Abstract
Reverend Hilton Smith discusses his journey from North Carolina to Cleveland in 1968, drawn by Carl Stokes' historic mayoral victory. Smith worked as a field epidemiologist for the Cleveland Public Health Department before joining Turner Construction Company in 1972. He became one of the first African American board members of the Cleveland City Club in 1972, joining alongside Rena Blumberg, the first female board member. Smith describes the City Club as a "citadel of free speech" that provided rare opportunities for racial integration and dialogue during the civil rights era. He served as chairman of the program committee, bringing speakers like Ralph David Abernathy, Charles Rangel, and George Bush to address the club. Smith reflects on Cleveland's racial climate during the 1960s and 1970s, including the contentious school busing debates following Judge Battisti's desegregation ruling. He credits Carl Stokes with giving African Americans hope and breaking barriers, while acknowledging that racism persisted in more subtle forms. Smith emphasizes the City Club's role as a neutral forum for diverse viewpoints rather than a policy-making organization. The interview concludes with Smith's call for Cleveland to unite as "we" rather than "you people" to ensure the city's future success.
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Interviewee
Smith, Hilton (interviewee)
Interviewer
Humphrey, Tom (interviewer)
Project
City Club - Civil Rights
Date
8-8-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
59 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Hilton Smith interview, 08 August 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 807017.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/800
Transcript
Tom Humphrey [00:00:00] Okay. I’m Tom Humphrey. I’m here at the Cleveland City Club with Hilton Smith, Reverend Hilton Smith. This is part of the City Club Oral History Project and the Euclid Corridor History Project, both out of Cleveland State. Thanks for coming.
Hilton Smith [00:00:15] Thank you.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:16] Sorry, slid that across the mic. Maybe we could start with some background information, if you’re from Cleveland or where you’re from, how you ended up in Cleveland, and kind of take us through the early part of your life briefly, and then we’ll start talking about the City Club as a kind of, you know, from there.
Hilton Smith [00:00:34] I hail from the state of North Carolina, came to Cleveland in 1968. Reason being is that the Honorable Mayor Carl Stokes had just won the mayoral election here in Cleveland in November of ’67. And I felt that Cleveland had to be the place to be at that particular time. So I, I made my way to Cleveland.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:58] Okay, what did you do when you first got to Cleveland?
Hilton Smith [00:01:01] When I first came to Cleveland, I was working with the city, hired by the federal government, but working for the city as a field epidemiologist, and that was with the Cleveland Public Health Department. Within about a year, I switched over to become a city employee, working as an assistant administrator, assistant commissioner for the city health department, in charge of personnel, activities, and all of the operations of the health centers in the city of Cleveland.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:35] Maybe you could explain for us what an epidemiologist does.
Hilton Smith [00:01:39] Field epidemiologists. At that time, what I was doing was going out and locating those persons that had venereal diseases, tuberculosis, trying to eradicate those diseases around the city of Cleveland and the state of Ohio.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:56] Okay. This is unrelated to what we’re talking about. I remember doing an interview or a student did an interview with a woman from Tremont, and she went to an elementary school in Tremont in the 1940s, I think, and she remarked on several students being taken out of class at school fairly regularly and taken to a fresh air room. Does that ring any bells with you?
Hilton Smith [00:02:18] It certainly does ring a bell.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:20] And why would people use fresh air rooms? What were those?
Hilton Smith [00:02:22] Well, the basic reason for using the fresh air room was to try to really educate people who had either symptoms of these various diseases or were around folk that had the various diseases. And it was a part of the educational movement.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:39] It was. It stymied us for quite some time. Couldn’t figure out exactly what it was for. Okay, so you moved in 1967, Carl Stokes had just been elected mayor.
Hilton Smith [00:02:50] That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:51] What was the mood of the city when you arrived?
Hilton Smith [00:02:54] When I arrived in Cleveland. I thought it was the greatest city in the nation. It was thriving. People that wanted to work two or three jobs had an opportunity to do that. It was one of the top cities in the country for Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. The jobs were here. Mayor Stokes was a breath of fresh air, not only for Cleveland, but for the nation. It was a new thing to have an able African American to become the mayor of a major city. And all roads led to Cleveland. Many of the Clevelanders that are here today came when I came here to work for Mayor Stokes or to just be in the city and be surrounded by this newness in these United States.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:48] Okay, where did you move to when you moved into the city?
Hilton Smith [00:03:52] I lived in the city of Cleveland. I lived in the city. I had one relative here, and. And I stayed with my one relative off East 121st Street in Kinsman in the Mount Pleasant area.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:03] Right, okay, okay. Sorry. I’m talking over you, and I shouldn’t do that. Okay. What were race relations like when Stokes was elected mayor of the first in the late 1960s in the city of Cleveland?
