By Bill Bradberry
While I sat in the front row at the Castellani Art Museum last week listening intently to the panel of scholars imploring the need to focus on the truth as we seek our historic identity as the “last stop” on the Underground Railroad, my mind wandered back to the several starts and stops we have encountered along the twisted and bumpy ride we have endured along the way, and I was relieved to know that one of the PhDs in front of me, the youngest of them all, had the best question, though it went essentially unaddressed.
When then City Manager Mort Abramowitz appointed me to the position of equal opportunity coordinator for the City of Niagara Falls nearly 40 years ago, it came after our city had begun to come to terms with the reality that something had to be done to help make the city’s labor force and spending patterns more realistically reflect the city’s population.
At that time, in the early 1970s, Niagara Falls was just beginning to wake up and realize that the world was changing, and that we had been standing still, holding onto the way things used to be, with the largest majority of African American workers, as few as there were, clustered mostly at the bottom of the city’s workforce and, with rare exception, few in the middle and until recently, none at the top of the ladder.
Joe Profit — a highly regarded and respected, albeit down-to-earth and lovable rotund man with a speech impediment which forced him to speak, as he said, “the King’s English,” in a clear, articulate and deliberately precise pace — was the only black man in recent history back in those days to rise through the ranks to head a city department.
In fact, it was in his Department of Public Works — where the labor-intensive, backbreaking jobs of paving, maintaining and plowing the streets in dead of winter and generally keeping the city looking clean and safe — where the biggest majority of black men who were willing to work hard could find a job with good benefits working for the city.
My appointment was not the result of the city manager’s sudden empathy, though Mort and I have remained dear friends over the years, it was the culmination of pressure that had been building on the city administration by a coalition of interests, black and white who had begun to question the city's spending of federal grants and other public money that was supposed to be used to address some of the city's most needy, which, according to the their own records, included a significant proportion of the city's African American population, but who, for whatever reasons were too often left out.
Some, like the NAACP’s Blondeva Bond and a few brave ministers and community activists, dared to stand up and ask some tough questions in Albany and Washington about what looked to them like a record of abuse.
How was it possible for the city to apply for and receive millions of dollars of federal funds based on a demonstration of need in the predominantly black neighborhoods, and then spend the money elsewhere? Why was it possible to exclude African-Americans from the jobs that the money was used to create? Why were minority businesses being systematically excluded, overlooked and ignored when the federal dollars were being spent to purchase goods and services?
Why was nobody doing anything to correct this?
Our coalition began filing formal complaints challenging the city’s funding applications for federal money, threatening to cut off the supply unless our questions were addressed.
Finally, after months of accusations and denials, appeals and new threats, the city decided to re-evaluate the situation and we negotiated a settlement.
With the commitment of the City Council, and the mayor behind him, Mort offered me the opportunity to work from the inside, and I took it.
I accepted the job and we hired a small staff that worked extremely hard to do the right thing and make sure, as best we could, that the hiring and purchasing processes were fair, not just to people of color, but to everyone regardless of their ethnicity or culture. It was not easy. We met with some resistance but over time, with continued pressure from the community, we made a difference.
Finally, there were positions opening up and being filled by qualified African Americans and others including women who had been denied the opportunity to work.
The police and fire departments, with new money from the feds, began a recruitment, training and promotion program. Even the convention center got on board and hired their first African-American who worked in something other than maintenance.
Things were looking up.
Even the private sector, including this newspaper saw the light and Nate Clay, now a radio talk show host in Chicago and the first black reporter hired by the local newspaper, recalled his first impressions of Niagara Falls.
He said he was hired as the result of the late Blondeva Bond and local businessman Ted Williamson’s insistence that the paper hire black professionals. A student at Columbia University’s Michelle Clark School of Journalism when he was recruited to come to Niagara Falls to “add some flavor” to the paper's coverage, he accepted the offer and started writing immediately.
Clay said, “It is vital to Niagara Falls’ future that its history be remembered and embraced. Black history is not just for black people. Our history is everybody’s history, and everybody needs to know it.”
But the question still haunts me. “What is the relevance of the history of the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist Movement to this community today?” asked Dr. Seneca Vaught.
As is typical, the well intended panel drifted away from the question; not that it could be fully answered there in one setting, but Dr. William H. Siener and Dr. Thomas A. Chambers had already addressed it in a way months before when they were asked to examine whether Harriet Tubman crossed the Niagara River from here, and if so whether or not any remnants of the bridge she crossed still remain?
They concluded that indeed she had, and that the remnants do still exist. Says Siener, “The stone and masonry structure at the current Whirlpool Bridge site, on your left as you enter the NEXUS lanes when crossing to Canada, dates to John Roebling’s 1855 Suspension Bridge. Niagara Falls can rightly boast that it possesses a documented architectural remain from the Underground Railroad, no small matter”.
But what continues to concern me and others is that the remnants of the racism, sexism and bigotry that the fugitives were trying to escape also still remain, and that we still have a long road to travel before we can boast that we have effectively crossed THAT bridge!
Contact Bill at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.
