'It was quite an adventure:' Rhoda Lee remembers life of activism in Lorain, Youngstown

LORAIN− Sun poured in large picture windows overlooking Lake Erie on an unseasonably warm February afternoon at Anchor Lodge nursing home. Rhoda Lee, 88, sat with her back to the view, talking quietly to her son, Kenneth Dotson, and his wife, Linda. Coming to Lorain in the late 1970s, she remembers how segregated the city and its neighboring communities were, despite its International City moniker. There were boundaries, she said. No Black families lived past West 21st Street — she lived in south Lorain — and they knew they could not be in neighboring Amherst after dark. "(The youth) have to realize how this country was built, on Black blood, sweat and tears," Lee said. "It was quite an adventure when you think about it." Lee was born in Mississippi in the mid-1930s and grew up hearing stories from her family of white men looking for Black men out in the streets after dark. "I can't imagine going through what you all went through, but I thank God for the strength that God allowed our parents and parents-parents to fight and stand for our rights," Linda Dotson said. "A lot of them lost their lives for us because of it." Lee remembered the Tallahatchie River that ran behind her grandmother's house was the same that the lynched body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was pulled from in 1955. It was a place her family left when she was 7 or 8 years old, she said, following her father and uncle north to Youngstown for work. Her father and uncle were activists and worked with A. Philip Randolph, the face of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids, who pushed for desegregating labor unions. Her uncle, Nathaniel Lee, worked to establish the NAACP in Ohio after he was unable to find work as a teacher because of his race. She remembers secret meetings held at the family's Youngstown home, while her father worked at Youngstown Sheet and Tube; and later on attending Civil Rights marches in Chicago and Washington, D.C., including the March on Washington in 1963, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. At the time the marches were a little scary to attend, she said, as they never knew what might happen. Lee graduated high school in the early 1950s and studied education at Youngstown State University. Education remained an important part of Lee's work — as Lorain NAACP education committee chairwoman, to a longtime parent-teacher association member at her son's schools. When the Head Start program was created, she took to the streets in Youngstown to help recruit children who qualified for the program. She helped run a hot lunch program her brother brought from New York. Kenneth Dotson remembered his mother sitting in on his classes, always involved. "She had her hands in everything that was kind of not politically correct and her team was there to change the scene a lot," he said. Lee also hosted a television show on public access while still in Youngstown for eight years of what was happening in the community, she said. In the late 1970s, she moved to Lorain with her husband, who worked at the steel mill. She was an early member of the Lorain Club of Negro Business and Professional Women Inc. and founded a long-running Boy Scout troop for children in the city. There were challenges over the years, including a car wreck in 1992 that left her in a wheel chair after a drunk driver struck her, pinning her against a parked car on East 28th Street. She remembered waking up at a hospital in Cleveland, with her left leg missing. But the harsh change did not slow her down. Lee continued to be involved in her community — named to the Lorain County Community Action Agency Board of Directors in 2003. It was a position she held until 2019 when she resigned so her granddaughter could accept a position with LCCAA's Head Start program. She also served on the city's Fair Housing Board until last year. It was a sense of community that helped propel Lee into her various roles — something she hopes the next generation finds. "If you take care of your community, your community will take care of you." Kenneth Dotson said. "The kids, they don't know what community means and I believe because of the breakdown of the family they'll never know anything about a community. It's a family that makes up the community." Lee received myriad awards and recognition over the years, including: -Proclamations from four mayors -Boy Scouts of America Whitney M. Young Jr. Service Award -1997 National Council of Negro Women Inc. Courageous Woman Award -Her name was placed on the Wall of Tolerance at the Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery, Alabama in 2005 -2010 Lorain Negro Business and Professional Women's Club Sojourner Truth Award -2013 inductee into the Lorain County African American Hall of Fame Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.