Hilton Smith [00:04:16] Well, it was a new thing for the city of Cleveland. No doubt, there are many Clevelanders that were quite surprised that he won. Race relations were not good. They were bad. However, with his victory and with the kind of support that he received, things became a bit better in the overall city within city government. It was tough because of the fact that you had many veterans that had been a part of the city and working for the city. You had many veteran city councilmen who, quite frankly, were not prepared for the new day in Carl Bernard Stokes. But we strived to make progress and made that history. Then, of course, Louis Stokes became a congressman, which was another first for an African American to be a congressman in the state of Ohio. So the city was prepped for this newness. However, the oldness was still there, oldness being racial factors and racism. So it was still there. Mayor Stokes had a tough way to go, but he was a tough man, and many things became completed for the positive for this city.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:42] I just had a question that jumped out of my- That escaped me completely. So you moved to Cleveland in the late 1960s. Oh, I remember. By veterans, you mean the veterans, people who had been in the administration or been in city government.
Hilton Smith [00:06:00] Been in city government for a long, long time. Yes. Not necessarily military veterans, but no, no veteran city employees. Because it was a new thing for everybody. I mean, it was new in the Black community to have Mayor Stokes as mayor. I mean, it was new to us, it was certainly new to those who didn’t expect him to win.
Tom Humphrey [00:06:23] How did the NAACP react, the Cleveland Chapter of the NAACP, react to this?
Hilton Smith [00:06:27] NAACP had played a major role, a significant role in getting out the vote for Mayor Stokes. A lot of people forget that congressman Stokes, Congressman Louis Stokes was the head of the legal redress committee for the naacp. So the NAACP was thriving, had lots of life members right in the thick of things, right at the helm of what was positive for this city in race relations.
Tom Humphrey [00:06:59] Were there- I know this is not quite on topic of the City Club. Were there divisions in the African American community? Maybe some people who thought Stokes was maybe not going far enough?
Hilton Smith [00:07:14] There were some folk that were surprised in the Black community that Mayor Stokes won. There are some folk against him in the Black community. But the good thing was that the majority, the overwhelming majority of those in the Black community was right with him from the start, from previous years when he narrowly lost, to the year when he became victorious. And then, I might add, that this particular victory was a victory for America. I mean, there are a lot of people that came into Cleveland. Dr. King and many others came in to rally around the mayor’s campaign.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:01] Why do you think some African Americans in this city were against or not against Stokes’ mayoral campaign, but maybe somewhat in opposition to it?
Hilton Smith [00:08:09] Well, they were in opposition because they had worked for other people in the city, worked for city council veterans. And so they had to- Well, I can’t say had to, but they were against him because of the sides that they had taken over the years. And like I said, it was not an overwhelming majority that were against him, but there were some. And we pretty much knew who those folk were.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:38] As everybody often does.
Hilton Smith [00:08:39] That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:40] Knows who’s on the other side.
Hilton Smith [00:08:41] Absolutely.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:42] You may not know your friends, but.
Hilton Smith [00:08:42] You know your enemies. You know who your enemies are. Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:45] So. So you moved into Cleveland in the late 1960s. It’s a contentious time in the city. It’s a contentious time in the country, in the nation. You moved into a city with the first. You moved into a major metropolitan area with the first African American mayor to serve in a major metropolitan area. The city itself was not placid by any stretch of the imagination. And you joined the City Club. How did you get in? How did you learn about the City Club? What kind of compelled you to join it or who compelled you to join it is often a better question.
Hilton Smith [00:09:17] Well, first of all, I wanted to be a part of the city in its totality. That’s number one. Number Two, I met a gentleman that became the first African American to be president of the City Club, Mr. Bertram Gardner. Mr. Gardner was my hero. He was my idol. He was my role model. And I always saw Mr. Gardner being honored for civic activities that he was involved in. I saw him active in the City Club. And at that time, there were very few African Americans involved in the City Club. And so with his suggestion, I began to come to City Club Forums in the old Women’s Federal building. And from that, I became very interested in what was going on in the city, what was going on in the nation. This citadel of free speech was beyond reproach, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had a lot to do with my educational enhancement and the experiences that I have in the city today. And so, lo and behold, in 1972, I became a member of the City Club, and soon after that, I became a member of the board. At that time, I think I was maybe the third or fourth African American to become a member of the City Club Board. I know the year that I was voted in as a member of the board, we had the first female to become a member of the board, which was Rena Blumberg. So we came in together, and so we created some history here in the City Club having a minority or an African American and a female on the board at the same time.
Tom Humphrey [00:11:05] Because women were just. If you both were on the board in 1972, women had just been recently admitted to the club, is that right?
Hilton Smith [00:11:11] That is correct.
Tom Humphrey [00:11:13] Were there any other clubs in the city that you joined?
