechwood Stadium. And again, they would fall -- this time by a score of 33-0. Portsmouth press coverage was completely silent. The Presidents had been humiliated. At the end of the season, both the Presidents and the Merchants would dissolve. But, while fans were licking their wounds, Jack Creasy was putting together a new football organization, one that would give the city a fully-professional team that could dominate the region and propel Portsmouth to the highest levels of national sporting leagues.

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On August 20th, 1928, Portsmouth, Ohio football fans and civic leaders gathered at the Hotel Hurth for a dinner meeting and the launch of a new professional football venture. The meeting came just five weeks after the tragic death of Jack Creasy, who had been the leading force behind the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels team, which had been led by the legendary Jim Thorpe, as player and coach. The success of the Shoe-Steels had demonstrated the possibilities of a professional football team in Portsmouth. But, without Creasy to take the lead, a new organization was needed.

Behind the scenes Howard Graf, the recently elected President of Portsmouth’s First National Bank, worked with Coleman Grimes and the Portsmouth Daily Times to promote the meeting at the Hotel Hurth: “It is a foregone conclusion that Portsmouth will support one of the greatest professional teams in history this year. …. Eighteen of the best players in the country, practically the same team that lined up against Ashland Armco [in] the last game of the last season, have been tentatively signed up. .... Walter Jean, who so successfully took charge of the Shoe-Steels last year after Thorpe left and who had charge of a great deal of coaching during the time Thorpe was here, will again coach the Portsmouth team.” Grimes concluded that “the citizens want a good football team in Portsmouth this year and are willing to support it.”

With fifty businessmen in attendance, the city’s diverse commercial interests stepped forward, more united than ever. Upon the suggestion of Howard Graf, it was agreed to organize a “stock company” with a regular board of directors and elected officers who would oversee the management of the new team’s affairs.

Ultimately, Dr. George B. Brown was elected president; William N. Gableman, vice-president; H. Coleman Grimes, secretary; and Howard Graf, treasurer and business manager. The organization would take the name of the Portsmouth Football Association. The board also announced its support for a $80,000 bond referendum to construct a modern stadium and public sports complex at the site of Labold Field.

It was also determined that a new team name should be selected, one that did not reference a local business or manufacturer, a name that all supporters could rally behind — the Portsmouth Spartans. On September 6th, following a public contest, over one-hundred names were considered. The Times reported: "Spartans was chosen as the handle for the professional eleven of 1928, pending approval of the president and board of directors. ... The author of the name is Bert Hurth, son of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Hurth, of Second street. If this name is finally chosen, young Hurth will be presented with a season ticket as a prize. Another fan suggested a name similar to the Spartans; it was ‘Peerless Spartans,’ but was not selected because of the fact that it carried two names and the committee decided to narrow it to one name."

While a mere coincidence, Bert Hurth was the son of the owner of the Hotel Hurth and his last name and the hotel itself will long be associated with the history of the Spartans and pro football in Portsmouth. The Times explained that "a number of reasons entered into choosing Spartans as the name for the team. One of the reasons was that it corresponded with the name Trojans, given the High School teams. It is suggestive of no organization or business house, and is suggestive of 'fight,' with a capital F."

