At the  festival, attendees will have the opportunity to meet authors and to purchase  signed copies of their books. Books by the Banks features writers in various categories including fiction, non-fiction, cooking, children’s literature, local  travel, sports, and more. Nationally known authors such as Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Karl Marlantes (What It Is Like to Go to War), Katherine Howe (The House of Velvet and Glass), and Robert & Cortney Novogratz (Home by Novogratz) will join local favorites Loren Long (Nightsong), Robert Flischel (Messages of Glory: The Narrative Art of Roman Catholocism), and Ellen Schreiber (Immortal Hearts) in the Author Pavilion.

Three University  of Cincinnati authors will be among the 100+ authors at the festival. The UC authors are:

• Joel B. Peckham, Jr., associate professor of English, UC Clermont College. His book, Resisting Elegy: On Grief and Recovery, is a collection of narratives that explore the transformative power of emotional and physical pain from the vantage point of a husband and parent who lost his wife and a child in an accident that left him in chronic distress. Along the way, Peckham fills a need for a brutally honest, literary examination of not only grief and suffering, but also of recovery.
• Leah Stewart, associate professor of English in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. Stewart will interview author Gillian Flynn in an open book discussion at 2:30pm. In addition, a limited number of galley copies of Stewart’s upcoming book The History of Us will be given away.
• Luke Geddes, PhD student in the English and Comparative Literature Department in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. Geddes’ publishing debut, I Am A Magical Teenage Princess, is a collection of 17 short stories that take a cracked-lens look at the past five decades of troubled teens, American pop culture, and media mania. Read more.

Other participating authors with ties to UC include: Dan Andriacco, author of Holmes Sweet Holmes, UC graduate; David Bell, author of The Hiding Place, attended UC; Edward Paxton and Jerry Glenn Harris, authors of Straight White Shield: A Life and Works of John Hauser 1859-1913, both retired UC professors, Nancy Herriman, author of The Irish Healer, UC graduate; and Christopher Bennett, Only Superhuman, UC graduate.

A  commemorative Books by the Banks poster by local artisit Marlene Steele will be available for purchase at the festival for $15.

Books by the Banks is organized by UC Libraries, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, The Mercantile Library, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Northern Kentucky University Library, Clermont County Library, Midpointe Library System, and Lane Libraries.

The Books by the Banks website has information on the authors scheduled to appear at the event, a schedule of panel sessions, activities scheduled in the Kids’ Corner, as well as directions and parking information for Duke Energy Convention Center. For more information, visit www.booksbythebanks.org.

The approximate 8,000 negatives and prints, which date from 1920 to 1956, include both interior and exterior shots of private residences and city scenes. They were taken as part of a failed subway development project in Cincinnati and also as documentation during various street projects.

The interior images offer an in-depth look at how a typical Ohio family lived. The products in their kitchens and the furnishings in their living rooms, with such things as player pianos and photographs on the wall, are all captured in the negatives and prints. The exterior shots show the layout of city streets and neighborhoods, stores and businesses, as well as the traffic and bustle of everyday life, not to mention the damage done by subway construction. Beyond the years of the subway project, the images of street renovations into the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s eloquently illustrate the changing urban landscape.

“In this collection of historically significant materials, we have the opportunity to see how one Ohio city functioned in the first half of the 20th century,” said Kevin Grace, project co-director, university archivist, and head of the Archives and Rare Books Library where the collection resides. “Ohio residents, city planners, researchers, and scholars worldwide engaged in research in social, political, urban, and transportation history, as well as genealogical and family history research, will find much value in this collection.”

The photographic negatives and prints are part of the Archives and Rare Books Library’s Ohio Network Collection in the state’s Local Government Records Program, a diverse body of materials that document official government activity from the 18th to the 21st centuries. The Cincinnati subway and street changes archive, which also includes construction reports, householders’ damage claims, blueprints, minutes, and correspondence, in addition to the negatives and prints, is used by researchers and students studying urban planning and development, the history of Cincinnati, American history, civil engineering, and political science. Faculty and independent scholars avail themselves of the collection for in-depth research on neighborhood decline and revitalization, America’s transportation heritage, and urban political reform movements. Additionally, in the past three years, journalists, City of Cincinnati planning officials, and neighborhood activists have consulted the documents in order to provide input for street and housing renovations and for reviving interest in downtown Cincinnati tourism.

The project to digitize the negatives and prints is slated for completion in October 2013 at which time the collection will be fully available for research and study on the Web. “This collection will be a significant addition to collections of Cincinnati historical documents already digitized by UC Libraries and available to anyone anywhere via the digital collections website at http://digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/,” added Linda Newman, project co-director and head of UC Libraries’ digital collections.

“By making it a priority to digitize our unique collections such as the negatives and prints from the Cincinnati and subway street changes archive, we not only broaden the availability of such materials, but we also fulfill our mission to provide outstanding research collections in order to enable the University of Cincinnati to achieve its comprehensive mission of teaching, learning, research, health care, and community engagement,” said Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian. “I want to express my appreciation to the State Library of Ohio for awarding UC Libraries this LSTA grant.”

