The Columbus Black History Blog by Arnett Howard 

A blog is a web log; one of the new age methods of publishing and distributing without incurring the huge expenses of ink, paper, shipping and promoting. We cut out the costs of visiting books stores, consigning our products, waiting on payments and servicing a local, regional and national markets for our intellectual properties.

Podcasting is the audio version of blogging; creating an audio broadcast without driving to a radio station, begging for a gig and getting paid five dollars per hour. The trick is have a great computer, good software and the curiosity to keep learning each day about your subject matter and the technologies to apply it to the new age of the worldwide web.

I began writing and collecting audio on subjects of Black music in the mid-1970s, focusing on Columbus history in 1980 and I was part of a team that produced a book called Listen For the Jazz: Keynotes in Columbus History in 1990. Many of the subjects in my Black History Blog were people that I first met in 1980 and I am forcing myself to keep their valuable legacies fresh, as well as adding to the lore of musicians or Columbus personalities who have been on the rise in the past twenty-five years.

Black history is American history; it belongs to all of us and should be celebrated by everyone. Enjoy the triumphs of your people!

Share your thoughts with me at mayorarnett@gmail.com
 

February 28, 2006

I met Eddie J. Colston, Jr. in 1980 as I began my quest to discover the roots of Black entertainers in Central Ohio. His family lived on Eastwood Avenue, down the street from my jazz mom, Emily Sawyer.

I was drawn to the Colstons because of the legacy that was established by Eddie J.Colston, Sr., a tap dancer, journalist, entertainment manager and promoter. Legend has it that his dancing days, he became the road manager for Lionel Hampton's Band, thus becoming the first Black to manage a popular orchestra during the swing era.

Perhaps the need to raise his family took him of the road, but Eddie J. Senior put his energies into promoting all things musical in Columbus. He became the amusements editor for the Ohio Sentinel during the 1940s, soliciting advertising and promoting many of the popular entertainers that came to Columbus. He and pioneer radioman Eddie Saunders were two persons that met and promoted the entertainers of all persuasions that brought their acts to the Central Ohio area during the heydays of supper clubs, concerts and nightclubs during the forties and fifties.

It is said that Eddie J. Senior and photographer Roosevelt Carter worked together and when I met Eddie Jr. and his mother, Dorothy, the collection of items in the family photo box was a who's who of entertainment. There were enough pictures to produce a book, unfortunate I never returned to duplicate the photos and book was never done. Eddie said that after his mother's death, the photos became his sister's property and he said they were now in Georgia.

Eddie Colston, Sr. died suddenly in 1960 at aged forty.

Eddie Junior was sixty-seven when he passed away last week, but he packed a heap into his life also. He was a graduate of St. Mary's High School in German Village and Cols. College of Art and Design, where he later instructed. He spent the bulk of his working years in the Cols. Recreation an Parks Department as a recreation leader and instructor to art students of all ages. Those students will be his legacy.

Jim Loeffler remembered the late 1950s when he and Colston were among the hungry visual artists who decided that they would drag their paintings out to the open space between the State of Ohio building on Front Street for an impromptu exhibition, like those in Jackson Square, New Orleans. Within a few years, the Greater Columbus Arts Festival was born.

Candy Watkins remembers Eddie as being the only color-blind painter that she ever knew. I remember the subtle dark shades and textures that he composed his canvases with.

But mainly, he and I both regreted that we were never able to collaborate on the book that should have emerged from the collection of family photographs that told the story of his father's life making the entertainment rounds in Columbus. One of those bright moments was putting Black performers, like Madam Rose Brown, Nancy Wilson and the Harmonaires on television in the pioneering days of television.

Love live the memory of the Colston Family. A picture is worth a thousand words.

February 26, 2006

Sunset Negril was taken of me by my former
saxophonist Keith Kimble in 1998. Nice 'eh?

Greetings on this Saturday Night/Sunday morning. Pat and I just went to the new Sunset Negril in the Continent. I can't remember when the last time I drove up Busch Blvd. and turned right into the parking lot, but when I walked past the fountains, I remembered back in 1986-92 when the Gatherings on the Continent attracted thousands to our performances in the summers and we made so many friends.

We found Sunset Negril in the location of the former Funny Bone Comedy Club at 6312 Busch Blvd., opposite the movie theater. We saw our old friends Gabbo, who played keyboard with the reggae band Identity and Deighton Charlemeign, the steel drum wizard from St. Lucia, as soon as we walked in the place.

