A Lot Has Changed...But Much Has Not

Today is Martin Luther King day in the USA. And today my favorite local public radio station, WVXU 91.7, rebroadcast an interview from September 2015 with Marian Spencer and Dorothy Christenson, the author of KeepOn Fighting: The Life and Civil Rights Legacy of Marian A. Spencer. Marian Spencer was 95 at the time of the interview. 

Marian Spencer was and still is an amazing civil rights activist locally and nationally. She was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio in the home of her grandfather, a freed slave from West Virginia. She joined the NAACP when she was 13. In 1938 she came to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati. She earned a BA in English in 1942. In 1981 she became the first black female president of the local NAACP and remains the only black female to have held that position in the Cincinnati chapter. She was the first black female to be elected to Cincinnati city council and served as Vice Mayor as a member of the Charter party.

One of her most famous battles was against Coney Island in 1952. After her sons had heard a radio ad inviting children to Coney Island to meet a local TV personality she called to verify. But once she told them they were “Negroes” she was told that her children were not allowed. On July 4^th Spencer showed up at the gate of Coney Island and was banished by a guard brandishing a gun.

Soon after her banishment she chaired the  NAACP Legal Action vs. Coney Island, Cincinnati, Ohio. The day Spencer showed up at the gate at Coney Island she had enlisted the help of approximately 25 other African-Americans to stand in line and be turned away. They all testified and were asked who called them to go to Coney Island. All answered, “Marian Spencer.” When she took the stand the attorney for Coney Island admonished her, “a white woman”, for getting involved with the Negroes. He called her a Communist. Her simple reply was “Sir, I am neither a white woman nor a Communist.”The NAACP subsequently won the case.

More recently Spencer spoke out against the controversial parks levy which was pushed by Mayor John Cranley. She initially supported the levy. But when she found out the money would only be used for capital projects and would become a charter amendment she pulled her support.  The levy was voted down.

Much has changed since MLK marched and gave his life for civil rights in the United States. Yes, we elected a black president…twice. But there is still a lot that has not changed.

Unarmed black men (and children) are being murdered by rogue policemen, who are indiscriminately protected by their blue brethren. We are seeing more black artists in the movies but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to be blind to that fact. OprahWinfrey is the most respected, wealthiest, influential and generous black woman in the world, yet blacks still rate as the highest percentage of those living in poverty and imprisoned in the United States, which touts itself as the richest country in the world. The face of our government, local state and federal, is still predominately white men. 

Today while visiting my 87-year-old father he sarcastically remarked “I wish they’d make a holiday on my birthday.” This is not the first time he’s made that crack and he is not the only person I have heard use this kind of coded language.

Yes a lot has changed, but much has not.