Hilton Smith [00:11:16] At that particular time, the City Club was first and foremost in my mind and in my eyes, because that’s where I began to meet the influential people in the city, here at the City Club. And we could sit at the same table and for an hour or so we could break bread together and get to know each other. That’s where I began to meet the Dick Pogues of the world, the Jim Davises of the world. Jim Davis, who used to be the head of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey at the time. And so we could really get to know each other. They got to know me and I got to know them. And as the years floated, we began to work on various boards together in order to try to enhance the development of the city. I guess soon after joining the City Club, I became a member of the Kiwanis Club again. Mr. Bertram Gardner was at the helm of the Kiwanis Club. And I must also remember here, Mr. W. O. Walker, who was at that time the publisher of the Cleveland Call and Post. And he also became a mentor of mine.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:41] And was he also a member of the club?
Hilton Smith [00:12:44] He was a member of the club.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:45] Could you describe for us the role the Call and Post played in the city of Cleveland and in fact, the role it still plays in the city?
Hilton Smith [00:12:50] Oh, a beacon for civil rights, a beacon for small businesses, minority and women businesses. The Call and Post was the paper that we could read when we really wanted to find out issues on the other side, so to speak. The editorials that was written over the years by Mr. Loeb, who used to be there, and the late John Lanier allowed us to embellish some thinking points that the other media did not really elaborate upon.
Tom Humphrey [00:13:35] Why do you think the Call and Post could do that in a way that maybe some of the other newspapers in the city, the Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Press, couldn’t at the time?
Hilton Smith [00:13:41] Well, first of all, we got coverage in the Call and Post. African American coverage in the Call and Post at that time. I remember very succinctly, if it wasn’t a robbery or a death, you very seldom saw pictures of African Americans in the newspaper. You could see a lot of things that were going on in the city. But a lot of times you didn’t get the Black perspective. And the Call and Post, through Mr. W. O. Walker, would give us that perspective and also would come to the City Club and voice his opinions as to why the city wasn’t moving in the directions that it should be moving in a swift pace. I remember, and I still have a copy of the speech that W. O. Walker did here in about 1975 or ’76, where he talked about the number of corporations that had businesses here and that had grown here and that were born in Cleveland but had major operations outside of the city of Cleveland. He gave that speech here, and I still have it in my files today. And every now and then I’ll pull it out and read it about how Cleveland was not treated properly by the city fathers. I remember vividly he talked about Mr. Cyrus Eaton, Mr. Eaton, who started Eaton Corporation. But yet back in those days, he had a lot of his operations in Europe and in the Soviet Union. And Mr. Walker politely asked Mr. Eaton to come on home and do some things for Cleveland. And from that particular speech, it radiated all over the city and all over this county. And many of the companies in Cleveland began to become involved in the city and brought jobs to the city. And so Mr. W. O. Walker was a drum major for the city of Cleveland, A drum major for action, a drum major for minority involvement, African American involvement in this particular city. And so we owe a lot to this man.
Tom Humphrey [00:15:59] He gave the speech here at the club. Was there another facility, do you feel like, in the city other than his own newspaper or the newspaper he administered? Do you think there was another facility in the city where he could have given such a speech?
Hilton Smith [00:16:11] Sure, he could have given it anywhere. But the City Club is where people listened to. And I think that’s one of the marvelous things about the club. People can come here and they can listen. Their trends of thinking can be changed or added to what they already think. And last but not least, you hear here at the City Club, the other side, so to speak, which enhances your knowledge, it ripens your knowledge and can give you a clearer picture about things. I remember when I was chairman of the program Committee here, we brought in folk like Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who was a chief lieutenant of Dr. King’s. We brought in people like at that time, the Secretary of Transportation, Secretary William Coleman. We brought at that time a gentleman who was head of the CIA. His name was George Bush. And so we got a lot of different ideas for people. John Gardner, with the Common Cause at that particular time, we got a lot of different ideas. And I think that’s again, the strength of the City Club. It’s not one-sided. It’s an open society.
Tom Humphrey [00:17:46] I’ve asked other- I’ve interviewed some other minority members of the club who joined in the late ’60s who felt that this was the only club that was open to them to join. Did you feel like that too when you came into the city?
Hilton Smith [00:18:01] Yes, I did. I found that it was open. I found that we were accepted. You could come into the room at the City Club and not believe that you were in Cleveland because as I stated earlier, you could sit at a table and be with a corporate executive and break bread with them. And you were just having a conversation. And I think you can’t beat that.
Tom Humphrey [00:18:28] Why do you say when you come into the club, it wasn’t like you felt like you weren’t in the city of Cleveland? What about being in the club made you- Well, you described it. You could sit with corporate executives, with the heads of businesses around the city. Did you feel like you had less, as an African American man, did you feel like you had less of an opportunity to do that outside of the City Club in other places in the city?
Hilton Smith [00:18:51] Oh, definitely. So because you didn’t have those opportunities to meet in other places, I mean, you certainly couldn’t go to Union Club back then. You couldn’t go to the Cleveland Athletic Club because there were no minority members.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:09] While you’re a member of the current mayor’s administration in the late 90s. So even Carl.
