Don Spencer: “What Cha Doin’ Now”, To Make a Better World?
By Connie Springer
Genteel and soft-spoken, 93-year old Don Spencer is still on the lookout for new things he wants to do. “When I find new opportunities,” he explains, “I’m willing to try them. And with most things I’ve tried, I’ve had the feeling that if I really make an effort, I can do it.”
Among his undertakings has been a lifetime of civil rights activism in which, when it came to integration and justice, he initiated many “firsts” in Cincinnati. He has also excelled as an educator, real estate broker, pianist, musical composer, and swimmer.
Spencer and his life-mindedly activist wife Marian have lead a 68-year long life together in service to the community and in personal devotion to their family of two sons and two grandsons. “My philosophy of life has been when you leave this world,” he has observed, “it should be better because you have lived.”
On March 5, 1915, Spencer was born at home in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood, the second of three children of Charles and Josephine Rice Spencer. His paternal grandfather was probably a plantation slave. Charles, his dad, finished a segregated elementary school in Augusta, Kentucky, moving to the city of Covington to attend the nearest African American high school he could find in segregated Kentucky. Spencer’s mother was the daughter of a Connersville, Indiana white doctor and his African American domestic servant. Josephine left her Indiana high school to support herself with a job in Cincinnati, living with an aunt who had made her home in the city.
Spencer speaks proudly of his dad’s industriousness. The elder Spencer held several jobs: shining shoes, waiting tables, supervising a shoe shining parlor in a downtown exclusive ladies’ dress shop, clerking in the Post Office, and supervising janitorial work in an apartment building.
Don also takes great pride in his remarkable mother who demanded dignity and respect and exposed her children to opera, symphony, and Broadway shows performed at Cincinnati’s Grand, Cox and Shubert Theatres, even though they had to sit in the balcony. As African Americans, the Spencer’s could only watch films in segregated movie houses. His parents taught the children manners and insisted that they try hard in school, instilling them with the concept that there was no ceiling as to what they could do.
From the age of three Don had a piano in his home and learned to play it by ear. He started earning his own spending money at ten with a paper route shared with his brother. When he was twelve the family moved to Hyde Park, where he worked alongside his father doing janitorial work.
Spencer’s school performance was stellar – throughout his school career, he received all A’s. Skipping sixth grade, he finished Hyde Park Elementary and in 1928 enrolled in Withrow High School. The family moved back to Walnut Hills when his father gave up his janitorial job to work full time as a postal clerk. Not being able to afford the nickel bus ride to Withrow, Don transferred to the rigorous classical program at Walnut Hills High School, within walking distance of his home.
During high school, Spencer got a job at the A&P supermarket, the first African American ever to work for a grocery store chain. At the age of 18 he paid $35 in cash for his first automobile, a 1927 Oakland, taking spins down “the Boulevard,” what is now Victory Parkway. Removing the top, he would use an umbrella if it rained. Gas prices fluctuated between eleven and fourteen cents a gallon.
He was writing songs by this time, composing by ear, and with his musical leanings hoped to participate in theater at Walnut Hills High School. But African Americans were barred. In 1931 Spencer graduated from high school with high enough grades to be valedictorian but was excluded from that honor. Instead at his Methodist church he organized the youth group and became its president.
Spencer and his siblings were the first in his family to go to college. “My mother saw to it that all three kids went,” he says. His brother, Joseph, and sister, Valerie, graduated from West Virginia State College in Charleston, West Virginia, but don was committed to his A&P job and stayed in Cincinnati. In 1932 he entered the University of Cincinnati to study chemistry.
“In those days teaching was the best job black people could get upon graduating from college,” he observes. Although he loved composing music, it was the time of the Great Depression, and he decided “to enter the field of education and make a living.” Along the way he picked up social sciences as his second major.
In the 1930s at the University of Cincinnati, African American students were disenfranchised in countless ways. Their extra-curricular activities were confined to a segregated group called The University Singers and Players instead of their being allowed into dramatics, glee clubs, debating, student government, and intramural athletics. African Americans could also not live on campus, attend social events, or be accepted into the college of medicine, music, or engineering.
Determined to integrate African Americans into school activities, in 1933 Spencer and his colleagues produced a musical comedy, Who’ Da Thot It?, for which he composed the music and contributed as producer, director, and one of the male lead soloists.
