By Michael D. Clark
The Cincinnati Enquirer

During a celebration of desegregation in Hillsboro on Saturday, Patricia Cooper Cousins, of Chillicothe, Ohio (left) and Nan Harshaw of Xenia uncover the Ohio Historical Marker to Lincoln School. The Hillsboro case was the first northern desegregation case in the wake of the Brown ruling to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The Cincinnati Enquirer/ERNEST COLEMAN

HILLSBORO - An early and largely forgotten chapter in the nation's struggle for classroom racial equality was brought to life and commemorated here Saturday while former students of a segregated school celebrated their place in American history.

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court's pivotal school desegregation ruling of "Brown versus the board education"in 1954, which struck down decades of "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation in American pubic schools, tiny Hillsboro in Highland County came to the attention of justices on the nation's top court.

Every school day morning for two years after the 1954 Brown ruling, young Virginia Harewood walked in protest with her parents, and dozens of other African-American families from Hillsboro's segregated Lincoln School, to an all-white public school seven blocks away. Often they strode through racial slurs and threats of violence, only to be turned away each day by white school officials.

"It didn't matter if it was raining, cold or snowing, we went every day and every day we would be refused entry into the white school, and we'd walk back to Lincoln and start our school day," Harewood said. Harewood was one of small group of surviving almuni of Hillsboro's all-black Lincoln School to help unveil an Ohio historical marker commemorating the school and local black residents who battled and beat racism.

Then, in April 1956, a lawsuit initiated by the Ohio chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and local black parents, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was in appeal - from Hillsboro school officials wanting to bar black students - from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Cincinnati-based federal court had ruled in favor of allowing all black Hillsboro students to attend any of the city's public schools, citing the Brown ruling of 1954.

The Hillsboro case was the first northern desegregation case in the wake of the Brown ruling to reach the high court. In April 1956 , Supreme Court justices decided to not consider Hillsboro school officials' appeal upholding the lower federal court's ruling and giving Hillsboro's black students and their families entry to white schools.

Harewood's husband, Perry, was a member of Lincoln's final class, which graduated in 1956. Gazing at the large iron historical marker at 537 N. East Street in Hillsboro, about 50 miles east of Cincinnati, he said: "A lot of people today don't know what went on here. This means the past won't be forgotten."

Fellow Lincoln alumna Nan Trimble Harshaw, who attended the tiny, two-story school that housed grades one through eight, admired the historical marker and described the school's now noted former site as a "testimony to the perseverance and survival of the human spirit.

"It's a way of honoring our struggle," said Harshaw.

In 1956, Nathaniel Jones was an African-American law student at Youngstown State University keenly interested in the pivotal Hillsboro case. The now-retired federal judge, who served on the same federal court of appeals in Cincinnati that had ruled in favor of Hillsboro's black residents, said most people "have no idea about the Hillsboro case."

"The Hillsboro case became very important in the legal drive later to challenge segregation in Boston and Cleveland schools, and other northern cities, in the early 1970s. It was the basis for those cases," Jones said.

In 1956, only about 2 percent of Highland County's residents were black. Today Hillsboros's minority student enrollment is almost 7 percent of the school system's 2,834 students, with most being African American.

Kenny Captain took his young granddaughter to the ceremony, which included Hillsboro's mayor, local state representatives, Ohio Historical Society officials and local clergy, as well dozens of black and white residents of the city. Captain, whose father attended Lincoln, said the historical marker provides a sense of pride for the community and a degree of closure for those surviving black residents who suffered institutional racism.

"It's nice to have something for the older African-Americans here who bravely fought the fight," said Captain.

E-mail mclark@enquirer.com