The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission: A History, 1943–2013 by Phillip J. Obermiller and Thomas E. Wagner (review)

In the wake of the Detroit race riot of 1943, cities and states throughout the nation rushed to create race relations or "intergroup" relations commissions for the purpose of mitigating racial, religious, and ethnic conflict and for promoting tolerance for diversity. Though a broad-based movement of some significance, this phenomenon remains a subject that has not been fully explored by historians. For this reason alone, Phillip J. Obermiller and Thomas E. Wagner make an important contribution with their book-length study of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (CHRC).

Do not expect a conventional academic history. The current executive director of the CHRC initiated the study, giving it the quality of a commissioned work, carried out by a "project team" that included the authors and local librarians and historians (p. xiii). In their introduction, Obermiller and Wagner note that they wrote the book with the general reader in mind, which shapes the approach and organizational structure adopted. Beginning with the 1940s, the authors devote a chapter to each successive decade covered by the book, thereby imposing an order of ten-year increments on the story that they tell, a convenient, but perhaps a bit too tidy, practice characteristic of works intended as general historical overviews. Moreover, some chapters are rather brief—chapter five clocks in at mere five pages—limiting the depth of coverage possible. Also, in the interest of aiding the general reader, each chapter begins with a short preface (in italics) designed to provide pertinent information for understanding the decade and to help place the CHRC story within a broader context, but with little effort to explain what connected the issues and events discussed.

The strength of the book rests with its chronological scope, which gives the authors an opportunity to explore the operations of a local human relations commission in its maturity, decades after the peak achievements of the civil rights movement and the emergence of the Black Power revolt. But this also presents a monumental task, one quite difficult to fulfill in such a slim, ninety-one page, volume. Consequently, a number of important issues do not receive the level of consideration that they seem to deserve.

While Obermiller and Wagner duly recognize the mid-to-late 1960s as a transitional period for the agency, what emerged from that time held significant social and cultural implications that the book does not fully address. For its first twenty-two years in existence (1943–1965), the agency operated as The Mayor's Friendly Relations Committee, headed by a white, male executive director, who, according to the authors, embraced a "top-down social service approach" (p. 36). However, all that began to change in 1965, when the city adopted a reorganization plan, which included re-naming the agency the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. Moreover, the executive director resigned, and the commission appointed an African American as his successor. And, apparently, the commission has never had a white director since. But Obermiller and Wagner devote almost no attention to this basic fact and what it might mean in terms of furthering our understanding of the period. (If not for the inclusion of photographs of the CHRC's various executive directors over the years, the reader would have no way of knowing their racial identity). Also, the centrality of race and what one might call the politics of race, both of which are strongly suggested by the evidence presented, receive too little attention on the part of the authors. Since at least the late 1970s, the CHRC seemed to face ongoing pressure to justify its existence and experienced a number of rather draconian budget cuts. Did some local whites perceive the CHRC as a "black" agency, directed by African Americans for African Americans, leading them to take a dismissive, race-based view of its activities? A more careful consideration to these issues would significantly improve...