THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

Cicero Fain, III

Dr. Cicero M. Fain, III, conducting a tour of Black historical sites in Huntington, West Virginia.

Growing up in Huntington was overwhelmingly a positive experience. Animated by the connective tissue that linked family, faith, and friends and nourished within its healthy communal eco-system, I flourished as a boy. I reveled in the adventures and misadventures of youthful exuberance and experimentation without thinking of or worrying about my race or class. For a time, these experiences were shared with my black and white friends. There were the Riner boys, part of a white family who lived across the street and the white kids who lived behind our house in Northcott Court. There were also Tom and Carol, white, progressive friends of mom and dad who lived two houses over. They were cool. In fact, all my white neighbors were cool. I don’t remember one peer or parent ever denigrating me, or any Black people, for that matter. So, while I noticed these people were white, they never made me feel black and I never thought of them as white. In truth, I lived in an interracial, working-class neighborhood so color was never part of our conversation or a barrier to our friendships.   

            As I grew older, I began to spread my wings. Probably, linked to the Riner’s moving out, our own move to 12th Avenue, some distance from Northcott, I increasingly gravitated to people of my race. Whether playing football in the streets, shooting baskets on the playground, going to A.D. Lewis pool to swim, riding my bike through neighborhood streets, singing in the church choir, playing “King of the Mountain,” or just hanging out on the porches of friends, I enjoyed my teenage years with all the gusto I could muster, never feeling afraid or worried about life. There were always the wonderful visits to my grandparents, the extended attention from a white or black teacher at school, the friendly greetings from neighbors sitting on their front porch rockers, or the impromptu interaction with a buddy, parent, or cute girl—all of which affirmed I was valued and loved. Safe in my Black familial and community cocoon and protected from any outside forces intent on damaging my emotional and psychological welfare, I reveled in my blackness, never questioning its distinctiveness, legitimacy, or citizenship. While I might not have had everything I wanted, I did have everything I needed. 

I don’t know exactly when the racist nature of American society began to seep into my psyche. However, at some point I began to realize, but not yet in a concrete way, that much of America considered Black people inferior. As a boy, for me racism only existed in the TV shows that caricatured black people, or in the news broadcasts that announced the actions of various individuals leading the Civil Rights Movement, or in the Jet or Ebony magazines that chronicled the violent exchanges between Black protestors and the police in some far off “other” America located outside of Huntington. In the city, and by extension, the Ohio Valley, racism was like any other, diffuse like bug spray from an aerosol can whose droplets floated in the atmosphere but never to the point where they really bothered you. So, I never knew of Huntington’s racial tensions, of the “eat-ins” (think sit-in, but with food) sponsored by the Civic Interest Progressives, or of my dad standing on the frontlines with its group’s members protesting the segregated policies of the White Pantry restaurant or Bailey’s Cafeteria.  

            Navigating life as a teenager, I became increasingly aware of what my dad knew firsthand, that Huntington also had its racist elements. However, I don’t remember it directly impacting my life in a tangible way. In truth, I was popular in both the black and white communities and that elevated social status largely inoculated me against the spiteful micro-aggressions many of my Black friends experienced. Yet, it did not completely immunize me. Somehow, at some undetermined time, my life increasingly became framed by my race. My parents forbade me from riding my bike in certain sections of the city. I began to consider some white people as red-neck or cracker and became wary of those in high school who I identified as such. And, while I could have a white girl as a friend, dating one was an impossibility. This reality did not stop me from believing in the beauty of my blackness. Besides there were plenty of pretty Black girls to date. But slowly and surely, I began to realize that my aspirations to live to the fullest extent of my freedom and manhood might be limited by forces beyond my control. 

I was walking to Ritter Park on a lazy summer afternoon when a white boy, no older than 13, called out from behind his apartment screen door, “Look Mom, there goes a nigger.” I was 17 then, and I remember stopping and sizing him up and down behind that screen door. He was a thin boy, who didn’t pose a physical threat, so I shook my head, laughed incredulously, and continued my way. I didn’t know then that that boy embodied a mindset that I would encounter throughout my adult life. Thankfully, though, he was just an annoyance, like a gnat to be swatted away. In fact, the next year, my Huntington High School classmates, in an action that rebuffed the boy’s claim, voted me the most popular male in the school and elected me Mr. Huntington.  

