COLUMBUS, Ohio — Melvin Barnes, an Ohio State graduate, is the program officer at the nonprofit Ohio Humanities. Barnes appeared in a documentary film called, “The Lincoln School Story, The Battle for School Integration in Ohio," which focused on the history of the city of Hillsboro.

“It's really on the cutting edge, that forward, tip of the spear of the civil rights movement,” said Barnes when speaking on the Lincoln School Story. 

What You Need To Know

  • OSU grad Melvin Barnes has added new context to "The Lincoln School Story" 

  • The goal of the documentary is to educate a new generation and spark conversation 

  • The 20-minute documentary is available to watch on Ohio Humanities website 

His job was to add new context about a group of Black mothers in the southern Ohio city of Hillsboro, who marched to school each morning from 1954 to 1956, demanding admission to an all-white school. The five mothers and their daughters marched to school and became known as the "Marching Mothers." Eventually, they took it to court, otherwise known as Clemons v. Board of Education of Hillsboro, Ohio.

“It's a local — it's an Ohio story, but it has national implications, so I wanted to talk to the team about bringing that out,” said Barnes. 

Barnes learned that for years, the story of this early fight for racial justice went untold. 

“What you know is just two years or three or four, however many years for other people in Hillsboro, is a meaningful amount of time for these kids. I think there's a lot of social justice movements that are going on today, where people will point and think that they have these really good reasons and ideas for why we haven't made as much change as we need to. And what we lose sight of is that those people who are affected by those negative policies, that's a meaningful amount of time in their lives,” said Barnes. 

After two years of marching and with help from the NAACP, they eventually won the case, helping to solidify Brown v. Board of Education's impact in Ohio and beyond. 

Barnes said it doesn't take a Martin Luther King or Malcolm X-type leader to inspire change. In fact, many changes during the civil rights era were made by concerned citizens. 

His hope is that students of all ages watch and discuss this documentary. 

“It's not simply just what a mother will do to make sure that her kids have better lives but that all of us have a responsibility to help make that change. And this is just one example in Ohio, of people who made a significant change throughout the country,” said Barnes. 

Related Stories