Hilton Smith [00:19:16] First of all, a lot of us didn’t know about the Union Club. People today don’t know about the Union Club or the Cleveland Athletic Club. I had a young man to meet me for lunch one day, and I said, meet me at the Union Club. I happen to be a member now. He said he walked by the Union Club about four times. He didn’t know that was a club before he- Somebody told him, hey, this is it.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:41] So you’re a member of it now?
Hilton Smith [00:19:42] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:46] Boy, we’re not even out of the ’60s. Just out of curiosity, were you at the speech after Martin Luther King’s assassination when Bobby Kennedy spoke at the club?
Hilton Smith [00:19:58] I was not here.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:59] Okay.
Hilton Smith [00:20:00] But I’ve heard it many, many times. It’s been played over and over again. Very profound. Very, very profound speech.
Tom Humphrey [00:20:09] What was the mood of the club after King? If you came to the club a short time after that, what was the mood of the members of the club and maybe of some of the African American members of the club after King had been assassinated?
Hilton Smith [00:20:20] Well, obviously, to many of us, the King was dead. What are we going to do now? It brought on an emptiness because we had lost a great leader, our leader, the man who feared to tread into dangerous shores, the man who said, I will stand up and be an ambassador for the rights of the little people. We lost that, and for a fleeting moment, we were a dead nation. But what happened, as God would have it to happen, it brought a lot of people together. A lot of people decided that racial strife had to end, that integration was key to the life of our nation. And so we came together, and many people embraced civil rights. Black, white, yellow, and brown. And the nation became a better nation. So I often tell people it was a tragedy to lose Dr. King, but God knew what he was doing.
Tom Humphrey [00:21:50] Okay, what did you do after you started, served in the Stokes administration.
Hilton Smith [00:21:57] I served in the Stokes administration until he decided not to run for a third. A third term. He announced that he was going to move to New York to work for NBC as an anchor for the evening news. And, you know, that left a void as well. However, I had taken a civil service test and had passed the civil service test, so I could have remained a city employee for a long, long time, for many years. And I was comfortable to make a way to continue to strive to make this city a better city. And lo and behold, I received A call one day from the Turner Construction Company, and my life changed after that. A gentleman called me and said that he was looking for someone to carry on a certain job, and he thought I could do it. I mentioned to him that I wasn’t looking for a job, and he said, I’m not looking for anyone who’s looking for a job. And that statement was very profound with me. I was impressed with what he said, so I went to talk with him. And two weeks after I talked with him, I became an employee on February 14th of 1972 with the Turner Company. And I’ve been there since.
Tom Humphrey [00:23:23] Okay. And so you’ve been in Cleveland through some of what a lot of people would characterize as some of its most tumultuous periods. Civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, including some of the rioting in 1968. Also the busing issue. Maybe you could describe what the mood of the city was like, but also kind of what the mood of the club was like during the debate over busing and maybe following Judge Battisti’s ruling that, in fact, Cleveland had to-
Hilton Smith [00:23:59] It was a great debate. It was a great debate over- It became a very sensitive issue in this community. Judge Battisti was loved by many and hated by a whole lot for making that courageous decision to try to bring about a beautiful mosaic in the city of Cleveland. I thought at the time it was a good decision because we were the tale of two cities, west side, east side. When there was a Senate basketball or football championship, you knew where you were, because if you were with a west side team, it was all white, and on the east side, it was all Black. And so it was no different from Mississippi or anywhere in the South. It was just- It showed the true color of Cleveland at that particular time. With all of the racism that existed here, you could cut it with a knife because it existed in such a great way.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:22] Who are some of the. Well, we should get back to the club. They debated this in the City Club, or people gave their opinions, gave presentations about it. Do you remember some of the speakers, what they talked about, how the club received it at the time. You even acknowledged that it was a predominantly white club.
Hilton Smith [00:25:44] Yeah, sure.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:46] So kind of how was it received in the club? Who. Some of those speakers were kind of notable.
Hilton Smith [00:25:52] I could say Russell Means, who is an American Indian who has become very famous with what he has been trying to do on the reservations over the years. Russell Means, of course, Bobby Kennedy. Back in those days, we had some white supremacists to come to the club. There was a doctor out of California who felt that whites were superior. And then we had a Roy Innis, who was head of CORE, Congress of Racial Equality. He came James Farmer, who was head of CORE before him, Julian Bond, who at that time was a state senator in the state of Georgia. We had a lot of folk to come through here at that particular time to talk about this whole racial strife. But, yeah, it was a tumultuous time.
Tom Humphrey [00:27:03] What was the mood of the people? Maybe if you’re uncomfortable talking about specific club members, that that’s fine, but what was the mood of the club at the time of the busing debate? It was a moment in time when to a certain extent, people think of the 1960s, and they identified the civil rights movement with the 1960s. But in Cleveland, it extended well into the 1970s because Battisti doesn’t hand his ruling down until ’76.
