Oscar W. Ritchie


Oscar Washington Ritchie was the first African American professor at a predominantly White university in the state of Ohio.

Background and education

Ritchie's parents moved to Hallandale, Florida from the Caribbean where his father had owned a fruit stand. His father died before Ritchie completed high school. At the age of 17, he enrolled in Florida A & M University, where he became founder and editor of the school newspaper.
The great depression of 1929 derailed his college career. He dropped out of college and joined a local band that went on the road, with him playing banjo. In Chicago, Illinois, he met his wife Edith and they had their only child, George.
Long after the band stopped, the family remained in Chicago. Ritchie worked odd jobs for a few years and eventually got a job as a porter in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1933, he got a job in Massillon, Ohio, working at Republic Steel.
By 1942 he was back in school, this time at the predominantly White Kent State University in Ohio. He initially studied pre-law but switched to sociology and graduated in 1946, with a B.S. in Sociology, while working a full-time job at a steel mill in Massillon.

Career

He immediately enrolled in a graduate program at Kent and so impressed the chairman of the Sociology department, James T. Laing, that he was given a teaching position in 1947, taking over from former faculty member Harley Preston. He was working as a full-time faculty member, something that was quite unusual for a graduate student.
During the summer of 1947 he attended the Yale Institute of Alcoholic Studies on a scholarship and earned enough transferable credits to graduate from Kent State that summer. He made such an impression on the Yale faculty that his master's thesis, "A Sociological Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous," was published in the Yale Quarterly Journal of Alcoholic Studies.
By fall 1947, Ritchie was appointed full-time faculty member in the Sociology Department, then located in Lowry Hall. This appointment made him the first African American faculty member at a predominantly White university in the state of Ohio.
University president Bowman, liberal as he may have been in making Ritchie's appointment to the faculty, considered the NAACP to be "a radical organization", and refused to allow the students to form a local chapter in 1954. The university had its own discriminatory housing policies, which Ritchie fought and eventually forced the university to change in 1963. The Sociology and English departments led the way by protesting and threatening to walk out, finally prevailing.

Scholarship

Ritchie received a scholarship to the Yale Institute of Alcoholic Studies. He was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Scholarship in 1948, which is given "solely for the well-being of mankind." He was the first Kent State graduate to win this award. He also received the Guggenheim Award awarded to graduate students for advanced study.
On his way to achieving his doctorate, Ritchie took a year off from Kent State and studied at the University of Wisconsin after which, in 1949, he resumed his academic duties and he gave the Scholarship Day address in May 1952. Ritchie received his PhD in Sociology from New York University in 1958. His dissertation was titled "Male Delinquents' Assessments of an Industrial School: A Study of the Relationship between Assessments and Length of Residence." He summarizes his study in the following manner in the dissertation's abstract.
Shortly before his death, he was elected by his colleagues to the chairmanship of the Sociology Department.

Mentorship

Ritchie was not averse to interacting with the student body and worked with a number of the Greek organizations on campus as an adviser, including Kappa Alpha Psi and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternities, which he advised from 1955 to 1956 and 1958-1962 respectively. He also assisted in the establishment of the Alpha Phi Alpha Education Foundation, which offered a scholarship as early as 1965. His work with the Alphas won him the honor of being named Director of Educational Activities for Alpha Phi Alpha's national chapter, an appointment he held from 1966 until his death in 1967.

Community involvement

Ritchie was a lifelong musician. Although he did not play with a band as he had in Florida, he did direct musical groups, outside of the university. From reports in the local papers it appears that he revived the Massillon Community Chorus in 1938, which developed into a full-blown 40-member choir by 1941. During that three-year period they toured more than 50 Ohio cities. The group was "composed of mill workers, garage mechanics, house maids, and WPA laborers." The amateur chorus donated all of their earnings to the Urban League "for the purchase of music, choir robes and a recording machine."
With his wife Edith in the choir and him on piano, he managed to keep his musical ambitions alive by presenting Negro spirituals a la Frederick and Harriet Loudin of the neighboring town of Ravenna, Ohio, who led the Fisk Jubilee Singers, for nearly 30 years.
In concert with some of his colleagues at Kent State he also co-founded the Portage County Family Planning, Counseling and Mental Health Center in Ravenna, Ohio, with Dr. Dwight I. Arnold, a KSU Emeritus professor, and Dr. John Guidabaldi, in 1962.
He was also an active member of the Massillon Urban League and the Canton NAACP, which recognized his work as the leader of their local recruitment drive in the 1950s, that nearly doubled the size of their local membership. Considering the attitude of KSU President Bowman towards these types of organizations, these were bold moves. He was also involved with protests against housing discrimination on the Kent State campus, a feature of university policy, and discrimination off campus in Kent and surrounding communities. Ritchie also spoke out about injustices in the juvenile justice system.

Recognition and legacy

In recognition of his 29 years' service to the university a building on the Kent University campus was named the Oliver W Ritchie Hall on June 16, 1967.
The Oscar W. Ritchie Four-Year Scholarship Fund was established in 1977 with an endowment of $450,000. It grants $2,000 to $8,000 per year to qualifying African American students who intend to attend Kent State University. A grant of $250 is made to all applicants.

Death

Ritchie died on June 16, 1967, in Ravenna, Ohio's Robinson Memorial Hospital, of lesions on the liver and lung. He was survived by his wife Edith, brother Alfred, sister Mary, son George and three grandchildren, Jocelyn, Victoria, and Bradford.

Published journal articles