Civil rights-era artifacts sought

Font Size:

By Kay Luna | Wednesday, January 16, 2008 6:23 AM CST | () comments

Arther Pitz, a professor and scholar-in-residence who represents St. Ambrose University's part of a project led by the Davenport Civil Rights Commission and the Putnam Museum to collect and chronicle info and memorabilia from the civil rights movement in the Quad-City area. (Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

VIDEO: Civil Rights Leader Bill Cribbs
Bill Cribbs, one of the unsung leaders of the civil rights movement in the …
Watch Video

Related Media

Discrimination was a way of life in Davenport that 80-year-old Bill Cribbs grew up with — but never accepted — even when he says his parents warned him “not to ruffle any feathers.”

He remembers blacks living only in certain neighborhoods, usually in horrible housing conditions, because no one would rent or sell to them anywhere else.

Certain Davenport restaurants would not serve blacks. Waiters would “walk all around” and never acknowledge them, he adds.

And he remembers one particular Davenport recreational facility where the staff would not allow blacks to swim, except on Thursday nights. Then they would drain the pool and fill it with fresh water after the swimmers left.

“I just knew it wasn’t right and tried to make things right, you know?”

Cribbs’ lifelong efforts to fight for civil rights — joining and leading Davenport’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, speaking out at City Hall and pushing for equal employment and housing for blacks — is now a crucial part of a new research project involving the city’s history.

Volunteers are working with the Davenport Civil Rights Commission, St. Ambrose University and the Putnam Museum to interview the community’s civil rights era trailblazers, collecting their stories — as well as any other documents, photos, videotaped interviews and memorabilia available — about the movement from 1940 to 1974.

The project eventually will provide fodder for a new display and research archives at the museum, said Judith Morrell, the director of the commission.

She expects the research process to take about two years, adding that its success hinges on community assistance via donations of artifacts and interviews.

“It’s critical for future generations to know about and understand the civil rights movement in Davenport,” Morrell said. “There were a lot of fights that were fought very hard. There were some very brave people at that time.”

Arthur Pitz, a professor and scholar-in-residence who represents St. Ambrose on the project, is chairman of the committee leading the job. He already has solicited help from Ambrose students to conduct and videotape interviews of key players in the movement.

Putnam officials are delighted with the project because the museum has “very little in the collection which tells this story and how it has helped to shape our community,” curator Eunice Schlichting said.

“With limited staff and resources, it’s wonderful to have community partners like these to help us connect with those who know the story and can tell their experiences, as well as have artifacts they would be willing to donate to the Putnam,” she said.

Morrell and Pitz said a former Davenport man, Jack Schneiders, prompted the project when he called and offered boxes of records regarding the civil rights movement that he collected during his time working for the former Davenport Catholic Interracial Council.

Another prized possession that Morrell says will go into the display was found at St. Ambrose: a recording of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in Davenport during 1965, when he was presented the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award.

“He was a great orator,” Cribbs said of the late Dr. King. “We had a huge crowd. I can remember people saying they were inspired by his speech.”

Pitz, who teaches history, also has a map that shows the only Davenport neighborhoods where blacks were allowed to live, strictly in small areas south of Locust Street.

“You’re talking about a different era here,” he said. “This was not at all unusual. Many communities would have been like this, and people might not realize it, but it happened in the North — not just in states like Mississippi or Alabama.”

The winds of change began blowing after World War II, about 1947, when former Davenport resident Charles Toney and his wife stood up and challenged discrimination in what is now the Quad-Cities, Pitz said.

They balked when a public swimming pool on the Davenport levee refused to allow blacks. And when a local restaurant denied the couple service, they sued, Pitz added.

In his 90s now, Toney recently was interviewed about his role in the movement, which, Pitz added, also got a big push from St. Ambrose faculty and priests, who were interested in social justice.

They recruited students during the early 1950s to take a survey on behalf of the League for Social Justice, which Pitz says was one of the first organized civil rights projects in the Quad-Cities.

“They did this and other things to try to heighten awareness in the community,” he said.

By the late 1950s, the Davenport Catholic Interracial Council was created and lasted through the 1960s. The council and the local NAACP chapter worked together closely, and one of their meeting places was Toney’s barber shop in Davenport, Pitz said.

Over the years, Cribbs also worked as a barber along with various other jobs — as a postal carrier, landscaper, factory manager trainee and congressional staffer — before being hired to run Davenport’s affirmative action department. He was the first director of the city’s Civil Rights Commission.

Cribbs also worked as an affirmative action coordinator, and then as director, for Deere & Co. from 1976 to 2001.

Now retired, Cribbs and his wife, residents of Bettendorf, have 15 children, 47 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren. The family’s younger generations “haven’t had to do all the fighting” for civil rights, he said with a laugh.

“There still is discrimination, but it’s not as open,” he said. “I think all people have to do is follow the laws. If they did, there wouldn’t have anybody fighting.”

“Tell people to be true to themselves. Treat your neighbor like you want to be treated because then we’ll have a better world.”

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.

Want to help?

Anyone who played a role in the history of the civil rights movement in Davenport between 1940 and 1974, or who is in possession of any artifacts related to the movement, is important to a new research project involving the city’s history.

A future display and research archive at the Putnam Museum will focus on the movement, thanks to volunteers now gathering information on behalf of the Davenport Civil Rights Commission,

St. Ambrose University and the museum.

If you have any information that could help with the project, contact Arthur Pitz at (309) 736-0840 or artpitz@hotmail.com, or call Judith Morrell of the commission at (563) 326-7888.