The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. Phillip J. Obermiller
Cincinnati intern. When Dr. Carson withdrew for health reasons, Dr. Fritz Casey-Leininger, head of the Community History program at the University of Cincinnati, became the project archivist. Nathan McGee, a University of Cincinnati graduate student in history, compiled the newspaper index and organized the eighty boxes of new material Dr. King-Betts had found and directed to the University of Cincinnati archives. Drs. Phillip Obermiller and Thomas Wagner agreed to write the history.
The team first set out to locate all repositories of materials relating to the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee and the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. Interviews with people who were a part of MFRC/CHRC history were conducted to supplement the written documentation. We also expanded the project to include an index of newspaper articles referencing the MFRC and the CHRC for the seventy-year period. We then developed a comprehensive database and finding aid, updated the agency’s timeline, and subsequently produced the book you have in hand.
At times, team members felt like detectives. Some useful collections outside Cincinnati were identified. For example, the estate of MFRC director Marshall Bragdon selected Tulane University to house his papers, while the files of the Urban Appalachian Council, including material on the CHRC, were located at the Berea College Archives, in Kentucky. Locally, the Community Relations Collection at Hebrew Union College housed related material, as did the University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Rare Books Library, and the Cincinnati History Library and Archives. Dr. King-Betts discovered a photo of Jackie Robinson holding a CHRC poster and Janet Smith’s history of the first five years of the MFRC in one of the many boxes stored at City Hall. Marshall Bragdon’s 1945–65 manuscript history of the agency was located by Obermiller and Wagner, as was the first CHRC director’s controversial report on the 1967 riots. Finding these key documents added excitement to the project as we became convinced that, without our work, some of these materials might have been lost or remained undiscovered.
On behalf of the project team, I invite you to share our excitement as you consider the lessons the CHRC’s history has to offer for the practice of human relations in the city and the nation.
Michael E. Maloney
CHRC History Project Director
Acknowledgments
Ericka King-Betts, CHRC Executive Director
James Carson, Archival Consultant
Charles F. Casey-Leininger, Historian*
Jeffery Crawford, E-Resources Cataloging and Database Management Specialist*
James DaMico, Curator of Photographs and Prints, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Geoffrey Daniels, Graduate Research Assistant*
Jeffrey Dey, Data Consultant
Christine Schmid Engels, Archives Manager, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Kevin Grace, Head and University Archivist*
Michael E. Maloney, Project Director
Nathan McGee, Graduate Research Assistant*
Danilo Palazzo, Director, School of Planning*
Suzanne Maggard Reller, Reference/Collections Librarian*
Claire Smittle, Librarian, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager* *at the University of Cincinnati
COOPERATING INDIVIDUALS
Helen Black, wife of Judge Robert Black
Tedd Good, LGBTQ community activist
Rev. Robert Harris, advocate for disabled people
Charles Judd, civic leader
Rev. Damon Lynch II, civil rights leader
Scott McLarty, LGBTQ activist
David McPheeters, first CHRC executive director
Cheryl Meadows, former CHRC executive director
Judith Bogart Meredith, former CHRC communications director
Rev. Arzell Nelson, former CHRC executive director
Susan Noonan, former CHRC acting executive director
Barbara Smitherman, civic leader
Marian Spencer, civil rights activist
Judge S. Arthur Spiegel, former CHRC board president
Louise Spiegel, former CHRC member
Sen. Cecil Thomas, former CHRC executive director
COOPERATING INSTITUTIONS
Cooperating institutions include the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Library, Berea College Library and Archives, the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, the Klau Library at Hebrew Union College–Cincinnati, and the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
FUNDING
This publication was made possible by grants from the Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Stephen H. Wilder Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission.
Introduction
Enter the phrase human relations into a search engine and you will get millions of hits, almost all having to do with the corporate management of employees. Check the phrase in a Merriam-Webster dictionary and the first definition is: “A study of human problems arising from organizational and interpersonal relations (as in industry)” (emphasis added). The Encyclopedia Britannica is more explicit. In entries under both public administration and industrial relations, the encyclopedia finds the origin of human relations in the pioneering efforts of Elton Mayo in the 1930s to develop ways to increase productivity at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant near Chicago. That is not what this book is about.
The concept of human relations is often confused with race relations, social movements for civil rights, and international agreements guaranteeing human rights. Human relations encompasses, but is not limited to, considerations of race; for example, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, region of origin, physical and mental capacity are but a few of the other characteristics of concern in human relations. Human rights and civil rights are most often matters of local, state, and national laws as well as international agreements—violate these norms and charges may be brought, courts convened, and sanctions carried out on those convicted. Human relations does not involve accusations under the law, tribunals, or the imposition of penalties.
Let there be no doubt that the field of human relations is closely aligned with movements for human and civil rights. It is definitely a thread in the braided efforts for social justice among groups such as African Americans, women, Hispanics, and former felons, as well as LGBTQ, Jewish, Islamic, and indigenous people. There is clearly great overlap between human relations and the issues identified and acted upon by these and other groups. But there is a lot of confusion as well.
When the concepts of justice and rights are propounded in Western society the law is usually invoked as the arbiter of the outcomes being sought. Laws are established through political processes that distribute power in the social arena. Human relations is cognizant of, but does not directly concern itself with, the law, politics, or power.
Human relations is the endeavor to improve the social and interpersonal interactions among people, or simply put, to promote civility. It operates not in the realm of force or power or legal coercion, but in the realm of ethics, that is, the set of principles that govern a person’s or a group’s behavior. It operates best at the local level, from the bottom up, and complements larger-scale, top-down efforts to compel human behavior through legislation. Put bluntly, laws cannot change personal bias, prejudice, or bigotry. This is where the hard work of human relations occurs, in