This is a true story about a courageous lawyer who forty years ago, at a time when bigotry was still disguised as the natural order of things, refused to accept the status quo.

            In the mid-1960s, the man I write about was a partner in a medium sized Cincinnati law firm. Although at the time I shared many of his beliefs and values, I did not know him, nor share his legal acumen, or his courage.                       

             We lived in the same neighborhood when this story began. I’d heard a lot about the controversy into which he boldly stepped, as it was actively followed by local newspapers for several years, and was a daily topic of conversation, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

            Here is what occurred: In 1964, Robert O’Brien, a Unitarian Minister, sold his house on a desirable tree shaded street to a black family, a first, since ours was then a middle-class exclusively white part of town. The purchaser, Dr. Nelson Perry, had been hired to be a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. Accompanied by his wife, Agnes, and their three children, our community was surely the most reasonable place to settle, in close proximity to the campus and many hospitals. Reverend O’Brien was vilified, the leaders of his church besieged with angry calls.

            There were neighbors who welcomed the Perrys and those who responded to their presence with hostile acts. But it was an incident surrounding their youngest son, Mike, a fifth grader, which caused the greatest stir. A classmate invited him to be his guest at Clifton Meadows, a private club to which many residents belonged. This is where many of our children, both members and their guests, learned to swim.

            Joan Seaman Robinson, the parent who accompanied her son, Jeff, and the friend he’d brought along for a swim, was not allowed to take Mike past the entrance to the pool. Not easily put off, before leaving she insisted on speaking with the Club manager, who told her that Club policy did not permit Negro guests, a stance that was subsequently confirmed by a vote of the Trustees, and later by a majority vote of the entire Club membership. A white-guests-only policy was formally adopted.

            History lesson: These events took place some fifteen years after President Truman integrated the armed forces, ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, six years after the color barrier was removed at our local Coney Island’s Sunlite pool (following wide-spread and highly publicized demonstrations and arrests), and one year after the assassination of JFK. Voting rights legislation was enacted in the year that followed.

            Word of the pool incident quickly spread and sides were taken.

            A personal story of my own: My family, Len then an Assistant Professor of geology at the University, did not belong to the Club, as we spent our summers in Montana where Len taught and studied the origin of mountain ranges. Some years before the Perry’s arrived, we had moved with our young brood to a quiet cul-de-sac, and were warmly welcomed. Then, about the time Mike Perry was turned away at the pool, a neighbor of ours invited all of those who lived nearby into his living room to tell us of his decision to sell his home on the “open market,” code words denoting that it would be offered for sale without the standard non-white exclusion.

            The reaction to his announcement was explosive. For over an hour vitriolic language and warnings of reduced property values filled the air. The angry shouts directed at the host shocked me into silence, Len as well. I did not, nor did anyone else, speak up in support of the homeowner, who subsequently changed his mind. Len and I walked home that evening feeling sad, but impotent, and frankly frightened by the level of rage expressed. Yard-side talk was hushed in the days and months that followed. A year later I entered law school. Fair housing legislation did not pass until four years later, in 1968, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

            Until the Mike Perry incident, the fact that Clifton Meadows was for whites only was so unremarkable, there had been no need to state the obvious in writing. When the Trustees adopted a formal policy banning Negros as guests, some were benevolent and accepted that the Perrys might be fine people, but insisted that they were exceptions to racial type.

            Those of good will were not completely silent, but most expressed their disapproval to like-minded friends in the privacy and safety of their living rooms. Repeatedly heard was the suggestion that “these things take time.” There were exceptions. Judge Gilbert Bettman, outspoken in his opposition to the discriminatory policy, stood for election to the Board, but was soundly defeated.

            So, segregation triumphed. And several years later, the Perrys moved to another city. But the crisis did not dissipate. If anything, tensions escalated. There were parents who would not allow their children to play with the children of those who’d taken the opposite side. Eventually forty member families (who came to be known as the “furious forty”), having failed in an attempt to change Club policy, decided to resign in protest. That decision further defined the role of the man of courage I describe.

             After his graduation from the University of Cincinnati in 1942, he served in the Pacific as a captain in the Marines during World War II, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948. In the spring of 1968, he stepped beyond his advisory role for the “furious forty” and with a U.C. Professor of psychology as the named plaintiff, filed an action in the Federal District Court, challenging the white-guests-only policy. But Clifton Meadows was a private club, not a public accommodation, so victory was certainly not assured. Yet, ultimately a Consent Decree was negotiated prohibiting discrimination against any guest on the grounds of race, color, religion or national origin. Two Board members later changed their minds and filed to set aside the Consent Decree, unsuccessfully. They then appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which affirmed the trial court.* The fight had lasted five years.

            Perhaps some readers have guessed that the man I honor is Art Spiegel, who bravely stood up against the odds in his quest for justice, long before he was appointed to the Federal Bench. In a memoir written some years ago he explained how his own early experiences with anti-semitism led him to fight on behalf of others:

            "I had experienced incidents of prejudice or persecution which made me have doubts about myself and which created strong, ambivalent feelings: on the one hand, to feel that something was lacking, to accept being a loser, not to try to succeed or win with a maximum effort because of the fear or expectation of failing or losing, yet, on the other hand to be angered and to be challenged to rise above the insults and prove my worth."

            How many of us can identify, with regret and perhaps shame, those times we could have spoken out but remained silent? Even if few of us today would choose to live in a neighborhood not open to all, or choose to swim in a pool that limited access to whites only, it wasn’t always so. For many, the 1960s are but a dim memory, if a memory at all. But the time of which my story tells is significant when taking the measure of this man.

            Before the history of the change-makers fades, attention should be paid to those who stood up courageously to challenge the injustice of the status quo that “decent” people in Cincinnati accepted without question, less than 40 years ago. Change does not just happen.

*Allinsmith v. Funke, 421 F.2d 1350 (6^thCir. 1970)

Note: An article published by the Vanderbilt University Press in 2004, written by Michael H. Hoffheimer, Professor of Law and Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Mississippi School of Law, enhanced my recall of these events.The Hoffheimer family lived across the street from the home purchased by the Perrys. Mike H. became a close childhood friend of Mike P., both fifth graders at the time.