Reminisce: Dr. Latimer’s dedication to Black history

Dr. Ralph E. Latimer practiced dentistry in his office at 119 E. Spring St. and promoted the study of Black history everywhere else in the community.

As founder and leader of the Lima chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, or ASALH for short, Dr. Latimer during the 1960s was instrumental in ensuring what was then known as Negro History Week was duly observed in February and not ignored the rest of the year.

As Lima was racked with racial unrest in the turbulent late 1960s and early ‘70s, Dr. Latimer took an active role in that history.

Ralph Edwin Latimer was born Dec. 22, 1915, in Warrenton, Georgia, the son of John Fletcher Kinsey Latimer and Carrie Virginia Hart Latimer. He was a graduate of Catskill High School in New York; Paine College in Augusta, Georgia; and Columbia University. He taught school and was a principal in Madison, Georgia, before receiving a doctorate in oral surgery from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Latimer, who served in the Army quartermaster corps during World War II, was active in the Army Reserve following the war.

In 1961, he came to Lima.

“A new Lima dentist, Dr. Ralph Latimer, D.D.S., will hold open house at his new offices, 119 E. Spring St. …,” The Lima News announced Nov. 23, 1961. “A graduate of Northwestern University Dental School in Chicago, Ill., Dr. Latimer has been practicing since 1958. He first had an office in Cambridge then recently has been doing institutional work for the state of Ohio,” the newspaper wrote, adding that, “He holds a commission of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and resides with his wife at 1408 W. Spring St.”

Dr. Latimer was married to the former Wiletta Hope Knox, and the couple had two children, John Fletcher Kinsey II and Temple Dawn.

Dr. Latimer was the right person in the right place in 1965 when three women at St. Paul AME Church discovered, according to an article in the Feb. 7, 1965, edition of The Lima News, “they shared a common conviction – Lima’s Negroes know little of their own race’s contribution to American history.” So, the women along with the pastor of St. Paul set up a Feb. 11, 1965, Negro History Week event at the church to begin correcting that.

Nearly 200 attended the banquet at the church, with Dr. Latimer leading a panel discussion.

“Dr. Latimer said few Americans are aware of Negro contributions to U.S. development because Negro history is published in the backs of social studies books, if at all,” The Lima News wrote.

Dr. Latimer was very aware of the contributions of Blacks to the country.

“Have you wondered where we were when Columbus discovered America?” Latimer asked the gathering. “We were there! Not as slaves but as pilots on the ships. In the Revolutionary War we were troops and sailors, and we were there fighting the Spanish-American War,” he added, noting that 200,000 Blacks fought in the Civil War.

“We are Americans, not step-children,” he told the gathering.

Founded in 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a scholar and son of former slaves, the ASALH and Woodson launched Negro History week in 1926, choosing the second week in February for the observance because the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Black abolitionist, orator and writer Frederick Douglass (Feb. 20) fall in the month. In 1976, as America celebrated its 200th birthday, the ASALH successfully lobbied to have February declared Black History Month by President Gerald R. Ford.

In Lima, although classes on Black history were available, notably at Bradfield Center, the first official celebrations didn’t occur until the late 1930s.

“Negro history week will be ushered in here with a mass meeting at the Fourth Street Baptist church Sunday afternoon sponsored by the League for Civic improvement,” The Lima News reported February 11, 1940. “A broadcast will be heard over the local station at 7:30 p.m. This history week is part of the widespread celebration started in 1926 by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded and directed by Carter G. Woodson.”

After his arrival in Lima at the beginning of the 1960s, Dr. Latimer annually ensured the city of Lima declared the second week in February to be Negro History Week. In 1966, according to the February issue of Jet Magazine, “Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, after receiving a request from the Allen County (Lima) branch of the Assn. for the Study of Negro Life and History, proclaimed the week of Feb. 7-12 a state-wide Negro History Week observance. President of the Allen County Branch is Dr. Ralph E. Latimer.”

Dr. Latimer, however, was not content with seeing the study of black history confined to February. He spoke at high schools and service clubs, organized forums on black history and wrote letters to the editor of The Lima News as well as a lengthy article on the history of Africa and Black Americans for the newspaper in 1967.

In October 1968, at the ASALH annual convention in New York City, Dr. Latimer was named national director of branches for the association.

“As director of branches, Dr. Latimer, a former teacher, principal and Army lieutenant, will help guide the organization’s branches throughout the nation,” The Lima News reported.

Two months later, in December 1968, Dr. and Mrs. Latimer organized an “Afro-American historical pageant and beauty contest,” described as a “pilot project of the Allen County Branch, Association for the Study and Negro Life and History.” The pageant, written, directed and narrated by Dr. Latimer, traced “history from 800 A.D. to now” and included “three African scenes, enslavement, voyage to America, exploitation and plantation life, followed by the spiritual phases of existence in slavery, emancipation, Civil War, reconstruction and modern era,” according to The Lima News.

The late 1960s also saw Dr. Latimer taking an active and outspoken role in local civil rights activities. At a November 1967 meeting of Lima’s Human Relations Commission on inequities in the city’s recreation program, The Lima News reported that Dr. Latimer declared, “Lima reeks of discrimination, like any other Northern city.” However, he added, “Discrimination is done in a sneaky way, and the Human Relations Commission is going to have one heck of a job uncovering it.”

As tensions increased in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Dr. Latimer, and his wife, became more directly involved. Dr. Latimer was spokesman for a group of concerned parents who briefly occupied and then picketed South Junior High School, demanding removal of the principal and city school superintendent for, among other reasons, “their disregard and disrespect for Black people,” The Lima News reported Jan. 6, 1970. Mrs. Latimer was among a dozen protesters arrested for trespassing.

Beginning in about 1972, Dr. Latimer, who had founded a dental clinic at the Fairfield School for Boys in Lancaster, began volunteering his services to Lima’s Mizpah Community Center.

Dr. Latimer died in June 1979 at St. Rita’s Medical Center following a lengthy illness. The local branch of the ASALH died with him.

Dr. Ralph Latimer, shown here in 1976, was spokesman for a group of concerned parents who briefly occupied and then picketed South Junior High School in 1970, demanding removal of the principal and city school superintendent for, among other reasons, “their disregard and disrespect for Black people.”

Dr. Ralph Latimer, shown here in 1965, came into Lima in 1961 as a dentist. He quickly became an advocate for teaching Black history throughout the year.

Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].