            Yet, that honor did not shield me from some uncomfortable truths. By the time I had graduated high school I was aware of two worlds: There seemed to be a Black America and a White America, and never would the twain meet. This was most manifest in the surreptitious dalliances with white girls, who were eager to meet under the cover of night but not in the brightness of day, lest they incur the wrath, and/or embarrassment of their family and/or community. This truth impacted me most profoundly when I started to seriously date a white girl from Milton who was a Sears and Roebuck work colleague. After I informed my parents about her, they said they didn’t care who I dated if they respected me, the family, and (our) household rules. And because I was foolish enough to believe that color didn’t matter, what mattered was the content of your character, I fell in love. Thus, she frequently visited the (our) house, secure in the knowledge that she mattered. I was well aware that Milton was not a place for Blacks to visit, however, I did not know at that time it was a segregated sun-down town, where non-residential Blacks were expected to exit it by sundown or risk threat of violence. Thus, she could not extend the generosity to me that my parents had extended to her. I do recall her younger sister accompanying her on a couple of short visits. Yet, other than those visits, I had no interaction with any other of her family members, friends, or community members.  Over the course of our relationship, I never socialized with any of her friends, never visited her home or neighborhood, and never met her parents. It’s clear now, given the abiding strength of the viral racial infection we were forced to confront, our relationship was doomed to fail from the beginning.   

            Mere months after our break-up, I was driving down 3rd Avenue on a summer’s day in 1979.  Passing the Mad Hatters club, I noticed a crowd gathered on the front sidewalk but thought nothing much of it. I recognized a couple of the faces as I drove past, including a longtime family friend and a first cousin, but saw no reason to stop, and so continued home. Shortly after arriving, I received a phone call from a buddy who told me to get down to the Mad Hatters because there had been a fight and several blacks had been arrested, including my two brothers. I rushed down.  As I looked for a parking space, I could clearly see my two brothers, the family friend, and my cousin in the back seat of a police car. I parked and spent some time gathering information and then strolled over to the lead officer. I politely stated, “Sir, I heard there was a fight between blacks and whites in the club. How come there are no whites arrested?” He replied, “You say one more word and I’ll arrest you.” I had barely uttered, “But…” before I was thrown on the hood of the squad car, handcuffed, and placed in the back seat. In short order, all five of us were taken to the city jail, booked, and placed in a cell. Never in my life have I felt more humiliated, angry, and impotent. Like Levee Green, Chadwick Bozeman’s tragic trumpet-playing character in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” I felt all his anger, existential rage, and powerlessness. And, like Green, who, forced to swallow the bile of indignity and self-loathing for far too long, and unable to directly challenge a white person or confront the racist system, instead explodes in a torrent of anger on a convenient target, his bandmate Toledo, resulting in his murder, that night I unleashed all my years of repressed fury on Sheriff Peters, our African American family friend and neighbor. I cussed him like I’ve never cussed any person in my life. Naturally, I regret it now. But then, what was I to do? No matter how truly honorable he was, how undeserving of the venom I spewed his way; at that place, at that moment, he was the man who represented a white racist system, a system that had jailed five black men and not one white man involved in the interracial fight. The five of us sat in that jail cell until my dad finally arrived and bailed us out. Three months later, I left Huntington to start my career as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways and never looked back.    