The LSTA program is funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and administered through the State Library of Ohio.

Join us at 6:30 p.m. as we debut this year’s Books by the Banks poster (a snippet is included on the left). Since the book festival’s inauguration in 2007, the posters—now considered unique collector’s items—have captured the essence of what Books by the Banks means to the community.

Meet this year’s artist Marlene Steele:

A native of northern Kentucky, Marlene Steele began her studies at the age of 11 in the studio of Aileen McCarthy, a student of Duveneck at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She was a full scholarship recipient and is a graduate of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She enjoys the challenge of figurative and portrait work as well as landscape in the mediums of oil, watercolor and pastel. Marlene Steele’s work is in corporate and private collections regionally. When the camera can’t get into the courtroom, the media must rely on her abilities as a professional courtroom artist to capture the action. Marlene teaches her studio skills in workshops and Art Academy Community Education classes. Steele’s Studio is in the West End of Cincinnati and is currently accepting commissions in all media.

Following her discussion, artists from previous years will join Marlene in a Q&A about their work and sign posters for purchase. The cost of the new 2012 poster is $15; previous years’ posters are $10 each.

Help Support Books by the Banks: A percentage of the proceeds from all purchases made at Joseph-Beth Booksellers and Brontë Bistro anytime during the Poster Debut day, Thursday, September 20, will benefit Books by the Banks. A coupon is required and can be downloaded at www.booksbythebanks.org. 

The 524,360 records, part of the Local Government Records Collection of the University of Cincinnati’s Archives and Rare Books Library, are of great historical and genealogical importance. Each “birth record” contains the name of the individual along with birth date, race, gender, name and birthplace of father and mother, occupation of father, name of doctor or midwife, and hospital. For each “death record” the following information is available: name, age, date and cause of death, address, occupation, race, gender, attending physician, funeral home, and place of burial.

Visitors to the collection can click on the full display of each entry to see the complete catalog record or the image of the original record. They can also search by a person’s name, date of birth or death, occupation, and cause of death. To assist researchers in using the collection, there is a Frequently Asked Questions page that gives more information on using the collection and a glossary of 19^th-century medical terms such as Catarrhal Fever (common cold), Dropsy (accumulation of water), and Parturition (process of giving birth).

According to Kevin Grace, project director and UC archivist, “these records are a tremendous resource not only for Cincinnatians, but for Ohioans and researchers across the country as well.  The free Internet access will allow a variety of research strategies that have not been previously available.”

In addition to being a resource for genealogists and the general public looking for information about an ancestor, the Cincinnati  birth and death records hold significant research value to historians, sociologists, epidemiologists, public health researchers, and other researchers worldwide.  For instance, researchers can identify residence patterns, occupational health issues, ethnic diversity, and general health practices.

“From a teaching perspective, I can attest that electronic access to historical birth and death records has incredible value in teaching epidemiologic concepts to our public health students. As just one example, instructors can use the data to illustrate the transition in causes of death from infectious to chronic diseases,” said Ronnie D. Horner, UC professor and chair, Department of Public Health Sciences. He went on to say, “from a research perspective, my faculty would have access to important data for numerous investigations into public health issues where a historical context is essential.”

With a few exceptions, the official death records for the City of Cincinnati begin in 1865 and those for birth in 1874. As a result of a government records program of the Ohio Network of American History Research Centers, over 500,000 card files from the Cincinnati Health Department were transferred to the UC Libraries’ Archives and Rare Books Library in 2003. These cards were sometimes typed and many times handwritten, and were created by the Cincinnati Health Department several decades ago to preserve the data, which were originally entered in ledger books. The ledger books are also preserved in the UC Libraries, but are of such fragility that any turning of the pages results in flaking and tears. The informational cards are considered the official and legal records of births and deaths for this time period.

“It is part of our mission to make unique research collections available to UC students and faculty. The digitization of these historical records and their accessibility via the Internet provides a tremendous resource for researchers throughout the world,” said Victoria A. Montavon, dean and university librarian.

Support for the digitization of these records was provided by a Library Services and Technology Act grant awarded by the State Library of Ohio. The collection is housed on the University of Cincinnati Digital Resource Commons, part of the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons, a network of digital repositories.

Clothesline used to strangle Emogene Harrington on December 2, 1965. Image courtesy of the Enquirer archives.

Though much of this collection, and therefore this blog, focuses on the life and works of Theodore M. Berry, it is also a veritable wellspring of primary resources on 20^th century history especially concerning the Civil Rights Movement in Cincinnati. I have recently come across some rather illuminating material about the riots which took place in and around Avondale, a predominantly African American neighborhood north of downtown Cincinnati, in June of 1967.