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Discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was now banned by federal law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically outlawed racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Private clubs, however, were exempted and it was unclear whether or not the federal law applied to the Terrace Club, which at the time was owned and operated as a private club. Since the late nineteenth-century, a similar “private club” exemption had existed in the Ohio Revised Code. Thus, despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, segregation of many American swimming pools — including the Terrace Club — continued in the summer of 1964, just as it had before. The fight to end Jim Crow in Portsmouth was not yet won. In hindsight, direct, non-violent actions — what had become known as wade-ins and sit-ins — was what was needed to compel Portsmouth's white leaders to once and for all end Jim Crow in the city. Portsmouth's local branch of the NAACP would play a key role in planning the demonstration that would ultimately force the management of the Terrace Club to integrate their facilities. At the time, Charles Stanley Smith, Jr., a 32-year old employee of the Empire Detroit Steel Mill in New Boston, led the organization. Smith would tell the local press that the action was aimed at challenging the pool’s segregation under Ohio law, not the new federal law. “This is supposed to be a private club, but the word ‘private’ only means to bar Negroes,” he explained. The wade-in planning was extensive and involved secret coordination with Portsmouth Police Chief Ted Wilburn and County Coroner, Dr. James F. Scott, who ended up playing a critical role in the successful resolution of the controversy. In addition to the NAACP’s president, Eugene Collins, Curt Gentry, Roy Burns, Jesse Baggette, and other (not yet identified) community members, including two juvenile boys, decided on who would actually wade into the water. Gentry, at the time, was home from Maryland State College on his summer break, having recently participated in demonstrations organized by a local chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The protests, in Cambridge, Maryland, had turned as violent as Birmingham under Bull Conor, with the police using firehoses and German shepherds to break-up public demonstrations by Civil Rights activists. It was in Cambridge, that Gloria Richardson emerged as the leader of the movement, and there is little doubt the struggle in Cambridge informed the thoughts and actions of Gentry, as he supported the use of direct action against the Terrace Club in Portsmouth. Gentry, who went on to a professional career in three sports (baseball, basketball, and football), was already well-known in both the white and black communities of the city. He had been a standout student and athlete at the integrated Portsmouth High School, serving in student government and starring in varsity sports. His former PHS basketball coach, Charles Lorentz, it turned out, also managed the segregated pool at the Terrace Club. The wade-in planners coordinated with the Police Chief’s vacation schedule so that Wilburn would be at home and off-duty when the direct action began on July 17th, 1964. Eugene Collins and Curt Gentry’s mother stationed themselves at the entrance to the Terrace Club, positioned so that they could testify in court as to how the pool staff, guests, protesters, and police handled the situation. At 1pm, the appointed time, when the pool was packed and everyone was enjoying the sun and water, Smith, Gentry, Burns, Baggette, and two juvenile aged African American boys (who go unnamed in the newspaper accounts) approached the entrance. They asked for admission and were denied. As planned, they placed their 60-cent guest membership fee on the counter, hopped over the turnstyles, and made their way to the pool. Once they had entered the water, the life guards blew their whistles and an unnamed pool employee went on the loudspeaker, calling on everyone to immediately clear the pool. According to Eugene Collins, when the demonstrators refused, the voice from the PA system announced: “If you do not leave the pool you will be arrested.” They refused and the Portsmouth police were then called. Detective William Combs and Captain Ray Thompson soon arrived. The demonstrators again refused to exit the pool, and, as Thompson, who was Acting Police Chief, was making plans to arrest the protestors, Ted Wilburn showed up, unannounced, and took command. 

When Chief Wilburn ordered the black swimmers out of the pool and they once again refused, the Chief ordered Combs and Thompson into swim trunks and sent the two officers into the water to arrest the protestors.

While the crowd waited for the swimmers to be arrested, some of the younger white swimmers jumped back in the pool in a show of solidarity. A photographer with the Portsmouth Daily Times was there to catch the moment when one of the white youths reached out to shake hands with one of the protestors. The younger generation of Portsmouth residents appear to have been ready to put aside the old Jim Crow.

