Lorain Historical Society showcases Black History project

LORAIN — The beginnings of a burgeoning Black history exhibit was on display at Lorain Historical Society on Saturday. Project coordinator Janeya Hisle said the 15 exhibits dotting the Carnegie Center are overarching categories the society is collecting information on, from athletics to barbershops and beauty salons, social organizations and places of worship, lawsuits and early settlers. Hisle, a Lorain native, has worked with the Historical Society for months to start collecting what was a largely uncataloged history of the Black community in the International City. Hisle interviewed Vera Shephard, owner of Vera's Beauty Salon and a 1961 graduate of the former Erma Lee Beauty School in Cleveland. The East 55th Street school was one of the only colleges to teach students how to style Black hair, Hisle said. Shephard received her state license and opened her salon in 1969 — one of the longest-running Black-owned businesses in the city, she said. In athletics, Black Athletic Club jackets from the 1970s were donated to the exhibit, alongside information about famous professional athletes from Lorain. Lorain native General Johnnie Wilson, a retired four-star Army general, donated his uniform to the exhibit, and 2015 International Princess Moriah Ballard donated her African American pageant wear. Paintings by Jeffrey Pye, and his father, James, are also included in the exhibit, Hisle noted. Some of the earliest Black families in Lorain were cataloged in the 1870 census: Milton Holt, Thomas Traverse and Milton Poet. Other older families like the Brandfords and Colemans — the latter of which owned a plaster company that worked on the Lorain Palace Theatre — donated historic family photos now included in the archive. Early 1900s newspaper articles on Catherine "Kitty" Ferguson give a glimpse into the role a Black woman had on shaping part of the steel mill, when National Steel built around her cabin on what is now East 28th Street. "We sort of put some questions on each of these, hoping we develop in ourselves that kind of questioning. When you read the excerpts from the news back then, it's 'the great millionaire was so kind-hearted that he told her she could stay on the land,'" Hisle said. "We don't really know how amicable this agreement was." Newspaper reports of racial incidents in Lorain are also cataloged. While the city, just like Ohio as a whole, has always been a free state and integrated, that doesn't mean it was without its biases. Later efforts to strip that segregation include a 1979 Lorain NAACP lawsuit to desegregate the school district by balancing the racial makeup of its buildings and teacher assignments. "We need to look at history from different points of view and give it as full a picture as we can … hopefully we get people interested and excited," she said. As work for the archive has progressed, the historical society has found evidence of a possible third Black funeral home, and other unknown histories Hisle is looking into further. The Black History project, just like the Latino Lorain one, is an ongoing, ever-growing catalog of experiences, photographs and artifacts — and Saturday's open house served as a formalized kickoff to collecting some of those things from Lorain residents young and old. "It's going to take many years to do this, but the idea is to digitize the things that we can and make it so that people who are researching ... can go to this catalog and search 'Auntie Ferguson' or whatever and whatever we have in our archive will come up," she said. Those include photo scans, document scans, photos of artifacts, and ongoing oral histories cataloging what Lorain was like in the 1940s and onward from the people who remember it. "We want to pull as many people into the process as possible, for the purpose of building that community, encouraging pride in the Black History that we have and also documenting," she said. Those interested in helping Hisle with the project, or giving oral histories, can contact her at jhisle@lorainhistory.org or call (440) 209-2980. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.