BY RANDY GRIFFITH

RGRIFFITH@TRIBDEM.COM

Emma Jane Parker was born in 1923 in the former Rosedale neighborhood of Johnstown – the same year four police officers died in a fracas there and the city’s mayor ordered black residents out of town.

Mayor Joe Cauffiel’s executive order targeted blacks who had lived in Johnstown less than seven years.







After receiving a sternly-worded telegram from Gov. Gifford Pinchot, Cauffiel backed down, saying he was only advising blacks to leave for their own safety.

Parker was too young to remember the so-called Rosedale Riot, but she can remember being banned from her favorite tavern after a disturbance there some years later.

It happened at a “beer garden” known as Allen’s near her home in Minersville, Parker, 86, recalled during an interview at The Atrium Community personal care home, 216 Main St.

“Allen’s – that was my hangout,” Parker said, grinning with a pinch of snuff tucked behind her lip.

“Four colored guys went into the beer garden and told the bartender they want a drink. He said, ‘You got enough in you that you don’t need no more. You go home and sleep it off and you come back.’

“They tore the whole place up, and we wasn’t allowed to go in there. There was chairs all over the place.”

Although local black leaders say race relations have come a long way in Johnstown in recent years, there are still barriers for today’s African-American citizens in Cambria and Somerset counties.

Police profiling persists, they say, as well as cultural, employment and educational barriers – especially for young blacks.

“I believe you cannot be all that you can be in this environment,” businessman and former NAACP president James Porcher said.

“There is no room at the top for African-Americans in a small town.”

“Still, in our (school) system here, some of the students aren’t getting what they need from certain people just because of the attitudes and where they might live,” said Bruce Haselrig, a former administrator both for the city of Johnstown and Pitt-Johnstown.

“If you don’t have a parent, a relative, an aunt or uncle (looking out for you), you might get lost in the shuffle.”

‘I had to go to the back’

Racial discrimination was widespread here through much of the first half of the 20th century.

Charlene Wilson, 82, of Prospect remembers going to a downtown eatery to pick up lunch for her employer. Because the employer was white, she could use the front door.

“If I wanted to get food for myself, I had to go around to the back,” Wilson said at her home in Prospect.

Blacks were not permitted to eat in the restaurant, she explained.

“We was not supposed to go past here,” Wilson said.

“There were some things you couldn’t even do.”

Wilson was 20 years old when she moved to Johnstown in 1947. She left even more-blatant discrimination in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Ala., where she remembers a bus driver pleading with a stubborn white rider to move forward and allow blacks more room. He was the only white on the crowded rush hour bus, but regulations required all blacks to squeeze behind him.

African-Americans everywhere responded to the discrimination by banding together.

Johnstown’s black churches became the community center.

“Everybody went to church then,” Wilson said.

“They helped people out in the community who needed help.”

Her son, Jeffrey Wilson of Prospect Street, said segregated residential neighborhoods actually brought black communities closer together in the past.

“Before integration, you were forced to support one another,” Jeffrey Wilson said.

“You would have the teacher living next to the garbage collector, living next to the dentist.”

None of those interviewed remembers an all-black neighborhood. But their neighborhoods were the poorest areas, shared with new immigrants, they said.

Parker said Rosedale was mixed, with both black and white. Nearby Minersville had a spectrum of new arrivals, Mary Boden of Hornerstown remembered.

“That’s where I grew up,” Boden said. “It was a mixed neighborhood. Everyone in the neighborhood had an accent, whether it was Polish or Slovak – or the southern.”

Like virtually all of Johns-town’s blacks of the day, Boden’s family moved to Johnstown from the South.

Role models

Rosedale School’s location led to a high percentage of blacks there, retired teacher Claudia Jones of Mardis Avenue said.

The school became a center of activity in the African-American community. The school had a black principal and several black teachers.

But integration of Johnstown schools, like many other areas, meant closing primarily black schools and sending those students to other neighborhoods.

The plan resulted in fewer black teachers and administrators, Jones said.

“I was hired in 1956 to teach in the junior high,” Jones said. “I think I was the first one.”

Previously all black teachers were in elementary schools. Early black educators included Bruce Cochran and Superintendent Levi Hollis, Jones recalled.

With cutbacks in teaching and support staff, there seem to be fewer black instructors in the schools today, she said.

Others noticed the same phenomenon.

“There seem to be less role models in the school system,” said Clea Hollis, wife of the late Levi Hollis and president of the local NAACP.

“It’s kind of ironic that if you look back 35, 40 years ago, there were actually in our school system more examples of African-American role models than there are now,” Jeffrey Wilson said.

“There were more teachers and teachers’ aides at that time.”

Besides providing role models, Wilson said, black educators and guidance counselors can relate better to black students because of shared culture.

Wilson was quick to point out that he was not singling out the school system.

“We have to be realistic, it is not just the school district, but all throughout this community,” he said.

“A lot of talented people who could stay here and be a great contribution, they leave. They don’t feel any real confidence there is going to be anything for them in the area.”

Role models are lacking in other venues, locally, he added.