The dark, but colorful room has a nice sized stage, a tile floor and you can dance on a stone map of Jamaica that highlights the major cities. Gabbo and Deighton might be jamming each week from Wednesday through Saturday with any number of musicians in the band.
To eat and drink was our primary mission; after Red Stripe and Corona beers came the coconut shrimp, along with two kinds of dipping sauces, Mango Chutney and Reggae Twenty-nine (hot). Afterwards, and quickly mind you, came our entrees of curried chicken and the sliced, grilled fish called tilapia. I told Pat the story about waiting for meals extraordinarily long times in Negril restaurants and getting the answer, "Soon come," from our waitresses. Our food "come" surprisingly soon at Sunset Negril, thanks to three Jamaican cooks in the kitchen.

Pat joined the clean plate club and Arnett took a box with a "soon come" Monday meal. On the way out, we walked over the stone map, I gave her a geography lesson and the very personable restaurant proprietor and founder, Garrett Greenlee, met us in the middle of the empty dance floor.

After I introduced my legendary self (LOL), Garrett said that he had cultivated his Sunset Negril dream from an experience with me. He said that a friend and he had signed on for our Return to Negril tour in 1992 (and a great trip it was), but had to change plans and ended up going later in the season.

He has had a five year dream of opening a Negril theme restaurant and after an aborted effort in the Arena District, he and his team of cooks, bartenders, musicians and staff have landed on their feet in the Continent. I read a food review in my Clintonville This Week paper and made it my main stop this Saturday night.

When Garrett saw our mardi gras beads and I told him that I had no gig on Fat Tuesday, he suggested that we put together a quick party for Fat Tuesday so I accepted his challenge.

Fat Tuesday, February 28, Sunset Negril with Arnett Howard and Friends. 8 pm. the music starts, come an hour early for dinner. You will like the room and food, I guarantee. 6312 Busch Blvd., opposite the movie theater. Plenty of parking, but you have a good walk from the parking lot; there is no valet service. Bring some beads, a mask and some color.

Soon come!                                        Download this MP3 to get into the Mardi Gras spirit

Return to Negril, Jamaica, June 22-29, 2006
Willa Owen, Uniglobe Trave Unlimited, 614/764-9914

February 24, 2006

Edith Clark was a pianist and singer who I met once in the 1980s, doing a stint at the legendary piano bar called the Dell, on Parsons Avenue. I found her photo in the archives of the Columbus Call-Post, a Cleveland based Black newspaper chain that continues to serve Ohioans.  

I interned at the Call-Post in the early eighties and a book that Edith had written came into my possession, through my friend and fellow journalist Charles Briggs. In The Way, The Gifts and The Power, published in 1971 by New York's Vantage Press, Inc., Edith created an autobiographical character named Isobel Grant, who grew up in a community in Columbus called Flytown. Now known as the Arena District, the area was also the community where musicians Hank Marr and Ronnie Kirk, as well as Edith, grew up in the twenties and thirties.

Here is the narrative that begins on page thirty-six of The Way, The Gifts and The Power, describing the community in the 1920s;

"Flytown was a community singular unto itself. It nestled around the Ohio State Penitentiary, a stones through from where the Olentangy and Scioto Rivers merge, a hop, skip and jump from the geographical center of Columbus. Bordering Long Street on the south, Flytown meandered along the edge of Front Street past Naughten, Maple and Vine, crossed the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks at Spruce, skirted down Goodale Street past the park, followed the street car line past Neil Avenue, cut through Henry Street to Buttles, then up to an undefined line which eventually ended at the Olentangy River to the West.

A railroad spur track ran behind Michigan Avenue to serve the many factories which lined the river; the Indianapolis Paper Stock Company, the Pipe factory, the Wire Works. The factory that made molds edged a big vacant lot where my father, Carl, and his cronies played baseball for barrels of beer.

Past the mold company there was a small open field where the kids played and men kept their dump wagons. There was the Paste factory, the Piano company, the Vault company, the derrick makers, the stove factory, and on up towards First Avenue, the Oleo makers and the beer company. On Michigan Avenue proper there stretched the lumber company.

Carl was working for the Power and Light Company downtown when he mashed his thumb on the job and, taking pride in his male invincibility, ignored the soreness until it festered into gangrene and he lost part of his left arm, almost up to the elbow, in order to save himself from dying due to blood poisoning.