            I flew for Pan Am, off and on, for 11 years until it folded in 1991. I flew to over 35 countries during my stint and not once did I experience overt racism overseas. As any traveler knows, travel is freedom; travel allows you to throw off the yoke of your past. And I am eternally grateful for those experiences. Only in America, twice in Honolulu and once in Florida, did I encounter an explicitly racist action against me. On two of these occasions, I was called nigger. By the time of Pan Am’s demise, I had moved to Arlington, VA. This is where I started life over and reinvented myself. After holding more than a dozen odd jobs throughout the decade while going to college, I completed my MA in Education from George Mason University. I was hired shortly afterwards as a history/social studies teacher at an independent school in Washington, DC. I taught there for three years before I applied for the Carter G. Woodson Fellowship from Marshall University. After acceptance, I moved to Columbus, OH, in 2000, to begin graduate studies in History at The Ohio State University. After achieving my MA in History, I was required to return to Marshall to teach part-time while I pursued my Ph.D.   

            For several years, while I taught at Marshall and conducted research in the city and surrounding communities, I commuted from Columbus to Huntington. Not once during my 10 years of residence in Columbus was I accosted by the city’s police. However, I can’t say the same thing about Huntington. One night after leaving campus to travel to my grandmother’s house in South Point, Ohio, where I stayed when in the city, I noticed a police car pull out behind me as I left a fast-food lot. After traveling several blocks, with me regularly checking my rear-view mirror and making sure I observed the proper speed limit, the cop turned on his flashing lights and pulled me over. I was livid! Within seconds of his arrival at my window, I berated him. I informed him that I had seen his initial pull out and his subsequent trailing. I then forcefully told him that I was a MU professor, had not been speeding, and how dare he trump up a charge on me! I could see acknowledgement dawn on his face. Within a couple of minutes, the incident was over. Having been called out for his lie, he sheepishly apologized, and I departed. Only later did I realize that, in my anger, I had neglected to retrieve his name and badge number. I vowed then and there, that I would never make that mistake ever again.   

            I imagine my experiences with Huntington’s police mirrored that of other Black people and communities nationwide. While I cannot condemn the entirety of the city police force or white citizens for the actions of a few, those encounters shaped the way I viewed and interacted with police for years afterwards. Only lately, as an adult, as a parent, as a property owner, have I evolved in my thinking. But it has taken many years for my anger to subside. Today, there seems to be a better relationship between the police and the Black community, but that’s only my opinion, borne out of only a year of recent residency in the city. I have no hard data or anecdotal info to support it. At least Mayor Steve Williams is attempting to advance the narrative. He hired the city’s first Black chief of police in 2021 and has been forthright in his mission to acknowledge the contributions of Black people to the city’s history. Williams is but one of many of the city’s white community members who are committed to uplift and improve race relationships. 

            Today, I can sense a renewed sense of optimism in race relations within the city from both Black and white sides. In large measure, gone are the relics of a bygone era who subscribed to segregationist and white-supremacist ideas. In truth, it’s common to see interracial couples at the mall, on campus, or downtown. And Huntington High has a high number of bi-racial students. So, times are changing. Now, there’s a new generation of young, smart, accomplished white progressives who aren’t beholden to the norms and ways of their forefathers and mothers. And I am delighted to see this sea change in attitude and environment. Yet, while many are open to change, diversity, and inclusion, many remain unaware of the city’s and region’s rich Black history and of the contributions of Black people to the rise of Huntington. And this is true of the region’s Black people as well. This is the main reason I wrote the book, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story, to educate as many people as possible on what I believe to be a unique story, a belief, by the way, that has been echoed by readers and reviewers. However, there was/is a difference in impetus. I wanted to remind Black Huntington of its former greatness. I wanted to inform White Huntington of the same. I think the book fulfills both objectives. But just as important, in the end, the book serves to refute the words uttered by the 13-year-old white boy, the actions of the white arresting cops, or the stop by the policeman. In the final analysis, it is an affirmation of the power of one community to nurture, guide, and protect someone it valued and values. I am grateful for the love extended.

About the Author

Cicero Fain, III, Assistant Provost of Access and Opportunity, Marshall University, and author of the award-winning history, Black Huntington: An  Appalachian Story, published by the University of Illinois Press. A native of West Virginia, he earned his PhD at The Ohio State University; a Master of Arts from the same institution; a Master’s degree in education at George Mason University; and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His extensive research in the antebellum and post-emancipation history of Blacks in Appalachia’s border states of West Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky is reflected in numerous publications and presentations.