“If I turn on the television and look at a commercial, I’m sitting here thinking: Don’t we bank? Don’t we go to the grocery store?” Wilson said.

“There are not a lot of positive role models.”

But local role models aren’t as important as they once were, Porcher said.

“Some people make that argument, but I think that was the case when we were not in a global society,” Porcher said.

“We are exposed to so many different programs with professional black folks. When I was younger, you had to see that person.”

‘There to protect them’

The information revolution, along with integration and improved access to post-secondary education have all created opportunities for today’s young blacks. But the same things have led to some disintegration of the traditional African-American community, leaders said.

“People with skills and the ability to move on, have moved out of the communities,” Haselrig said.

“Younger people didn’t have a chance to experience overt racism and discrimination that you knew while you were banding together. You knew you had to battle and support each other.

Now children can go where they want to go – to a movie or to go swimming.

“When I grew up in this town, there were places I couldn’t go to swim. There were places I couldn’t go to the movies. My children don’t know that, so maybe they don’t need to get together and support each other for those causes.”

But memories of discrimination keep today’s parents alert, Hollis said.

“We heard about the lynchings,” Hollis said. “We heard about being conscious (of danger) when you go out. Growing up in suburban Pittsburgh, there was still the unspoken about Jim Crow.

“When we had our generation of children, I think in some cases we still protected them from that, but we didn’t speak about it. Sending them out, but keeping a watchful eye.”

Memories of being asked not to enter a swimming pool area came back to Hollis when a Johnstown neighbor asked to take her children to a local pool.

“I thought, if my kids get to that swimming pool and they are turned away ...” Hollis said, not finishing the sentence. “So when that parent came to pick up my two kids, their mother was there to go with them. I was there to protect them.”

Prejudice and oppression once made blacks ashamed of their heritage, and even their families, Hollis said. By insulating her children from those forces, she hoped to instill pride and confidence.

“They learned to compete in a different world,” she said.

But young people are still experiencing discrimination.

Hollis said she thought her own son was targeted by police as a youth when he was seen with two nonblacks who lit a fire in a trash can. She was told her son would have the offense on his record for seven years.

Although the others ran off, she was able to supply police with their names.

“I said three boys will have something on their records for seven years,” Hollis said.

“Those parents were never contacted. We still have that constant fear of police brutality, of being assaulted, just for the color of the skin. It still exists.”

‘There’s profiling’

It is even more evident in low-income areas, local hip-hop singer Trev Mangum, 26, of Hornerstown said. Mangum was charged by police following a confrontation near his home.

After all the information was collected, he was released and all charges withdrawn.

“There was an altercation where (a drunken man) assaulted me and my cousin, and he decided to do something crazy,” Mangum said.

“So we get blamed for it. Police are overreacting a lot. Yes they are. Yes they are. It happens in Johnstown – there’s profiling that goes on.”

Mangum said his friend’s head was injured by police while arresting him. The police said they thought his friend had something in his hand, but it was empty, Mangum said.

“They told his dad, this is what happens when you run from police,” Mangum said. “Of course he’s going to run. He’s scared.”

Mangum said his music is his outlet, allowing him to put his frustrations into his songs. He knows many of his generation who have chosen more negative outlets.

Part of the problem is a lack of recreational opportunities, he said.

“The problems for young people in Johnstown, there is nothing to do,” Mangum said.

“When we were younger, they had places to go to. They had Deja Vu (at Joey Del’s). They had the (Skateland) skating rink. We don’t have none of that any more.”

“It’s hard to keep away from the negative around here when there is nothing here for us,” his fellow musician Justin Harris, 28, said.

“My biggest problem is, there is really nothing for children altogether,” 16-year-old Tyra Smith said at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church youth fellowship meeting.

She suggested more recreation and education programs through community centers in neighborhoods.

“It would be easier for people to stay out of trouble,” Tyra said.

‘It is a community’

Lack of opportunity in Johns-town is not limited to the black community, Porcher said.

“It is a struggling community,” Porcher said.

“Blacks tend not to thrive unless we are in a community where there is excess. There is one thing I have found out as a State Farm (Insurance) agent: There are a lot of people in this community who have difficulty paying their insurance premiums; who are struggling unbelievably. It is not just black people. It is a community.”

Despite the economic issues, Porcher said advances in civil rights have created opportunities for his children and many others in the community. His daughter is a school principal in New Jersey and on the board for Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network.

Integration is still a one-way street, Jeffery Wilson noted.

“An African-American young person in this city has a greater opportunity to mingle in the white community, out of necessity,” Wilson said.

“Anything that you need or want, in order to survive, in order to get jobs, you have to integrate into the white community and the culture of the white community. But it is not necessary for the average white person in Johnstown to have to deal with or integrate within the black community.”

Still, the increased opportunities through integration are encouraging, Hollis said.

“I think the older generation may be in the (black) community and of the community both at the same time,” Hollis said.

“The younger generation says, ‘We can do what we want to do.’

“I think it’s a wider view. I think it’s a world view. I think this is happening with all cultures. We are becoming more assimilated – more accepting of the differences. Consequently, I think we are becoming what we should be – more wholesome and one.”