Now, thanks to this collection we not only have a number of articles on the subject, but a series of firsthand accounts of the riots written by citizens of Avondale and correspondence to and from government officials and leaders in the Cincinnati African American community. It has gone down in local history that it was the controversial death sentence pronounced against Posteal Laskey Jr., an African American cab driver, which set off the riots. Laskey was accused and convicted of the murder of one woman, and was generally thought to have been the “Cincinnati Strangler,” a serial killer who assaulted four women in October of 1965 after asking for directions, or to speak to the caretakers of their buildings.  He allegedly raped and strangled seven more from December 1965 through December 1966. The attacks sent waves of fear through the city as police were forced to admit they had no good leads on a suspect more than a year after the first victim was discovered. Laskey’s license plate number was given to the police in the wee hours of the morning on December 9^th, 1966 when two people witnessed his car speeding away after an attempted attack of a woman in an apartment building on Court Street. Later that morning, the body of 81-year old Lula Kerrick was found strangled in the elevator of her apartment building on Ninth Street. Laskey was brought in for questioning and identified by six witnesses as the “slightly built black man” who had been connected with many of the attacks.

The case against Laskey, though strong in the minds of many, had issues. Chief among them was the distinct lack of physical evidence against him. The police found blood at the crime scenes which they presumed to have belonged to the murderer but when tested, Laskey’s blood type did not match it.  To add to public doubt about Laskey’s guilt, 79-year old Anna Scales was assaulted in the basement of her apartment building on December 15^th by a short, slender black man who had asked to see the caretaker.  At the time, Laskey was locked safely away in police custody. Despite these problems, Laskey was found guilty by an all white jury of one count of first degree murder on April 13, 1967.  He was sentenced to death by electrocution.

While protesting the sentence on June 11^th, Laskey’s cousin, Peter Frakes, was arrested for loitering.  On June 12^th, further protests engulfed the Avondale area. Fires, break-ins, and looting resulted in huge amounts of property damage to businesses with and without the “Soul Brother” and “Soul Sister” signs which were supposed to keep rioters at bay. One person was killed during the riots, and 362 people were arrested.

The situation seems fairly cut and dried when it is put forth as I have just done – Laskey’s death sentence was the cause of the rioting. However, the documents in front of me tell a much more complex, and in some cases, incomprehensible tale. Many reports in the Berry collection cite causes for the rioting completely unrelated to Laskey’s sentencing, and some contend the violence was planned long before the verdict. In a report to Edgar May of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Steve Clapp, another OEO employee, reported that Dr. Bruce Green, president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP and Myron Bush, an African American lawyer and City Councilman, received death threats for refusing to join the Negro Mediation Committee. Bush reported that he had been visited by a young male friend of his daughter’s who told him “This is a revolution. You’re either in or you’re out, and if you’re out, you can be disposed of.”  Dr. Green reported a phone call about a Black Power “execution list” with his name at the top.

Dr. Green’s wife explained to OEO officials that she believed that the violent riot had been planned before Laskey was sentenced and that a group which gathered to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, who spoke about the importance of peace and non-violent protest, were told to meet the following day at the Abraham Lincoln statue on Rockdale Avenue. She also stated that she saw youths gearing up for the event by filling soda bottles with gasoline later that day. Most worryingly to Berry, Mrs. Green said that the note announcing the meeting was handed up by Clyde Vinegar, an official at the local Community Action Commission, which was an agency federally funded through Berry’s own Community Action Programs and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Dr. Green went on to state that he saw Vinegar with leaders of a militant sect of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) bragging about their participation in the Watts riots in Las Angeles in 1965, and that at a meeting with the NAACP Vinegar explained that “unity was necessary so that Negroes could ‘call a riot in a minute.’” According to Berry, the director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, David McPhetters, Jr., was forcibly taken to the home of the local SNCC chairman and given a list of twenty “black power” demands for City Hall. Joseph Hall, Executive Director of the Urban League, told an OEO Civil Rights investigator that “at least six CAP employees were ‘organizers’ of the rebellion” though the Clapp report is careful to point out that Vinegar was never arrested and that there was no “solid evidence” of his involvement.

It seems that each report and piece of correspondence tells a different story from a different perspective and gives a new set of explanations for the violence.  In his statement delivered to the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders on October 6^th, 1967, Berry stated that:

“…violence is the result of at least three related factors:

1. The lack of access to the centers of power, whether these are represented by loca [sic], state, or national authorities and the consequent feeling that nobody cares about them.

2. The fact that their voices are not truly a part of the decision-making system which impacts their lives from a variety of quarters.

3. The fact that relief from their acute distress is not forthcoming either in the quantity or quality that they believe the situation demands. Change from their point of view, is simply not occurring fast enough.”

Though I am not at all sure of what really happened in either the case of the Cincinnati Strangler or during the 1967 riots, I am sure that anyone wishing to get a more complete, albeit more confusing, version of events should consult this collection when the Berry project is completed in 2012.

In 2010, the University of Cincinnati Libraries received a $61,287 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the Archives and Records Administration to fully process the Theodore M. Berry Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library.  All information and opinions published on the Berry project website and in the blog entries are those of the individuals involved in the grant project and do not reflect those of the National Archives and Records Administration.  We gratefully acknowledge the support of NARA.