Hilton Smith [00:27:29] That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:27:30] Something around there. And it was dangerous for him. He dropped- Traveled with a bodyguard-
Hilton Smith [00:27:34] Absolutely, yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:27:35] For a long time after, and so did his aides. So what was the mood of the club? Kind of the members of the club. Were there people who you remember speaking out distinctly against, again, without kind of-
Hilton Smith [00:27:55] Oh, yeah, we had members of the club that spoke out against- And they would let you know it in the question and answer period when speakers would speak. And then you had those that were really ambassadors for race relations and for the civil rights movement, and they spoke their mind during the question and answer periods at the club. It was entertaining, too, as I might say. It was very entertaining. But a situation where you learn to accept both sides of the road and determined which side you wanted to be on.
Tom Humphrey [00:28:35] I guess I find it difficult to think that somebody like you could have accepted the other side, because it seems that some of the positions held by people on the other side would have seemed maybe untenable.
Hilton Smith [00:28:46] No, I accepted their freedom of speech. I didn’t accept what they said. I accepted the fact that you could speak your mind. And quite frankly, I was very happy that people spoke their mind because you knew where people stood. There’s nothing more dangerous than a closet racist. People who smile, but the smile is a frown turned upside down. And we had some of those type of folk where I grew up in North Carolina, you knew where you stood. People call you a n——, and you knew that’s what they thought of you. And then you could call them a few names, and they knew what those names were as well. So I am very apt to feel okay about someone straight up with me who will say what they really feel rather than to announce that they are for minorities, they are for civil rights, and then go out to the far suburbs and sometimes even in the city at night and have a different story. There’s no honesty in that. And that really against anybody who doesn’t have honest feelings.
Tom Humphrey [00:30:15] And the club fostered that kind of open atmosphere.
Hilton Smith [00:30:18] Yes, the citadel of free speech. I think that’s- I like to say that the citadel of free speech. You had your opportunity to speak freely.
Tom Humphrey [00:30:26] Here and you were on the. Were you on the program board during some of this?
Hilton Smith [00:30:29] I was head of the program board. I was the chairman of the program committee.
Tom Humphrey [00:30:33] And who do you think, as the head of the program committee, who do you think was the most. I guess there’s a couple different ways of thinking about it. The most interesting person, perhaps the most that you thought was the most interesting, but perhaps also the person that maybe other members of the club related to you that they thought was one of the most interesting people they saw while you were the head of the program committee.
Hilton Smith [00:30:52] I would say Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, because when he came here one day in a blue denim suit with a vest, Dr. Abernathy, he spoke from being a part of the minority community. And then he spoke to show his superior knowledge as a historian and as a very learned man. I’ll never forget he started his speech by saying that I am a diversified professional. He said I can eat collard greens and neck bones and feel very good, and then I can eat filet mignon and pronounce it correctly.
Tom Humphrey [00:31:45] Who did you bring in the club member? Well, David Abernathy. Did he speak in a normal club setting? Did you set up something special for him?
Hilton Smith [00:31:53] He spoke at the City Club. We didn’t go out like we do now when we have people to come in town. He spoke at the City Club and he talked about the history of the civil rights movement and why the civil rights movement came about and why we must embrace it for the future of this country. And through the years, as you can see, with the embracing of civil rights, our country has become stronger. And when it’s not so embraced, we’re not that strong. When you see, if you see today on the news, something about the Klan, you see the overwhelming majority of the people against a Klan march. And years ago, that wasn’t the case. I know that when I was going to school in Raleigh, North Carolina, we as students marched in front of the Klan with their rebel flags and we had the courage to do it, yet we were scared to death.
Tom Humphrey [00:33:00] I bet you were. What year was that?
Hilton Smith [00:33:03] That was in, from ’64 to about ’68.
Tom Humphrey [00:33:12] That’s early. Okay, so the club, when you- Sorry, I’m just, I’m taken aback a little bit. It’s an amazingly hard thing to do. Okay. The club, you- When you joined the club, it was in the Women’s Federal building.
Hilton Smith [00:33:33] That’s correct. On Superior.
Tom Humphrey [00:33:35] Yeah. If you could kind of describe the physical space of the club when you kind of, you know, you walk in, what did it look like when you walked in?
Hilton Smith [00:33:41] Well, it wasn’t very large, number one. Number two just looked like a setting for businessmen. Not business women, not business women, businessmen, white men, not minorities. Rena Blumberg and I became very good friends because we’d come to the club together on many occasions. And a lot of times we were the ones that spoke and conversed with each other. But one thing about City Club. It was- It tried its best to be a drum major for civil rights, a drum major for a new movement as the years rolled by. And so I credit the City Club for stepping out and charging ahead with the movement toward bringing the city in racial peace and harmony.
Tom Humphrey [00:34:57] So it was kind of an austere place, a business-looking kind of place.
Hilton Smith [00:35:01] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:03] Light wood, dark wood, carpeted, not carpeted?
