Civil Rights Movement in Portsmouth, Ohio
Explore the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Portsmouth, Ohio, where the city’s black residents resisted the development of racial segregation and other discriminatory practices that followed the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s.
Learn about the decades long struggle to end segregation in the city’s schools and how in the 1960s non-violent, civil disobedience worked to integrate the Booker T. Washington School and the Terrace Club, a private, whites-only swimming pool and youth center. Complete the tour in person or virtually using the Scioto Historical mobile app and website.
Begin at the former location of Allen Chapel (AME) on 7th Street (now the location of Kroger’s delivery docks), where the city’s leading black and white champions of civil rights celebrated the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870.
Learn about local efforts to resist the segregation of public spaces, when Wurster Brothers on Chillicothe Street refused service to the Rev. W. B. Derrick, an influential Bishop in the AME Church. Visit the site of the Westland Theater (now the location of the Portsmouth STEM Academy playground), where the NAACP successfully organized black enrollees in the nearby Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps to boycott special, black-only movie screenings. Visit the grave of Bessie Tomlin who is remembered as the only person to drown in the Flood of 1937 and learn how residential segregation shaped the city’s evacuation plans and ultimately contributed to the tragedy that is memorialized by her marker in Greenlawn Cemetery.
Learn about the origins of the Fourteenth Street Community Center, when the North End Luncheon Club opened a “Community House” in 1932. Then, with the establishment of multiple, segregated CCC camps on the outskirts of the city, Portsmouth civic organizations backed the National Youth Administration’s construction of a segregated “Community Center” on 14th Street, one that could serve the needs of black CCC enrollees, as well as the city’s black youth.
Finish the tour at the Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool, which supporters of integration originally promoted as “A Place in the Sun for Everyone,” and then contemplate the history of Dreamland Pool, which before its integration in 1965 was known as the Terrace Club.
Stories 9
Fifteenth Amendment Ratification Celebration in Portsmouth, Ohio: Allen Chapel of the AME Church Hosts Integrated Celebration in 1870
The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 marked the culmination of a decades long struggle to end slavery and establish a new national republic that guaranteed equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of their "race, color, or their previous condition of servitude." The right to vote, guaranteed to African American men through the Fifteenth Amendment, was thought to be the capstone in a renovated representative democracy, one where racial discrimination was no longer the law of the land. The Fifteenth wrapped up the business first begun with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for criminal violations of the law. The Fifteenth Amendment was meant to establish true equality by opening elections and public office to African American men.
Booker T. Washington School on Eleventh Street: Public Education and Racial Segregation in Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth City Schools opened their first segregated facility for African American students in 1859, marking the first time that black residents were able to receive a public education. The school…
Jim Crow at Wurster Brothers Drug Store on Chillicothe Street: The Ohio Conference of the AME Church Denounces Racial Discrimination in Portsmouth, Ohio
In September 1904, Portsmouth, Ohio's Wurster Bros. Drug Store on Chillicothe Street made headlines in the New York Times when they refused to serve soda water to Bishop W. B. Derrick, a visiting leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was in the city attending a meeting of the Ohio Conference of the AME, which was being hosted by Allen Chapel, the city's oldest Black congregation.
Fourteenth Street Community Center: "The Heart of the North End"
Today’s Fourteenth Street Community Center has its origins in a vibrant black civic movement of the 1920s during the Era of Jim Crow, when Portsmouth, Ohio, like much of the United States was segregated along racial lines. A national civic movement in scope, its local manifestation included groups associated with civic betterment (public health and wellness, recreation, and education), along with black-owned business promotion and networking, but also advocacy organizations that championed social justice and equal rights, including a branch of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Portsmouth NAACP Protests Jim Crow at the Westland Theater: Screening of Joe Louis's “The Spirit of Youth” Sparks Controversy in 1938
In February 1938, Joe Louis was just starting his reign as heavy-weight champion of the world, having won the title the previous June when he knocked out James J. Braddock. Portsmouth, Ohio, like the rest of the nation, had not yet recovered from the Great Depression. At a time when racial discrimination was at its height and the modern Civil Rights Movement only beginning to pick up traction, Louis quickly became as an inspiration for African Americans, young and old. As Langston Hughes famously recalled, "Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions—or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too."
Bessie Tomlin and the Ohio River Flood of 1937
When the Flood of 1937 hit Portsmouth, Bessie Tomlin, like others in the city's African-American neighborhood, first found safety on the second floor of the Booker T. Washington School. But soon she and the other refugees at the Washington School would run out of food and water, and heat, and would need to be evacuated by boat to the other refugee centers in the dry Hilltop neighborhoods. The story of Tomlin's death by drowning resurfaced in the 1990s and has since gone onto inspire local artists and musicians. Her grave in Greenlawn Cemetery was refurbished with a new engraved black marble stone, her image etched into its face. Robert Dafford's flood wall mural, perhaps more than any other image, commemorates the tragedy in the popular imagination. While Rob Black, a local musician with the Boneyfiddle Project, has written and recorded "Bessie Lift Your Baby Up," which tells the story in song. Her untimely demise, told here, has become forever linked with that of the Flood of 1937.
Dr. James F. Scott, the First Elected Black County Coroner in the United States
James Forrest Scott was born in Porter, Ohio located in Gallia County, on 29 July 1903. He graduated from Bidwell Porter High School in 1921. Despite being the only black member of his class, he was…
Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”
Portsmouth, Ohio’s only city-owned, public pool was built to memorialize the drowning death of fourteen-year-old resident Eugene McKinley, the son of George and Ruth McKinley, who lived at 1212-E Farley Square.
Integrating Portsmouth, Ohio’s Dreamland Pool: Non-violent Direct Action at the Terrace Club
By the summer of 1964, the Civil Right’s Movement had picked up momentum and direct actions aimed at integrating white-only public accommodations and places of amusement, such as swimming pools, had spread across the nation. In June of 1964, a "Dive-In" at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida, where protestors were pulled from the motel's swimming pool and beaten by police, captured the nation's attention. In response to the protests, turmoil, and media pressure Congress finally passed the Civil Rights Act and President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law on July 2nd, 1964.Tour curated by: Andrew Feight, Ph.D. | Special Thanks to the Fourteenth Street Community Center and Sean Boldman's American Family Insurance Agency for their support of the development of this tour.