With the money that he received as compensation for the lost of a limb, Carl and Reba, my mother, paid cash for a house further down Michigan Avenue. By this time the bootlegging and highjacking Italians were becoming affluent enough to leave Flytown and move across the river into a newly developed suburb which began at Goodale Street. Our family was the first Colored family on that block. Reba took great pride in jerking the "For Sale" sign as a symbol of an answer to some White neighbor who called to inform them that the house was not for rent; it was for sale.

Carnivals and medicine shows often set up on the baseball field on the corner of Poplar and Michigan in the summer time and the neighborhood reveled in the novelty of the show put on by the medicine man. The Godman Guild was the heart, the hub, the center around which revolved the community of Flytown. It taught the residents laws and ordinances, showed them the way wherein they must walk and brought their causes to the rulers of the city.

Long before the nation would be confronted with the same problem, the Godman Guild met and found solutions, faced squarely and honestly the needs of the neighborhood and welded the transplanted souls into a solid acknowledgment of pride in themselves and their community. The pillars of society of Flytown were as high-minded and respectable, virtuous and God-fearing as any people in any neighborhood; for their children they had the same goals as any human being in the nation."

Thanks to Edith Clark, we have a glimpse of Flytown, a community that ceased to exist in the 1960s when urban renewal and highway construction brought progress to the near Northside of Columbus.

February 22, 2006

I give my greetings with a heavy heart this day; my friend Eddie Colston, Jr. died yesterday morning.  Eddie was a noted painter and educator, teaching at the Martin Janis Center, part of the Columbus recreation and Parks Department.  His father, Eddie Colston, Sr., was an entertainer and journalist and much of his writing and photography has helped me uncover the legacy of Columbus' Black entertainers. Eddie Jr. is to be honored with a funeral mass on Saturday at St. Dominic Parish on North Twenty-five Street.

-----------------------------------------

The Mother of Black History in Columbus is Anna Bishop. In addition to being an educator in Columbus schools, a singer, poet, composer, actress and tireless community activist, she was the author of Beyond Poindexter Village: The Blackberry Patch.

In 1982, the first of four parts of her writings were published by the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Beyond Poindexter Village chronicled the community that began after W.W.I when Black southerners moved north to take advantage of the industrial boom that was occurring in many Midwestern cities. The Blackberry Patch was settled in East Columbus bordering Long Street, Mount Vernon Avenue, Ohio Avenue and Mink Alley. 

According to the book, southerners brought strange customs and cultural patterns to Columbus. "On warm days different people came through the streets selling different things. The watermelon man drove a flat bed truck with a hand made sign that said 'Georgia.' You could hear him coming, singing, 'Watermelon, watermelons! Georgia watermelons, red, ripe, red watermelons!"

Jake and Lena, Italian immigrants, had a horse drawn wagon and they sold vegetables. The people on Champion Avenue knew what Jake meant when he called out, "Epple! Epple! Good, juicy red Epple!" All of the people in the neighborhood would run out to get fresh apples, green beans, corn and potatoes.

One man rang a bright metal hand bell as he walked along the streets and all of the children ran out to the musical sound. The scissors grinder carried a contraption on his back that was machinery for sharpening knives and scissors, screwdrivers for umbrella repairing and for fixing things. He was their science and mechanics teacher.

When the rag man called out, "Iron, rags, glass," the people in the Blackberry Patch knew they could exchange the things that they had been collecting in buckets around the neighborhood for cash. The rag man was the original recycling business.

In her four volumes Anna Bishop interviewed the golden agers, born in the south at the beginning of the century, who had the recipes that helped families survive the terrible times of the depression years of poverty. She documented the details of neighborhood business, theaters, nightclubs, transportation and personalities.

One fascinating businessman was James Albert Jackson, a successful feed merchant in the day when Columbus citizens kept small flocks of chickens in their backyards. He and his business partner, James Williams, opened the Empress Theater at 768 East Long Street in the 1920s. When a theater owner on Mount Vernon insisted on keeping Black customers out, Mr. Jackson said that he'd fix them, "I'll build a theater better than any one in the United States."

When the Ogden (Lincoln) Theater opened in 1928, the whole interior took you back to Egypt with marble pillars carved and painted to look like Egyptian antiques. The carpeting was plush and the Club Lincoln was where Sammy Stewart's Orchestra performed and little Sammy Davis, Jr. was four years old when he made his first impromptu appearance onstage.

