OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 83 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 July 20, 2006 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio Tid-Bits part 83. by Darlene E. Kelley notes by S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-Bits part 83. African-American Newspapers in Ohio. The Advocate - African American Republican Owner- Ormond A. Forte Published Weekly Cleveland, Ohio May 15,1914-1924. The Cleveland Advocate, a weekly paper concentrated on local and National news of interest to African Americans. Predominate topics included race riots, lynching and discrimination. Social and church news of Cleveland and other Ohio cities were also reported. The Advocate was founded and edited by Ormond A. Forte who was born in 1887 in the Barbados, British West Indies. He attended Cambridge University, where he studied the classics. He came to Cleveland in 1910 to attend Cleveland Law School, then began working for Daniel K. Hanna, who was the son of Marcus A. Hanna and publisher of the Cleveland News. Forte founded the Advocate in 1914, which became The Cleveland Advocate in 1918 and was published untl 1924. In July 1917, Ralph W. Tyler became a contributing Editor. He had previously worked on The Dispatch and the Ohio State Journal, which were white newspapers. Ralph Tyler was appointed by the Committee on Public Information as the only black war Correspondent in World War I. He was assigned to Pershing's Staff and began writing from France in October, 1918. Ormond Forte closed the paper in 1924, for the lack of funds that had been generated into World War I war efforts. He died in 1959. A veteran of that war. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Gazette African American Owner - Henry C. Smith Editor - Same as above. Published Weekly in Cleveland August 25, 1883. Henry C. Smith founded The Cleveland Gazette with three other associates in 1883. He purchased our the 3 associates in 1886 and then served as its editor and owner 58 years till his death in 1941. The Gazette was a " one man paper " in that it was a product of his own personal vision, views, and work. He was unafraid of controversy and used the paper to focus attention upon issues such as discrimination, the state of civil rights, ad the declining political position of African Americans. Smith was elected to represent the Ohio Legislature. His most notable contributions include introducing an Anti-Lynching law " An Act of the Suppression of Mob Violence," in 1896, which served as a model for simular Acts in other States. He was also vital in the enactment of Ohio's Civil Rights Law in 1894. He was a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Ohio Secretary of State in 1926 as also in 1929. He sought the GOP gubernatorial nomination. He kept the paper going for 58 years until his death, which occurred in 1941. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Informer Rpublican Owner and Editor- E.W.B. Curry Published Monthly Urbana, Ohio & Springfield, Ohio. The Informer, was a religious and educational Monthly, circulated Nationally, with news regarding the Baptist Church predominated, and the paper advocated " right thinking and right living " as a means to affect African American advancement. The editor, E. W. B. Curry, believed " honest work " rather than agitation was a more profitable way to draw attention to the goals and practical capabilities of the black American. Curry maintained that racial issues confronting America had to be settled gradually after American Africans had become independant, self respecting, and self reliant, could this be accomplished. As a practical manifestation of his beliefs, he established a school following the Tuskegee tradition, called " Curry Normal and Industrial Institute " in Urbana, Ohio. Professor E.W.B. Curry, had been born at Delaware, Ohio in 1871. He established his paper in 1897. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Palladium of LIberty African American Politics; Abolitionist Editor; David Jenkins Published; Weekly, Columbus, Ohio Dec 1843- Nov 13, 1844 The Palladium of Liberty was an early short-lived, civil rights paper " devoted to the interests of the colored people geneally." Editor David Jenkins established the paper in 1843 with a group of free blacks in the Columbia area. The paper had a strong antislavery stance and lent editorial support to the education of African American children, temperance, moral reform, and the elective fanchise. it was distributed throughout Ohio and eastern states, but ceased publication by winter of 1844. Editor David Jenkins was born in Lynchburg, VA in 1811. At various times in his life, he was a farmer, barber, Paper hanger, and painter, as well as an energetic operator in the local underground railroad. Jenkins was a recuiter for the 127th Ohio Infantry during the Civil War and was appointed to the Freed Mans Bureau in Mssissippi. Jenkins came to Columbus in 1837 when he became a leading participant in local civil rights activities and attended sessions of the Legislature so regularly that hebecame known as " The Member at Large." Jenkins left Columbus, Ohio in 1873, then settled in Canton, Mississippi where he cared for a family of 6, and there became involved with the underground railroad. " Look for the Drinking Gourd." He died Sept 6, 1877. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Dayton Tattler. Politics; Republican Editor; Paul Laurence Dunbar Published; Weeky, Dayton, Ohio Dec 13, 1890 - Jan 1891. The Dayton Tattler was edited and published by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Orville Wright. It supported the Republcan party and promoted the interests of African Americans. Poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of freed slaves, was born June 27, 1872. He was the only black member of his class at Dayton's Central High School, where he was a class mate of Orville Wright. During 1889-1890, Dunbar dropped out of school for a year to launch " The Tattler." a paper aimed at the black community of Dayton. Dunbar composed and edited the paper and Orville Wright published it, and financed most of the money. Both were quite young and still of school age. The Wright brothers published the early issues on credit, but they were only able to publish it as long as financial resources permitted. Consequently, only three issues were known to have been printed due to the influence of the Wright brothers parents. They insisted that the boys pay better attention to their education instead. They believed in higher education and application of mathamatical, and industrious forms of education. But he did not graduate from high school, and continued looking for new challenges, which resulted in their airplane experiments. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Wright Brothers Aviator Orville Wright was born August 19, 1871 in Dayton, Ohio. His parents were Bishop Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Wright. Orville was ther fourth child. He attended the local schools with his siblings but never graduated from high school. As young men Orville and his brother went into business together. At one point, they opened a print shop. They also began making bicycles in their own bicycle shop, in part because of Orville's talents as a bicyclist. These bicycles were called Wright Flyers. The Wright brothers had an interest in flight that had been sparked by a toy shaped like a helicopter that their father had give them as children. As adults, the two men became interested in glidder like those built by Otto Liliental. It was so that Wilber and his brother began experimenting with wing designs for an airplane. They envisioned a bi-plane that could be guided by warping wings. They continued to experiment with their airplane designs, first with glidders and eventually with powered flight. Their first successful flight of a powered airplane occurred at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. That first plane was very primative, but within a few years, the Wright brothers, as well as other aircraft designers, had begun to make many improvements. The first flight only lasted twelve seconds and traveled 120 feet, but a later flight that day lasted fifty-nine seconds and traveled 852 feet. Imagine the mother of these boys, worried beyond imagination about their boyish fantasies, along with many Americans, including journalists, who did not believe the story of their first flight. Only five Ohio newspapers covered the story originally, because they refused to believe the flight impossible. That skepticism proved to be short lived, and Americans became interested in news stories about airplanes. In the short term, the Wrights found it very difficult to obtain funding for their efforts. They attempted to sell their design to the United States military, but the government was still too skeptical about the possobilities of flight. Time after time the banker's scatched their heads when they were approached for funding, and told them to go home and grow up. But they continued to dream and design their ideas -- By 1908 an 1909, they were gaining international attention for their designs by setting aeronautical records in France. They also sought newspaper coverage by flying around the statue of liberty and then flying around and along the Hudson River. Throughout this time period, they were still continuing to develop new advances in aeronautical design. Wilber's Wright's promise was cut short when he contracted typhoid fever. He died on May 30, 1912. Orville continued to work on new developments in aircraft design after Wilber's death. In 1916, he chose to sell the company that he and his brother had founded so that he could concentrate on aeronautical research and design rather than on manufacturing. Orville Wright was one of the original members of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics ( NACA ), which was founded in 1929, He served'on this committee for a total of twenty-eight years. He lived long enough to see that he and his brother were credited for the full influence of their accomplishments. Orville Wright died in Dayton, Ohio, on January 30, 1948. He was seventy-six years old. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-Bits continued in part 84.