Hilton Smith [00:35:09] Kind of like a smoke-filled room, so to speak. A smoke-filled room. You saw it there. And I remember very vividly on many occasions after growing up in a small town in North Carolina, coming to the City Club and saying, wow, looks like I’ve arrived. I can come in here and I can sit with folk that I didn’t know, folk that I’ve never dealt with, yet become very close friends with many of those folk. Many of those folk are my friends today. When. And you could come in and meet a Bruce Akers and become a really good friend with the Bruce Akers and I mentioned Dick Pogue years back. Oh, so many folk that I met that never thought I would meet people. When I first came here, I’d read about the newspapers. Jim Davis, that was again the head of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, those kind of folk. The head of Cardinal Federal Saving back then, you could sit with those folk and really deal with issues that faced our city and try to, in a collective way, solve those situations.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:36] And then you were also part of the, obviously, part of the club as it moved into the new space here.
Hilton Smith [00:36:40] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:41] In what is now the City Club Building.
Hilton Smith [00:36:42] Yes. My company was fortunate enough to be the contractor on the new space here.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:47] I’m sorry. Oh, your company.
Hilton Smith [00:36:49] My company. Turner Construction Company.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:50] Okay. And so your company did the reconstruction.
Hilton Smith [00:36:52] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:53] Okay. The reconstruction of this space that we’re sitting in now came about in large part, or came about in part as a way to lure new members. Did it come as a kind of- I’ve talked to other people who said we kind of faced a crossroads where membership was declining a little bit in the 1980s, and so we needed something to attract new members. Could you kind of describe the feeling of the club in the late 1980s?
Hilton Smith [00:37:20] Well, I agree. We needed some new blood. We needed to recruit. Many folk outside of Cleveland knew the City Club better than people that lived in Cleveland. And so we needed to bring in new blood. We needed a new era, a new surroundings, and we needed a beautiful facility to attract young professionals and to attract more minorities and women. And this facility has done that. It’s a beautiful facility. It’s a facility that it’s open to the community. It’s just a good thing for the city of Cleveland. What I’d like to see is a big sign out there saying the City Club out front.
Tom Humphrey [00:38:13] We’ll make sure we replay that over and over and over again.
Hilton Smith [00:38:15] That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:38:17] How do you feel like. Do you feel like the club has changed as it’s moved into this space in a somewhat more modern space?
Hilton Smith [00:38:25] It’s changed because I think our attitudes have changed. We knew where we were and for a while didn’t have a place. And to come here and say, this is ours. We stake our claim in this particular place because we all paid money to see this beautiful facility come to fruition.
Tom Humphrey [00:38:50] How do you feel like- Or how do you think that the kind of face of the City Club has changed over, say, the last 15 or 20 years, or maybe 30 years?
Hilton Smith [00:38:58] Well, certainly, the inclusion of minorities and women, the inclusion of minority and women speakers, the inclusion of young people, we’ve always had another key, I think, to the club. We’ve always had young people come to the club, to the Friday forums, and that has expanded to many of the schools in Greater Cleveland. And we’ve got many corporate supporters of the club, which is a really good thing. And so we moved into this new era with a very proactive mind.
Tom Humphrey [00:39:45] Do you think that kind of. Since corporations have. There’s an increased corporate financial presence at the club, do you think that that has changed maybe the kind of speakers they bring in now or the tone of the club or maybe the membership of the club?
Hilton Smith [00:40:00] Well, these are three separate questions. I realize yeah, you get people now who make suggestions for speakers. I’ve made suggestions of speakers and we’ve been able to get some of them and some of them we haven’t. But if you. When you see a major national, state or local issue, we have folk now that are calling Jim Foster, saying, hey, we got to get this person in. We’ve got to get a panel to discuss this situation or that situation. And so it’s open. You don’t have a group of folk just making decisions and saying, this is what we have, which would kill it. You have folk that are listening to the membership. You have folk that are ready and able to help bring speakers in. So I think it’s a good thing.
Tom Humphrey [00:40:56] Do you think that that’s a different feeling than when, say, you were the head of the Program committee in the 19th century?
Hilton Smith [00:41:01] Well, when I became head of the program committee in 1970s, they had to get used to me because, of course, I was African American and I had to get used to the folk I was working around. But I’ve always said what I had to say. And so we got used to each other and we would get together and talk about the type of speakers we wanted to come in. And we were able to get those speakers in here. Congressman Charles Rangel, who became the head of the Congressional Black Caucus in a time when the caucus was just becoming a force in America. And so we were able to bring him in. And again, we brought both Republicans and Democrats into the. And I might add the late Bob Hughes, helped me tremendously in getting speakers to come to the City Club, say.
Tom Humphrey [00:42:02] In the last 15 years. Who do you think was the most controversial speaker that you saw or who do you think inspired the most controversy maybe in the club and out among non members, kind of out in the space that the club broadcasts to?
Hilton Smith [00:42:18] Probably Supreme Court.
Tom Humphrey [00:42:23] Justice Antonin Scalia.
Hilton Smith [00:42:25] Scalia.