After the success of the performance, The University Singers and Players were reorganized into Quadres (quad + res, Latin words for “four principles”), of which Spencer was elected the first president. The four principles were to racially integrate every student activity on campus; to encourage excellence in scholarship; to provided socialization for African American students; and to create a major annual production to stimulate the interest of African American students.
In 1935 Quadres produced a second musical comedy, What Cha Doin’ Now?, for which Spencer again composed all the music. His continued interest in musical composition led him to produce songs for his fraternity, Kappa alpha Psi, and later for his wife and sons.
Sixty-three years later, he orchestrated a nostalgic revival at the Cincinnati Art Museum of selected songs he had composed from 1933 to 1944, with the Kappa Men’s Chorus and his family members as featured vocalists.
Graduating in 1936, he was hired by the Cincinnati Public Schools system to teach social studies at Douglass Junior High School. He was just 22, only three or four years older than some of his students. He soon earned an additional bachelor of education degree from the University of Cincinnati by taking all education courses. (In 1940 he was also to earn a master’s degree in education, completing his thesis, Opportunities for Negroes in the Tailoring and Printing Industries, which posited that African Americans did not have to be limited to menial jobs.) His draft status during World War II changed from 1A to 1D since teaching was considered a necessary occupation.
A few years later, in 1939, he fell in love with 20-year old Marian Alexander, a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati, meeting her through his friend who was dating Marian’s twin sister, Mildred. Marian and Mildred had been raised in Gallipolis, Ohio, the granddaughters of a freed slave.
Less than half a year later, Spencer proposed to Marian in a downtown Chinese restaurant and asked her father for her hand, though it was Marian’s mother who provided the needed signature. They married on August 12, 1940 and moved into an apartment in the home of their life long friend and the future mayor of Cincinnati, Theodore Berry.
When their first son, Donald Jr., was born, Marian was finishing her senior year at college. Her twin sister went to classes for her so that Marian could finish her English literature degree on time and graduate with her class. Two year later, their second son, Eddie, was born. The Spencer’s agreed that he would make the living and she would take care of him and the children.
A highly energetic man, Spencer worked two jobs to support his family. After his daytime teaching, he would work from 5 pm to 9:15 pm at the Post Office.
After eight years of teaching at Douglass, Spencer transferred to Stowe Junior High when Douglass shut down. He remained at Stowe for another eight years until it too was closed. He moved to Bloom Junior High, where he taught for half a year until he decided to retire from teaching. At Bloom he was instrumental in transforming the school’s “worst kids” – loafers, “wiggly guys,” and truants – into achievers.
Spencer was fulfilled by his teaching, gratified to be able to help the kids. When he runs into his former students he is delighted both to reminisce and to learn about the paths they took.
The occupation into which he segued – a forty-ear career of selling and building residences – was also dear to him. In 1944 Don and Marian bought their first house. When Don found out how much commission the real estate broker had made, he decided to become a realtor as a secondary income.
Wanting to be taught by the best, he hooked up with Horace Sudduth, whom he considered the finest realtor in the African American community and a prominent leader in African American causes. Although Sudduth warned him that real estate was full of disappointments, Spencer could not be dissuaded. He took the real estate exam and went to work for Sudduth.
His start in real estate was concurrent with his last six years of teaching. Since he worked two jobs, his family made him sign a contract that he would be home for dinner before leaving for his second job. Eventually he went on his own, establishing Donald A. Spencer Associates, which also incorporated a building division and a large insurance business and which at one time had a staff of twenty-five.
In 1955, the Spencer’s built their own home, a contemporary house overlooking Victory parkway, with seven-foot pieces of thermo pane windows across the front of the house where they still live today.
Spencer’s philanthropic ways extended into real estate, as he helped clients get loans and found ways to get people homes. He was the first African American broker elected to the Cincinnati Board of Realtors. Though its members were not eager to accept people of color on the Board, he convinced them that they needed to have a minority point of view represented, especially when it came to the 1960s Fair Housing laws. Spencer was clear about expressing his non-allegiance to any covert housing restrictions the Board might endorse.
In 1984, at the age of 69, Spencer retired from the stresses o selling houses and dealing with appraisals, title examinations, and closings. For several years he owned property that he managed, but in 2004 he sold the last of it.
Every year Spencer and his wife took the kids on road trips. “I taught social studies,” he says, “and I wanted to see the world.” The family visited every state except South Dakota and Minnesota.
