WARREN — As a child going to the Paramount Theater on West Federal Street in downtown Youngstown during the 1950s, Helen Youngblood never thought much about the racial undertones as she and her friends always were seated at the upper level of the theater.

“I didn’t think of Youngstown being racist back then. It never hit me that I was sitting up there because I was black,” Youngblood, now of Warren, said.

The term commonly attached to this practice is the “peanut gallery,” referring to sitting black people in theaters in the upper or back seats, normally considered to be the cheap seats.

It was one of many revelations about her upbringing she and members of the Greater Mahoning Valley 1619 project, started through New Bethel Baptist Church, came to while piecing together the YW Magazine.

Youngblood, publisher of the magazine, was at the 2022 African American Achievers Association Festival in Warren over the summer allowing people to see and buy the publication. It is a one-issue magazine published in 2019 that profiles and highlights the accomplishments of some African Americans who lived in Youngstown and Warren.

“In 2019, I decided to do something to commemorate the 400 years when the first African-American slave landed in the United States. We decided to do a magazine,” she said. “When we began, I thought it would be 15 to 20 pages long. I did not realize the number of African Americans that did so much in this area, so it turned out to be much larger and more in depth.”

Youngblood estimates 150 to 200 people were highlighted in the magazine by the time it was completed.

“Many slaves were brought here in Warren back to 1836,” she said.

Youngblood grew up in Youngstown during the time when the far East Side was filled with houses built for and by black people.

“The city was so segregated that blacks lived in one area,” she said.

The streets were lined with houses owned by black doctors, lawyers and black people that worked in the steel industry. As a teenager, Youngblood said most people frequented Hillman Street.

“As a teenager, I would go up on that street to go to places like Isaly’s,” she said.

The area was one of the most popular streets in Youngstown before it was burned down by its mostly black residents — four days after the assassanation of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

About 50 years following the riots, the neighborhood still has never been rebuilt.

“I understood to a degree the anger but looking at the end result, they didn’t realize those neighborhoods weren’t coming back,” Youngblood said.

The National Guard eventually was brought in to disperse the violence, but Youngblood said community members also played an active role in stopping the violence.

The “Rev. Lonnie K. A. Simmons of New Bethel Church was a part in calling a calm to those riots back then,” Youngblood said.

Despite her realizations about that time and the de-facto racism she endured, one thing about those days stands in her mind.

“You couldn’t find a sense of community like what we had back then around here today,” she said.

The magazine she and others spent nine to 10 months putting together took days and nights to fact-check, thumbing through archives in the library and the basement of the Tyler History Museum to be able to tell this history.

“For younger generations, this is important for them to know their history and know that good things could come out of Youngstown, that they can achieve some of that,” Youngblood said.

To suggest a Saturday profile, contact Features Editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.