Tom Humphrey [00:42:27] Were you surprised as a club member that he refused to allow his speech to be recorded by the club? Actually, it was kind of a standard.
Hilton Smith [00:42:35] Thing being a Supreme Court justice. Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:42:38] Were you disappointed that the club continued with that? Kind of went ahead and gave him the Free Speech Award anyway?
Hilton Smith [00:42:44] Well, you get a chance to get a Supreme Court justice to come to visit your city, you extend the invitation and you bring him in. Although I think he should have allowed his speech to be recorded because of the fact that you have young people who want to become historians like you, who would like to hear what he and others have to say. [00:43:19] And for that not to happen, I thought it was a great disappointment because.
Tom Humphrey [00:43:26] There were high school students here trying to record a speech as well.
Hilton Smith [00:43:28] That’s exactly right.
Tom Humphrey [00:43:33] Do you think the club is just wonder how to ask this. It seems like the club could play a somewhat more socially active role or a more active role in shaping public thought in one way or another. Do you think that’s the club’s role? And if it is the club’s role, how does a City Club go about doing something?
Hilton Smith [00:44:00] I don’t think it’s the club’s role. I think the club’s role is to bring in those people that affect public policy and on one side or the other and let the people decide from what they hear. Because this is a citadel of free speech. It’s not a political organization and it’s not a policy making organization. I think it ought to be just like it is, whatever side it is. Bring the people in to discuss their feelings and the way they think things ought to go and allow the members to question them very sharply.
Tom Humphrey [00:44:46] Do you think the club has had. Has leaned in one direction more or another over the time you’ve been here? If it has leaned in one direction over another, do you think, do you think it’s shifted sides or gone one way?
Hilton Smith [00:44:58] Well, I think people on both sides have tried to get their people in. I mean, you get somebody who’s not going to get two votes in a primary, but yet you got folk that want their person to be here and on those forums during the week. City Club has given them opportunity to speak. So everybody has their favorites and they play favorites and they try to move the club toward the way they want the club to be. And I think the club has done, through its board of directors and the foundation, have done a good job of bridging the gap, so to speak, mediating the two sides. That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:45:52] This is somewhat off the City Club radar, maybe, but because this is part of the Euclid Corridor project, I guess I feel like I can answer this. What do you think Carl Stokes’ legacy is in the city? As somebody who is really intimately involved in his administration, what do you think his legacy is as a, in the city?
Hilton Smith [00:46:14] That he had the courage to run for mayor. That he had the courage to speak up and speak out. That he exhibited his brilliance in his speech, he became a role model for those that worked for him and those that grew up in this city and that could see him on TV and. And see him protest many of the things that people wanted to bring about. Perhaps you heard of the legendary debates between Carl Stokes and Jim Stanton that Was historic here in this particular city. And Carl Stokes never bowed his head. He may have been. His head may have been bloody, but yet unbowed. And he stood for something, and he stood by his convictions. And he was just a brave, brave individual during those days and times of very, very tough, tough situation that he had to deal with as a chief executive of the city.
Tom Humphrey [00:47:38] If I said maybe or suggested maybe that Carl Stokes enabled African Americans in Cleveland, and maybe I’ll speak about Cleveland, maybe not about the rest of the country, but at least about Cleveland, would it be fair to say he enabled people, kind of gave people the power African Americans in the city to kind of pull off that mask of grins and lies that Paul Dunbar talks about?
Hilton Smith [00:48:05] Yes. He gave people a sense of hope. He gave people a sense of I am somebody and that regardless of the odds, I can make it. He gave people to. He gave people the way of reasoning in that if I suffer a setback, I can still make it. For a setback is just a setup for a comeback. And if you fall, you can keep coming back, just keep getting up, shake it off, wipe it off, and keep moving forward. I think that’s his legacy.
Tom Humphrey [00:48:57] One of the things that he certainly represented was a kind of racial equality, or at least the opportunity for African Americans in big cities to achieve things that. Well, he broke a color barrier. There can be no doubt about it. Cleveland continued. Continued to struggle with racism and segregation for a number of years after his. After he left this city. Do you feel like. Do you think that Cleveland has kind of gone, has kind of turned a corner on racism in the city? Do you think racism still plagues the city in ways that it might? Well, maybe not as. Maybe not in the same way as it did in the 1960s. But is racism still a problem in the city? This is where Carl Stokes was mayor.
