Donald Spencer, Douglass School teacher
Donald Spencer was born in Cincinnati in 1915. He went to public schools and graduated from Walnut Hills High School in 1932. At Walnut Hills, Continue Reading
Tag: Black History
The Great Migration
In the nineteenth century, both before and after the Civil War, most African Americans lived in the rural South. Cincinnati had a relatively high African Continue Reading
Grace Smith Slade
James and Mary Smith lived in the African American settlement near the Elm Street Colored School, on Maple Street (later 2912 Park Avenue). They were Continue Reading
Frederick Douglass School Library 1911
Since the nineteenth century, the Cincinnati Public Library provided service in the district’s school buildings. Douglass was no different; it housed a small library for Continue Reading
Lawrence C. Hawkins, Ph. D.
Lawrence Hawkins was born in South Carolina in 1919, the son of a sharecropper. His family moved to Cincinnati in 1926, and he enrolled in Continue Reading
James H. Robinson, Sr.
James Robinson was born in Sharpsburg, Kentucky in 1887. He attended Fisk University, one of the premier Historically Black Colleges, founded in Nashville Tennessee in Continue Reading
Sarah Gibson Jones
Many African Americans in Cincinnati before the Civil War arrived responsible for their own freedom. Many had found ways as enslaved people to purchase their Continue Reading
DeHart Hubbard
William DeHart Hubbard was born in Walnut Hills on November 25, 1903, the first of eight children. His middle name honored Andrew DeHart, principal of Continue Reading
Projects
SCPA Research on Gaines High School In 2024-25, students in the college-level class at SCPA traced some graduates of Gaines High School to document their Continue Reading
Thatcher’s Fish and Poultry
Ernest and Georgia Thatcher came to Cincinnati in 1929, a young African American couple from Kentucky hoping to make a better life together. His construction Continue Reading