As empty nesters, the couple did travel the world, exploring Egypt, Europe, South America, and Hong Kong (four times), and more. When he was 91, Don and Marian visited the Panama Canal. “In foreign countries I like to stay in houses built by the people who live there,” he says. “I like to see the things that the native inhabitants think are good.” In 1962 the couple also built a place on a lake in northeast Indiana where they spend summers. Spencer was instrumental in building a lodge and constructing a beach for the community of Fox Lake in the late ‘60s.
The Spencer’s helped raise their grandson, Oliver, now a lawyer in Seattle, who moved into their home at age 16. According to Spencer, the teenager said he wanted to live with his grandparents because they had a “more structured lifestyle.”
Every morning Spencer plays the piano – he says he wakes up with a song on his mind – and during my visit he sat down at the piano with Marian to perform some of the pieces he’d composed.
The couple are completely in synch with each other’s political activities. Marian has always had a penchant for saying and doing whatever she felt was right. She chaired the NAACP’s legal action against Cincinnati’s Coney Island, which denied entrance to African Americans, and was instrumental in desegregating the park.
Over time she became president of the local YWCA, the NAACP, the Fellowship House, and the Woman’s City Club and vice-president of Planned Parenthood. She was elected to the Board of Trustees of the University of Cincinnati and served on City Council and as Cincinnati’s vice-mayor.
“All of our lives we have tried to support things that were right,” Spencer comments. “Wherever Marian is involved, I help.”
In 1943 he raised $40,000 in a brick-selling project in order to construct a new building for an orphanage in Avondale. Years later he raised $25,000 for the national NAACP to provide for legal help in the battle to integrate the schools. In 2000 Spencer chaired the School levy Committee, successfully passing the November tax levy. The following year he co-chaired the passing of a $395,000,000 bond issue for new school building for the Cincinnati Public Schools.
His good deeds have not gone unnoticed. He has been showered with honorary doctorates, awards, and proclamations speaking to his lifetime of fighting for equality and justice. The Cincinnati Park Board named an overlook in Eden Park after him in 2001, and he was recognized as a Great Living Cincinnatian by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. Spencer was one of only twenty alumni (out of 16,000) chosen by Walnut hills High School to be inducted into the school’s Alumni hall of Fame. In 2006 both he and Marian received honorary doctorate of humane letters degrees from the University of Cincinnati.
Spencer likes to share his honors with Marian, who has been similarly feted. “Our years have been a life together in service to the community,” he emphasizes. “We talked about doing this type of work together back when we were dating.”
Although he announces he hates to go to meetings, on the day we talked he had just come from a board meeting of the Cincinnati Symphony, and he has been active on numerous other boards, including 30 years on the Ohio Valley Goodwill Board, years on Ohio University’s Board of Trustees, and 25 years as a trustee board member of his church.
At 93, he knows he can’t do the things he did when he was 39. “I realize my own limitations, both physically and mentally, and accept them,” he acknowledges, “like the fact that I pant when I go up steps and can’t walk as far as I used to. But all in all, I feel good.”
Marian and Don swim together at the neighborhood Melrose YMCA three times a week. His swimming style is sleek and graceful, and he can finish 25 lengths without stopping.
Spencer reads books by his favorite authors, such as John Grisham, and pours over Newsweek to keep abreast of world events. He regularly indulges in bridge, gin, and 500rummy, and enjoys watching basketball and baseball. “I do ordinary things, like going out to dinner – just like always.”
Spencer is concerned that many African Americans don’t know enough about their own history – how hard a struggle it was to accomplish the freedoms of riding on public transportation, buying homes where they want, eating at the restaurant of their choice, and achieving their career goals.
He is encouraged for the United States that an African American man is running for president and reels that Obama has both the ability to see the future for the country and the hope and confidence to get us there. He only hopes that citizens will set aside any lingering prejudice and go with the leadership that is best for the nation.
Spencer is dismayed that people seem to have gotten into frenzy over wanting to have more for themselves and possess more things than other have. “They just don’t know when they’re happy,” observes this man who has spent a lifetime concerned for the welfare of others.
Knowing firsthand the satisfaction that a life of service brings, and evoking his musical composition from seventy-five years ago, he asks one question of today’s generations: what cha doin’ now to make a better world?