Anna Bishop passed in 2004, but the legacy that she not only left with her active life but documented in Beyond Poindexter Village, continues to inspire me.

February 20, 2006

What a blazing weekend; Cols. was on fire. Friday, Tim Commisky Trio at Worthington Inn, Saturday, the Cols. Children's Choir World Music Festival, Arti Gras at First Community Church in Marblecliff with real New Orleans Cuisine, The Cols. Jazz Orchestra saluting Diz and Bird with Jeff Clayton, Claudio Roditi and Deena DeRose, a jam session with Bryan Olsheski at the Cols. Music Hall, Sunday at Shiloh Baptist Church and a sellout at Cols. Music Hall that featured piano phenom Aaron Diehl. I'm overdosed!

For thirty years my artistic mother has been Barbara Chavous, painter and sculptor. I met Barbara in 1975 when I was living in East Columbus and she was looking for a space to work. She and her former husband, painter and engineer Stanley Sourelis, moved two doors away, above the then Pace Gallery at Taylor and East Broad Street.

Barbara was raised in Columbus, graduated from East High, Central State University and was married to movie photographer Adger Cowens in New York. She met Sourelis in New York and they resettled in Columbus. She says that he taught her the sense of color that now characterizes her work.

During those exciting days, Stanley and Barbara were the artistic mentors to many of us; Queen Brooks, Terry Logan, Pheoris West, Candy Watkins, Stephen Canneto, Walt Neal, Sandy Aska and countless others. They moved to 776 East Franklin Avenue, the former Henry Hallwood Mansion, and were one of the pioneering household in a diverse community now know as Olde Towne East.

One day in 1979, I was wrestling with the choice of accumulating thirty years and a pension in a lawn fertilizer factory or walking off into unknown to be a musician entrepreneur, I went to her for advise (or more like a shove off the gangplank). Her words I will carry with me forever, "If a bird stays too long in the nest they get too fat to fly." I jumped into history.

She can't remember those words of advise to me. If fact, my artistic mom can't remember very much because she has dementia; that loss of intellectual capacity has become so severe that it interferes with her social functioning. She has been patient for over ten years, but fortunately, she has been able to continue to create her amazing art pieces.

In 2003, I was honored to be nominated for the Arts Freedom Award, presented by Southside Settlement House and the Columbus Museum. The two other honorees that year were Steven Anderson, director of Phoenix Theater for Children and Barbara Chavous, my mom.

What a joyful evening; like the proverbial "Old Home Night." All of the Columbus arts family that we partied, exhibited and loved with during those frenzied days of the seventies and eighties came together to celebrate the recognition of our life's work.

To paraphrase a composition from my pastor Mary Kay Beale Carter, "With grateful heart I thank you, Lord, " for bringing Barbara Chavous into my life.

Enjoy. Feedback feels good.

February 16, 2006
Wendell at Club Regal on Long Street at Garfield Ave. Dig those curtains. Early 1950s.

These days there are reports of British music fans who are writing my jazz research friends, actively interested in Wendell Hawkins, a Columbus pianist who was nearing the end of his long career when I saw him in the early 1980s. He was playing at Engine House Number Five, a very popular steak and seafood house on Columbus' Southside, at Thurman and Fourth Street in trendy German Village.

I regret that I never interviewed him because he lived not too long afterwards. I did spend an evening and had a chat with his brother, Wyman, a drummer with The Chuck Henderson Trio at the Gloria Restaurant. And,  somewhere, I picked up a record album on the King Label called Mr. Hawkins at the piano: The Wendell Hawkins Trio. So, to fill whatever thirst that our British friends have, here are the notes from the ten song album written by Bill Brabson in 1960.

"Unfortunately, scattered throughout the length and breadth of America are a handful of musicians who, for one reason or another, be it the case of not being in the right place at the right time or merely the workings of an unpredictable fate, sometimes spend their entire professional lives unknown and unrecognized by anyone save their fellow musicians and a relatively small following of discriminating fans in what area they happen to be working.

Wendell Hawkins has been, up until now, one of those hiding-their-light-under-a-bushel musicians.


Jazz fans around Ohio have been digging Wendell, and his equally talented brother Wyman, for more years than either of them care to remember. But the music business being what it is today, Gabriel himself couldn't get the type of exposure that was almost commonplace in the hey day of bug bands, radio remotes and supper clubs in the 1930s and '40s.
 

