Cincinnati has changed in many ways since the 1960s, but efforts by commissions and other groups to tackle race relations left enough unresolved problems to foster a repeat of the unrest that swept across the country 34 years ago. So say religious and political leaders and others who have lived through both riots in Cincinnati. They acknowledge the city's police division has made needed reforms over the years, but point out police-community relations are just one of the racial and economic issues at play. Progress in racial relations is easy to see. Diversity is more valued by employers now than 30 years ago, and most of the discriminatory barriers to black employment and opportunity are gone.
Colleges recruit minority students with scholarships and other aid.
Growing up in these extremes can produce very different perspectives on other races and classes and on how the world works. While Cincinnati slept In the mid-1960s, a group of powerful business and community leaders got together to talk about race relations in Cincinnati. Led by Joseph Hall of the Urban League, they founded the Committee of 28, a private group of 14 white and 14 black civic and business leaders. The committee met monthly and in secret for a few years, talking about race in sometimes emotional meetings. But even this powerful group of leaders produced only incremental change, according to one of its members and a July 1967 article in The Wall Street Journal .