My mother, grandmother, and great-grandparents. Springfield, about 1940
I have never lived in Springfield and haven’t even visited in half a century or more. Nonetheless, I know rather a bit about the place.
My mother was born there, and her mother before her. Her mother grew up on a farm outside Cedarville, in Greene County, to the south. My ancestors settled and built Greene and Clark Counties, and studying their history, as well as listening to my mom’s recollections of childhood, has given me a decent understanding of the area, Springfield in particular.
This is the place where, in a different sort of essay, I would say, “And the people of Springfield are hard-working, God-fearing folk who would never persecute someone just because they looked different or came from elsewhere!”
Yeah, well, this isn’t that sort of essay. And Springfield isn’t that sort of town. No place is, really.
Springfield, 101 years and a week ago.
The years after the Great War were tumultuous times for many Americans, particularly White Protestants frightened at societal changes. African-American soldiers came home from the war with a new sense of empowerment. Immigrants were reshaping the industrial landscape. This fear of change led to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, not just in the former Confederacy, but throughout the country, especially the Midwest. Central Ohio was a power center for the Klan, whose members included mayors, police officials and industry heads.
With internal disagreements and financial irregularities, the Klan saw its power wane in Ohio by the late Twenties and, though in the following decade, a resurgence of the Ohio Klan was attempted, America had new worries, and scapegoats, to think about.
Hooverville, Circleville, Ohio
With the Great Depression gutting Midwest industries and farmers, Ohio residents again were threatened with uncertainty and hardship, and again, they turned within, rejecting “foreigners” and “outsiders.” As Europe sank into fascism and no relief was forthcoming for them, Ohioans were ripe pickings for the America First Committee, the isolationist movement trying to keep the US out of Europe’s wars, which drew over two-thirds of its membership from the farms and factories within a 300-mile radius of Chicago.
The Second World War revived much of the industrial economy of central Ohio, though it brought its own, new prejudices and “otherings.” Still, by war’s end, Springfield and Ohio were on solid economic footing, ready to grow in a new, American, century.
Most of you are familiar with the next chapter. With offshoring and consolidation, Ohio’s industrial might faded in the 1970s and 1980s, the region giving up its title as the Industrial Heartland and getting a new nickname: the Rust Belt.
With the Great Rusting, Springfield has declined precipitously, its population falling from over 80,000 in the 1960s to under 60,000 today. With that decline, old habits of othering and scapgoating returned. And, when the federal government assisted more than ten thousand Haitian immigrants to relocate to Springfield, those old habits found an easy target.
I’m not writing this as a diss against the people I come from, but as an observation about all people: we are small, we are easily frightened and confused, and when we are, we sometimes revert to our worst human instincts. It’s a shame about us, but that’s how we are.
The greatest shame doesn’t lie with the people of Springfield, who, like all of us, can fall into our ugliest habits in hard times. The greatest shame, the greatest evil,lies in the men who know the weaknesses, the fears, the failings of people and see them as levers, as keys on a great organ of hate, on which they will compose a hymn to their own power.
The people of Springfield, my people, are a mixed bag. Some spread these vicious lies, some stood up against them. I assume some believed them. Each has their own karma to face.
The men who started this hatefulness are a different bucket of filth. JD Vance, though a certifiable ignoramus, knew that the rumor was false but felt he had to “make a story.” Trump probably didn’t know there was another Columbus other than the circle, but his white eggplant Stephen Miller sure does, and if Stephen and Laura say claiming Haitians are eating kittens will get votes, hell, yes, he’ll yell it to 70 million people.
I’m no Dante, but I imagine that, were there a Hell, it would hold a special place for men who gleefully lead others into evil to further their own power.
