Mansfield civil rights activist dies at 78
MANSFIELD – Wayne Mcdowell, an educator, union leader and lifelong civil rights activist whose lawsuit resulted in minorities and women being able to break through the “glass ceiling” of the state corrections department, died Wednesday at his home in Mansfield. He was 78.
Mcdowell, while a teacher at the Ohio State Reformatory, was offered lower pay than a white co-worker with the same qualifications and less seniority, according to a newsletter published by the North End Community Improvement Collaborative.
He sued the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in 1977, alleging the department discriminated against women and blacks when hiring and promoting. The case became known as Mcdowell v. Celeste, after then-gov. Richard Celeste.
The sex discrimination part of the lawsuit was settled in 1988 and the race discrimination portion was settled in 1990.
Despite his work, Mcdowell didn’t qualify to receive any of the monetary awards that accompanied the lawsuit settlements, according to previous News Journal reporting.
“He was always doing something in that community,” said Marcia Webb, former president of the Mansfield chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
“And it was never self-serving,” she added. “Wayne was a worker. He cared nothing about title or position. In fact, he shied away from it.”
The discrimination lawsuit wasn’t the only one in which Mcdowell was involved. He also was active in the effort to close the old reformatory because of its poor environment for officers and inmates.
As the NAACP liaison to the Counsel for Human Dignity at the reformatory, Mcdowell helped inmates in their class action suit that led to OSR’S closure, according to previous News Journal reporting.
Webb first met Mcdowell after joining the NAACP in 1989, and came away impressed.
At the time, “the police brutality was just ridiculous,” Webb recalls.
“They would beat inmates in the jail for sport,” she said in an interview. “On the weekend, you knew somebody was going to get picked up and somebody was going to get beat down in the jail. Sometime they died, sometime they didn’t. It was not good.”
The pair, as members of the NAACP’S labor and industry committee, met with employers who faced allegations of disparate treatment of minorities. The NAACP would often support employees as they filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Webb said.
“I would sit and watch Wayne, and, I mean, the man was brilliant,” she said.
“You want to say that Wayne put a whupping on them,” Webb continued. “But he didn’t. He just beat them up with facts, and how can you excuse facts?”
Mcdowell would often recite a quote from the late Rev. Henry Washington, Webb said.
“Stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything,” she said.
“His life’s mission was to stamp out racial discrimination and social injustice wherever it reared its ugly head.”
Wayne Mcdowell was born July 13, 1942 in Mansfield, the eighth of 10 children, including a twin brother named Wyatt.
Mcdowell graduated from Mansfield Senior High School in 1960. Two years later, he began taking classes at The Ohio State University-mansfield while working full-time.
Mcdowell commuted to the University of Akron, then commuted to OSU’S main campus in Columbus, where he received his bachelor’s in labor economics in 1969. He received his master’s in adult education in 1972 from OSU.
Mcdowell was barely past being a teenager when he first got involved in the Mansfield NAACP chapter during the 1960s.
“We’d go certain (retail) places in Mansfield and you couldn’t try on clothing or shoes,” Mcdowell told the News Journal in 2002. “You’d hope they fit ... In North Lake Park, there was a swimming pool. They made it a private swim club so no blacks could swim there.”
“There was a lack of job opportunities. Many young Black people were leaving town.”
The NAACP led local efforts to fight racism, including boycotting racist shops.
“We did selective buying. We knew from word of mouth where you were treated badly and simply did not go,” Mcdowell said in 2002.
As he got older, Mcdowell would help victims of police brutality or people with civil rights cases, both in his personal and professional capacity as an NAACP member.
Mcdowell was a mentor to many who joined the NAACP, including Lyneal Wainwright, warden of Marion Correctional Institution.
“I admired his ability to take on challenging issues,” Wainwright said in a statement. “On a personal level, he was a caregiver and a father figure to many.”
In 2000, Mcdowell retired from teaching at Mansfield Correctional Institution, which replaced OSR in 1990 when it closed, after 33 years.
He was the first person to teach 30 years within the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation’s Ohio Central School System, according to his obituary.
A year after his retirement, Mcdowell hinted during an honorary dinner that his work was far from done.
He didn’t lie.
At the turn of the century, Mcdowell was instrumental in the fight to put an issue on the ballot to create an independent police review commission.
Supported by the NAACP, the Mansfield Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, and AFL-CIO, the effort failed in 2000 and 2001 due to a lack of valid signatures. The proposal, finally put to voters in 2002, was rejected.
Less than six weeks before residents voted on the initiative, then-mayor Lydia Reed unveiled the city’s own plan to establish a panel overseeing police community relations.
The Mansfield Police Review and Community-police Relations Commission was established in 2004. It reviews completed police department investigations that involve contact between police employees and residents to determine if the investigation was “thorough, accurate, credible and impartial,” according to the city’s ordinance on the commission.
More recently, Mcdowell founded in 2019 The Black/brown Coalition of Mansfield, which consists of We Act, Latino Mansfield, Voices of Change, Activism and Leadership (VOCAL), and the North End Community Improvement Collaborative (NECIC).
His brother, John, was a police officer for 27 years and became Mansfield Police Department’s first Black detective at the age of 25.
The coalition and city leaders last year signed a “Code of Conduct,” which sets forth standards of behavior that police and community members should aspire to when interacting with one another.
“Mr. Mcdowell was a very strong advocate for the NAACP along with the Black and Brown coalition to which I’m sure his presence will be greatly missed,” said Mansfield police Chief Keith Porch, in a statement.
Betty Palmer-harris, former president of the NAACP’S Mansfield chapter, knew Mcdowell for over four decades.
Mcdowell, when she spoke to him two days before he died, said he planned to write a book.
“You couldn’t even sit him down at all,” Palmer-harris said in an interview. “Between the church and the NAACP, you couldn’t stop him from those two things.”
Alomar Davenport, elected as Fourth Ward councilman in 2019, said the best way to honor Mcdowell is to continue to build upon the foundation he laid.
“The impact of the loss of Mr. McDowell has on the community is immeasurable, but neither is what he gave us,” Davenport said in a statement. “He showed us if we are persistent despite the obstacles things can be accomplished.” mtrombly@gannett.com Twitter: @monroetrombly