Once Combs and Thompson were in the water, there was no further resistance and the six demonstrators were peaceably escorted out of the Terrace Club and placed in unmarked cruisers before being driven to the police station at the City Building. There, as previously arranged, Dr. Scott and Bud Hairston, another leader in the city’s black community, waited, ready to post bond, if necessary, to secure the release of the protestors. It was at the Police Station in the City Building that the critical showdown occurred, when attorney Ormond Adams, representing the Terrace Club’s Board of Directors, pressed charges of trespassing on both the adults and juveniles who had entered the pool. At this point, Dr. Scott intervened, explaining that the Portsmouth City Police would have to release the juveniles — they could not be arraigned in the municipal court; the city would have to release the juveniles to their parents or the sheriff would have to arrest the juveniles to process them through the county’s juvenile court system. The decision of whether to arrest the children fell to Scioto County Sheriff C. Russell Burns. First elected in 1958 on the Democrat Party ticket, Burns would serve as Sheriff until 1969. With the pool’s attorney pressing for their prosecution in juvenile court, Sheriff Burns at first decided to take the children into his custody. This dramatic turn in the controversy is an example of how fragmentary the historical record can become. Dr. Scott’s threat was never reported in the press and was first revealed in an oral history interview of Eugene Collins. Juvenile protestors played key roles in the fight to end segregation in Portsmouth, as elsewhere. When Sheriff Burns moved to arrest the teenagers, Dr. Scott took his stand and the last remnant of Jim Crow in Portsmouth began to crumble. The black county coroner reminded the white county sheriff that in Ohio the coroner is the only public official empowered to arrest the sheriff. If Sheriff Burns were to proceed with his plans to arrest the juveniles, explained Dr. Scott, he, as County Coroner, would place the Sheriff under arrest. To his credit, Sheriff Burns backed down. The juveniles were set free and never charged. Municipal Court Judge Charles E. Smith released the four adults on $25 bonds and the charges, after months of delays, were dismissed ultimately in July 1965. Once released from police custody, Charles Stanley Smith asked the Portsmouth Times reporter, "We all go to school together, live together, why not swim together?” The refusal of the Terrace Club management to integrate, along with Sheriff Burns’s decision not to arrest the juveniles may have emboldened the local movement, especially its younger supporters. A second direct action was soon planned. Although the local leadership of the NAACP would deny any role in its planning, clearly its rank and file membership were involved. On July 21st, four days after the wade-in, forty youths staged a massive sit-in to block the entrance of the Terrace Club. According to the Portsmouth Daily Times, “Police Chief Ted Wilburn was summoned to the scene and gave the order to move the youngsters to the police station. The action was taken after repeated requests from pool employees to clear the gate.” The demonstrators were first taken to the Municipal Courtroom, "the only available room at City Hall large enough to hold the group.” The Daily Times noted that “Juvenile Court officials later notified police to transfer the youngsters to the courthouse, so they could be handled by juvenile officials.” The children had once again forced the issue of whether county officials would intervene to defend Jim Crow. The children, many of them now joined by their parents, were moved to the Scioto County Court House, where they were told to wait for the entrance of Judge Paul E. Fowler. The Civil Rights Movement in Portsmouth had reached a critical impasse. Chief Wilburn and the municipal and juvenile courts were clearly not going to tolerate wade-ins and sit-ins at the Terrace Club and the Movement had shown local law enforcement and the courts that they were no longer going to simply accept Jim Crow. While the children and their parents waited, a behind the scenes “conference session” played out in the Judge’s chambers. Fowler first met in private with Charles Stanley Smith, Jr., and then, as a group, with Ormond S. Adams, president of the Terrace Club; Charles Fugitt, court probation officer; and two additional representatives from the local NAACP chapter (who go un-named in the Times reporting, but, a good case can be made it was, once again, Dr. Scott and Bud Hairston). According to Judge Fowler’s statement to the press, law enforcement and the representatives of the NAACP had “arrived at a good understanding,” following their discussion of “individual adult responsibility as it affects youngsters of the community.” Explaining that there are legal and illegal ways of demonstrating, Fowler proclaimed that “demonstrations must be kept within the lawful realm of activity.” And Chief Wilburn indicated that “action against the parents probably would be sought if children are used in future illegal demonstrations.” Charges of “contributing to the delinquency of minors could be filed against the parents.” With a clear threat of arrest for any further protests, Fowler ordered that the children be released and no charges be filed. The summer of 1964 would unwind, the court hearings for the adult wade-in demonstrators would be repeatedly postponed, and no further demonstrations were held. The local chapter of the NAACP supported their legal defense and, according to Eugene Collins’ account, their investigations turned up records that proved the Terrace Club had been receiving city water at a discounted rate. In other words, this supposedly “private,” white-only club, it was claimed, was receiving a form of public subsidy, which implied that the pool was in fact operating as a public accommodation. While the legal drama unfolded behind the scenes, the Terrace Club continued to enforce its Jim Crow membership rules for the remainder of the summer of 1964. The silence in the public square unnerved some residents. As the summer came to end in early September, the Times published a letter that chided city leaders for remaining quiet: “Perhaps I thought some of our white citizens would speak up on the injustices of the Terrace Club swimming pool. …. I feel we live in a very unhealthy atmosphere when no one wants to become involved. Religious and civic leaders are quiet on anything so controversial.” The writer, Mrs. Olive Goings Melvin of 1154 Ninth Street, recalled the paper’s original coverage of the wade-in, which captured the support for integration that could be found in the community. “I must say,” concluded Melvin, “I admired the young man who shook hands with one of the swimmers. Thank you, young man, for showing Portsmouth there is some good when all looked so bad.” The Terrace Club board of directors would ultimately decide to integrate their facilities, but they did so only upon reopening the following summer in 1965. They dropped the name “Terrace Club” and relaunched their now-integrated pool as it had been originally named when first built in the 1920s — Dreamland. The impact integration had on the attendance and finances of Dreamland is debatable. After the pool was opened to African-Americans in the summer of 1965, but before the opening of McKinley pool in the summer of 1967, attendance at Dreamland appears to have declined, as some residents chose not to swim in the newly integrated waters. In June of 1965, Rose Ticatch, a resident of New Boston, lamented the drop in attendance in a letter to the Daily Times wherein she called on area whites to embrace an integrated facility: “Dreamland swimming pool is the heart of the city in summertime. Don’t let it die. History tells us that it took all kinds of people to make this great country of ours what it is today. Let us go to work like our fore fathers did and build, not destroy, this wonderful opportunity that we have and follow the law of the land. It is a great place and big enough for everyone that has an open mind.” Dreamland did not die with integration. With the opening of McKinley Pool on 17 June 1967, the two pools allowed for the continuance of a form of de facto segregation in Portsmouth, now no longer enforced by law, but rather supported by continued racism and the legacies of red-lined residential neighborhoods. Whites, of course, could be found swimming at McKinley and occasionally blacks did swim at Dreamland, but it was clear that each community had its own un-officially designated swimming pool. Dreamland would thrive through the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, experiencing what some would consider its heyday and much of the community’s current nostalgia for the pool focuses on these formative years of the Baby-boomer generation. With maintenance expenses and insurance premiums, along with the increased competition of newer township swimming pools such as those in Rosemount and Wheelersburg, Dreamland's finances deteriorated and by 1993, the facility would be closed, sold, and demolished. Its demise paralleled and, for some, symbolized the larger economic decline of the city in the 1980s and 1990s. By the time author Sam Quiones had named his best selling book about the opioid epidemic on Portsmouth's Dreamland Pool, there was growing nostalgia for the so-called good old days when Portsmouth's economy was strong, when good jobs were plenty, and summer days were spent playing in the sun with friends and family. Today, much of the old Terrace Club property and the Dreamland Pool itself has been converted into a parking lot, serving a strip mall, which is anchored by an Aldi's grocery store. Without a historical marker and without any surviving structures, all that is left are photographs, family movies, and the fading memories of those who once spent their summers in Dreamland.