The Sammy Hopkins Trio, Bill Ray, drums, Sammy, alto sax, Wendell, piano. Late 1940s.

Twenty-five years ago... Wendell Hawkins would have been known coast-to-coast. (He) has as little background worth touting as anyone we've ever run across. He has had no command performances before Queen Elizabeth, he's never played the Newport Jazz festival and he isn't a regular on Jack Parr's nightly (show).
 
All he does is play good, listenable, clean-cut, imaginative, jazz piano. There's a little Art Tatum here, a smattering of Erroll Garner there, a hunk of Oscar Peterson in spots, but the overall product is pure Wendell Hawkins. A thirty-two year old pianist from Columbus, Ohio who we firmly expect to be one of the blazing new stars on the jazz horizon. He is backed up by his brother Wyman on drums and the capable bass work of William Bell.

We hope you like Wendell. We think he plays good. He's a nice guy too."

Wendell was born in 1927 or 28 and died in the mid-1980s.

Lover Short MP3 (2MB)
The sound file is three minutes. Sorry if it clogs your browser:

Feedback is good.

Charlie Einhorn is featuring my blogs on Innerart.
http://innerartblog0.blogspot.com/2006/02/this-is-real-jazz-lovers-gem-bright.html

Mardi Gras season starts Friday. My first party is at First Community Church, First Ave. and Cambridge Blvd., Saturday, Feb. 18th, 3 pm., featuring a second line for displaced New Orleans families.
  
Let the good times roll.
 

February 14, 2006 (b)

Thanks to Doug Tracy the mystery woman has been uncovered. He found this column in the pages of the Ohio Sentinel, a Black newspaper that I used to deliver as a child on the Westside.  Doug, you are da' man!

The Bright Rose of Bronzeville
By Eddie J. Colston, The Ohio Sentinel, March 29, 1958 edition

Name any great Columbus entertainer in the past decade and the name Madam Rose Brown will ring a bell. Years ago, Madam was the town's top performer. Today she still has firm hold on her star studded crown by singing and swinging in the area's night clubs and plush cocktail lounges.

The young clique will remember Madam more vividly from her weekly TV show a few years ago, over WTVN-TV, for a segment of "The Rose Brown Show" was devoted to introducing fresh talent.

Born in Savanah, Georgia, Rose Brown came to Columbus to visit relatives. Out on the town one night she did several guest numbers at a couple of popular night haunts. With soulful blues, sexy torch songs and energetic swing style, she had the town's nightlifers in the palm of her hand. Since then, this has been Rose Brown's town.

Wasn't so long ago that Rose rose (and I'm not tongue tied) to the pinnacle of Broadway success, when she costarred with the late Bill Robinson as Katisha in Mike Todd's "The Hot Mikado."

Her Broadway appearance was in a featured role in "My Dear Public," starring Willie Howard and a long list of today's top stars.

Rose has added other musical triumphs and flattering press notices to her scrapbook with top billings with The Page Cavanaugh Trio. Louis Jordan's Band, the Page One Ball, sponsored annually by the Columbus Chapter of the American Newspaper Guild and many others.

Norman Nadel, Columbus Citizen's celebrated theatrical editor and big voice in show business recently penned a lengthy feature on Rose Brown. Nadel said, "I thought of shows I'd seen, singers I heard in Manhattan nightspots where the cover charge would buy food for a family of six. Once in a blue moon you might hear a singer like Rose. People from Columbus go to those New York clubs when they travel east. They could do as well or better, listening to this handsome dark-skinned woman singing in a little club on High Street."

Another thrill for Rose was her invitation to audition for the role of Bloody Mary in the original "South Pacific" cast. "Rogers and Hammerstein brought me to New York," he recalled happily, "and I sang the part for them. But when I saw Juanita Hall do it, I told them to go ahead and pick her, because she was perfect for the part. But I would have loved it."
 
Currently, Rose is slated to make a series of films or live appearances on WTVN-TV doing Negro spirituals.
 

 Note: Rose Brown passed in 1960.

Download the MP3 of I Cried for You

PS: The music files are from Jim Loeffler, whose father, Bill, recorded them on a homemade disc cutting maching in the 1930s. The photos are from the Cols. Call-Post newspaper.

