New exhibit captures story, vibrancy of Poindexter Village
Ira Hartway, 78, was a baby in 1940 but says he can remember his living room full of people and his mother lifting him up to see the excitement outside the window of their Near East Side home.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was there for the opening of Poindexter Village, one of Ohio’s first publichousing developments and home for many African-Americans in Columbus. The project was part of Roosevelt’s New Deal program to pull the nation out of the Great Depression.
Hartway relived his childhood Saturday at the opening of a new exhibit at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, “Poindexter Village: A Portrait in Stories.”
“It brings back good memories,” Hartway said.
For decades, Poindexter Village thrived, its 426 homes in 33 buildings surrounded by schools, churches, businesses and nightclubs.
The exhibit portrays the lives of residents, many of whom came to Columbus during the Great Migration of millions of AfricanAmericans from the rural South to northern cities, which began in 1916 and continued for decades.
“This was an affordable place for them to come and join and create unity and families,” said Taryn Toone, 30, a Columbus State Community College student visiting the exhibit and who grew up nearby.
“They thrived and built one another up, coming from nothing and becoming successful. I never knew that history.”
Reita Smith, 81, raised her twin girls and a son in the 1950s in Poindexter Village.
“Everybody knew everybody and everybody cared and everybody looked after everybody. And that is what I miss today. You don’t have that sense of community,” Smith said.
“It was a place of hope, a place that was affordable and a place where you knew you were part of something great.”
Steve “Paco” Grier, a jazz percussionist who grew up in Poindexter Village, recalled on Saturday sitting on his kitchen floor as a kid, banging on his mother’s pots and pans and later playing outside late into the evening with neighborhood children.
“Everybody looked after each other. There was no such thing as locked doors. Neighbors had authority over other kids,” Grier, 69, recalled, adding that there was also mischief.
“We had our altercations, but we lived to tell about it,” he joked.
The exhibit, which runs through Sept 2, includes photographs, toys, household items and other artifacts, as well as the work of the late local artist Aminah Robinson, who grew up in Poindexter.
Other noted residents included the late Dr. Earl Sherard, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War
II and former chief of pediatric neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital; Edward “Skip” Young, who played basketball for the Boston Celtics; Myron Lowery, mayor pro tem and president of the Memphis City Council; and Columbus school board members Betty Drummond and Charlene Morgan.
The complex was named after the Rev. James M. Poindexter, the pastor of Second Baptist Church from 1862 to 1898 and one of the city’s first black leaders. In 1880, he became the first African-American elected to the Columbus City Council, and served on the Columbus Board of Education from 1884 to 1893.
Today, only two Poindexter Village buildings remain; the Ohio History Connection plans to convert them into a museum, the state’s 59th historic site. The tentative opening date is in 2022.
“It will be a place where we can celebrate our history and where our children can research and learn about our community. We have lost so much of the symbols within the black community; much of the significance is gone,” said Smith, who also serves as chairperson of the James Preston Poindexter Foundation.