Hilton Smith [00:49:44] Racism is a problem everywhere. I think it’s more subtle now than overt oftentimes now you find racism, as I stated earlier, in the closet. And it comes out when it. When people let it come out, so to speak, in their way of talking. For instance, I know pretty much where a person stands after I talk to them for about five or six minutes. I can pretty much tell which way they go, where I have to watch what I say or watch them. And that’s the tough part about it. I’d rather, again, for someone to come out and say, hey, this is where I stand, and you know it and you deal with it. There is still a lack of integrity. We have folk that can come In a setting like this and put on a very, very good show. I mean, they could be the best actors and actresses in the world. Yet when they retreat into their safe places, the true color comes out as far as racism is concerned. So racism is in many areas, and that is still there, but it’s more subtle than overt. And that’s something we still have to deal with as a nation. We have to deal with it personally. We have to deal with it in our families. I tell you, where a lot of racism has become eradicated is in our children. A lot of children don’t see color. They just play with each other. They deal with each other in the malls. You can go in the malls and you can see black and white together. I remember an instance when I was in the third grade in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the state fair. There was a white boy and I were riding a ride together. And when that ride was over, I can remember to this day, his grandmother came up dressed in black with a black pillbox hat on, with a little veil over her face, and telling this boy, don’t you ever sit beside a nigger again in your life. And the boy was mixed up because as she was talking, he kept looking at me as if to say, what gives? Why is she singing? And I can see that woman right now. She looked like the devil, Satan, at a state fair, dressed in black. And she said that to her grandson. And I don’t know what effect it had on him, but I know the effect it had on me that racism was alive and well and had not left. And as a third grader, I decided that I would do whatever I could to eradicate the black and white issues. And that’s what I’ve tried to do throughout my life.
Tom Humphrey [00:53:22] Was that the first instance you remember of racism?
Hilton Smith [00:53:26] That’s the first incident that I really saw. Because, see, I grew up on an army base most of my life. My father was a military man, and I had an opportunity to deal with whites, Puerto Ricans, people of all hue and color, and we got along together. But in the communities outside of the military base, you seal the racism. I can remember going to school in the ninth grade, having gone to school with white kids throughout my days. And when the ninth grade came in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the white kids went to Fayetteville High School and I went to E. E. Smith High School. The Blacks were on the bus to go to E. E. Smith High School in Fayetteville, and the whites were on the bus to go to Fayetteville High School. During those days, I often say that if integration had not come, the money that corporations and owners make today would not be because of the fact that they never would have had the players to come together and to make teams great.
Tom Humphrey [00:54:53] That’s right. Yeah. They wouldn’t have the market.
Hilton Smith [00:54:55] Yes. It’s kind of like with Ward Connolly out in California with Proposition 207. I said, well, we can really. We can stop that just as Black kids stop going to California schools. If Southern Cal, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA had no Black ball players, it’d be a tough situation. They wouldn’t make any money. A Rose Bowl would be a little wilted bowl.
Tom Humphrey [00:55:23] So your father must have joined the military in the late 1940s.
Hilton Smith [00:55:26] That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:55:27] It was a segregated military at the time.
Hilton Smith [00:55:29] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:55:32] But then it was. If he was a career military man, then he stayed through the military after it was desegregated.
Hilton Smith [00:55:36] He stayed in the military through the Vietnam War.
Tom Humphrey [00:55:44] He’s not alive.
Hilton Smith [00:55:45] No, he’s not alive. Boy, he could tell you some great stories. Yes, but through it all, he became First Sergeant, having many men reporting to him, both black and white.
Tom Humphrey [00:55:58] Did you ever live on a segregated base?
Hilton Smith [00:56:01] No.
Tom Humphrey [00:56:03] So you were born after.
Hilton Smith [00:56:06] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:56:07] Okay, I’m sorry. That’s satisfying my own curiosity.
Hilton Smith [00:56:10] That’s all right.
Tom Humphrey [00:56:11] I’m sorry. And we should kind of wrap this up. It’s been almost an hour and I was wondering if you have anything else to tell us. If you thought of something while we were talking that you really want to let us know. If you think about anything or can think of anything in the next week or so, you can definitely, or whenever, give me a call and we can do this again. It’s not a problem. But if there’s anything at the moment, please let me know.
Hilton Smith [00:56:41] The city of Cleveland must grow. We’re at a crossroads in the city between success and failure. We’ve got to do what we can as a collective body to attract Cleveland to outsiders, but most importantly, attract Cleveland to Greater Clevelanders. So goes Cleveland. So goes Greater Cleveland. We’ve got to expunge the you people, those people philosophies, and become we in every sense of the word, we in order to make this city great. If we don’t, we will be not only the laughingstock of the nation, we will be a failure to the citizens of this community and a failure to the nation and to the world. City Club must continue to exist. City Club must continue to be open and open minded and lay all the cards on the table instead of having agendas that might be under the table. We are at a crossroads in the city, and we need to come to the point where. Where the young people in the city want to stay here and make a difference and not worry about going south or going west. We need to have this city in such a way that when the snow comes, enjoy the skiing and the slopes, and yet roll up your sleeves to make the city a great city. Embrace the mayor. Embrace winning concepts.
Tom Humphrey [00:58:51] Okay, I think that’s about it. Thank you very much. This has been great.
Hilton Smith [00:58:56] Thank you.
Tom Humphrey [00:58:56] My pleasure to interview you.
Hilton Smith [00:58:58] All right, professor, thanks a lot.
Tom Humphrey [00:59:00] Gary, you’re off.
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