NEWTON FALLS, Ohio – In the southwest corner of Braceville Township are two old and seldom seen housing developments. They were built between the first and second World War for Blacks who migrated to the area from the South to work in the mills.
The houses – arranged along a few narrow streets on the north side of state Route 5, just east of state Route 534 – are humble, but they created a close-knit community that produced powerful memories in those who lived there and many noteworthy citizens.
The two adjacent neighborhoods, known as the lower and upper allotments, can make another claim to fame: According to a group of former residents, they constituted the largest rural settlement of Blacks in Ohio in the mid-20th Century.
Terrance Shavers and his wife, Gwen, both grew up in the allotments and are part of the Braceville Community Foundation, a group of former residents who are preserving the history of the allotments. Terrance is the project manager.
This spring, the group will open The Braceville African American Heritage Museum to depict and preserve life in the neighborhoods.
The museum at 1250 Cedar St. SW occupies one of the lower allotment’s original houses and sits in the middle of the neighborhood.
Before then, a documentary film on the neighborhood, “History Forgotten: The Story of Braceville,” will premiere at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Robins Theatre in Warren. Tickets are $10 (plus fees) and available at the theater box office and online at RobinsTheatre.com.
A Closer Look
The making of the documentary started with a team led by Gwen Shavers and Neil Heller, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Braceville, who interviewed many elderly people who grew up in the community and recorded their responses.
“They interviewed ‘super-seniors,’ people in their 90s or late 80s,’” Terrance said. “Because if we don’t get their stories now, they will be lost forever.”
The project gained momentum when local filmmaker Ron Hughes got involved. “He had a real passion about the history of Braceville,” Terrance said.
The Shavers, Rev. Heller and Hughes will be at the Robins Theatre for a special program that will immediately precede the screening.
The creation of the documentary and museum are separate projects, but they ran on parallel paths, with many of the same people working on both.
The museum’s official opening date has not yet been set, but it’s already open on Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m.
“It’s not officially open, but it is complete,” Terrance said. “The exhibits are in place.”
All that remains to be completed is improvements to the yard and exterior, which cannot be done until the weather improves, Terrance said.
The museum, funded by a $10,000 grant from the Trumbull County commissioners, is in a house that was sold to the foundation for $1 by the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership.
Inside are furnishings, decor and memorabilia consistent with a typical home in the allotments during its heyday.
“People have donated things for the museum,” Terrance said. “We’re trying to make it look like the late 1940s and early 1950s, but also from the early 1900s to the 1960s. There is old furniture, a sewing machine, a mirror and table …”
The museum will have a family room, with lots of family photos, and another room dedicated to athletes who came from the area, Gwen said.
History
Like many townships in northeastern Ohio, Braceville is a 5-mile-by-5-mile square, with a total area of 25 square miles. But the Black newcomers, who came mainly from Florida, Georgia and Alabama, lived in less than one-third of one square mile, Terrance said.
“The great migration happened after World War I, when Whites went to the service and people from the Southern states were recruited to come north and take the factory jobs,” Terrance said.
“Newton Steel opened in 1919 and was almost directly across from our little community,” he said. “People in the lower allotment could walk to it.”
The lower allotment was formally known as the Steel Industrial Allotment, while the upper allotment – situated about a half-mile northeast, just off Newton Falls Braceville Road – was known as the Midway Plat. Many original houses remain in both areas and are occupied, although the glory days of the tight-knit community have long since ended.
“We believe our community was the largest rural African American community in Ohio, and no one has ever discredited that statement,” Terrance said.
Determining the exact population was problematic at first.
“The 1930 census was the first that included Blacks,” Gwen said. “We never got higher than 90 families, but there were between 350 and 400 people.”
Each home lot was 40 feet by 150 feet. The neighborhoods were filled with homes, and each home was filled with children.
“Both sides of both of our families were from Braceville,” Gwen said. “I had 28 first cousins while growing up there.”
The Blacks who moved to the allotments were from rural areas and wanted to have a little bit of land in their new state to grow crops.
“The land was swampy, and it flooded, so no one wanted it,” Terrance said. “But they managed. They couldn’t get loans, but they built their own church and homes. They survived the Great Depression.”
Legacy
The tough times created a sense of resiliency in the population. Many notable folks came from the neighborhoods, Terrance said, including Ted Toles Jr., a Negro Baseball League great; Brian Broome, an author; and, in later years, Guy Hughes, a regionally famous barbecue chef with his own line of sauces; and boxing great Earnie Shavers, to whom Terrance is related.
Today, the neighborhood remains largely hidden from passing traffic on state Route 5. Many of the original houses remain standing, as well as a few newer ones. Most of the houses are occupied, but the streets are quiet and surrounded by trees.
Gwen said the effort to preserve the history of the allotments began in 2016.
“Pastor Heller would talk about the stories people told him, and they were such rich stories,” she said. “I asked him if we could videotape some of the stories, and from there it snowballed.”
Former and current residents have a reunion every two years, and it was at the 2018 event that the Shavers and a group that included about six others decided to preserve their legacy in a physical way – with a museum.
“We discussed it because we knew no one else would, and even if they did they wouldn’t get our story right,” Gwen said. “So we started looking for a house where we could preserve our history. Everything stemmed from the reunions.”
Pictured at top: Gwen and Terrance Shavers stand on the porch of the Braceville African American Heritage Museum, which will open in the spring.