Sources: Tiana Adeniyi, “Interview with Eugene Collins,” Stories of Life & Labor: Oral Histories from Portsmouth, Ohio, Center for Public History, Shawnee State University. A portion of this interview is available via https://soundcloud.com/tiana-adeniyi/2-collins-eugene-interview. Blaine Bierly, “Swimming Pool Integration in Portsmouth,” PHS Trojan Alumni Prints (August 2011).

Rebecca D. Jenkins, "Forgotten: Scioto County's Lost Black History," MA Thesis, Bowling Green State University (2015). Ray W. Thompson, "Black People Go Swiming in Dreamland Pool," in Law and Disorder while Assigned to Metro Police at Portsmouth, Ohio (unpublished typescript, c. 2011).

“Cambridge, Maryland,” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, https://snccdigital.org/location/cambridge-md/. "16 Rabbis Arrested as Pool Dive‐In Sets Off St. Augustine Rights Clash," New York Times (19 June 1964). Niraj Chokshi, "Racism at American Pools Isn’t New: A Look at a Long History," New York Times (1 August 2018). “Four Freed on Bond after Pool Entry. Negroes Charged with Trespassing at Terrace Club,” Portsmouth Daily Times (18 July 1964). “Trespassing Charged After Pool Wade-in,” Coshocton Times (18 July 1964). “40 Negroes Stage Sit-In at Local Pool. Police Remove, Arrest Young Demonstrators,” Portsmouth Daily Times (21 July 1964). “In Pool Demonstration Officers Warn Against Children in Protests,” Portsmouth Daily Times (22 July 1964). “Cites ‘Injustice’ of Pool Operation,” Portsmouth Daily Times (2 September 1964). “Wants Dreamland Pool Kept Operating,” Portsmouth Daily Times (5 June 1965). “Charges in Pool Incident Killed,” Portsmouth Daily Times (28 July 1965). Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

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