February 14, 2006

In honor of Claudio Roditi and this week with the Cols. Jazz Orchestra, here is a treasure. I just wish I could upload the other twelve minutes of this fiery song from 1980 when he jammed at Oldfield's Bar with Sanctuary (featuring the beautiful Debra Rothrock) after his set at the Ohio Theater with Herbie Mann and his Brazilian Band.  Enjoy 

Listen to  Claudio Roditi MP3
 

February 13, 2006

Among my first memories as a child growing up in West Columbus in the mid-1950s, was listening to WCOL-AM 1230 late at night on our family's Westinghouse transistor radio. From nine at night until the wee hours, WCOL-AM featured Doctor Bop and his introductory patter went, "This is Doctor Bop on the scene with a stack of shellac and my record machine. A little country boy from across the track, so down with it, baby, that I'll never go back."
 
Doctor Bop's real name was
Hoyt Locke and his family ran Bop Record Shop in 1956. When hot new rhythm and blues records came out, he would call the radio station and bug the disc jockeys to get with the musical program. In time, he talked his way onto the air and stayed on WCOL-AM for several years.
 
Doctor Bop was the person who introduced the high energy music of Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry to Columbus teenagers. The accompanying photo, taken by Kojo Kamau, shows the good doctor at a local dance. The band in the background is led by legendary jazz saxophonist Ronnie Kirk, also known as Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
 
Bop eventually migrated to a Milwaukee radio station and he died there in 1984. But he was the announcer who brought rock and roll to Columbus audiences in the 1950s.

The sound file is about five minutes. Those who have dialup service have been left off this mailing; the file is too big. If I've mistakenly included you, sorry. Feedback is good.

 

Dr. Bop MP3

February 10, 2006

Greetings. Black History Month, Day Ten. I'm getting feedback from some of my friends, but wondering why I'm not from many of my loved ones. Oh well, outta sight, outtta' mind.

Thanks to my partner in history, B-ruce Warner, for this contribution to celebrating people of color. The young drummer featured at the end of this link is Tony Royster, Jr., from Hinesville, Georgia. He has been playing since aged three and is mentored by drummer Dennis Chambers.


Bruce Warner wrote, "make sure you have the sound on when you watch this video  .... and I fail to see how this kid can get much better!"


Enjoy. It'd sure be nice to hear that some of you are still alive in this millennium of instant communication. What are you doing to get through the winter?

 

February 9, 2006
Today, Thursday, I am principal for a day at one of my favorite schools, Robert Frost Elementary in Westerville. Lucky me.

The Black History profile is of one of my musical fathers, Archie "Stomp" Gordon. I guess he is who I get my crazy energy from.

Download an MP3 of Stomp performing Fat Woman Blues here
 

February 8, 2006
Happy Birthday to Ethyl Tanner from New Orleans, who hit the Big Seven-Five yesterday and we did a second line in her honor at Lutheran Village late evening. I ate crawfish 'til my belly 'bout busted.

Here is a profile on two men who have blessed me with their friendship and linked me with the music of one hundred years.

 Enjoy and let the good times roll (Mardi Gras, February 28th)Click here to hear Jeepers Creepers MP3
 

February 7, 2006
Here is a profile on one of my dads, Cliff Tyree. He is a king!


 

February 3, 2006
It's Super Sunday,soon come. Go Steelers. Go Seahawks. I'm off to Chicago to visit Aunt Becca Robbins and Bill Dancey has pulled my coat about a new club, Hot House.

http://www.hothouse.net/

  Perhaps someone can solve a twenty-five year puzzle for me. Who is Madame Rose Brown? I have plenty of pictures, two recordings, but no biography.

  Perhaps by the end of History Month...

Enjoy this dynamic woman and the sound file attached.  Click here for MP3.
 

February 2, 2006
Due to an overwhelming response from my people, February Black History Month is being combined with Filipino History Month and Westside Columbus Month. Now to find the first Black Filipino from the Hilltop...

Enjoy this profile on Nancy Wilson, while I work on the Phillipines connection.

Click here for a MP3 sound file of Nancy Wilson

Here is a great picture of Nancy Wilson with Hank Marr

February 1, 2006
Greetings. It's history month and I'm making myself learn new things about the people in my beloved community of Columbus, Ohio. Attached is a profile on Reverend James P. Poindexter, a giant in the foundation of community relations, religious life and education.

  Also, I am making a concert appearance at Wexner Heritage House, Wednesday, February 1, 2006, at 2 pm. It will be a treat for senior audiences, especially my friends Elizabeth Laney and Rose Ross who live there.