WARREN — When he was growing up with his family in a small rural Ohio town, Ric Sheffield, an author and college professor, said he always remembers being the only black student in his class from elementary to high school

Sheffield, professor emeritus of legal studies and sociology at Kenyon College in Ohio, spoke virtually at a recent program at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library for Black History Month, about his own experience being black in small town America, which is reflected in his book, “We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland.”

He said there were often challenges for his family, who has lived in communities such as Knox County, where few others looked like them.

“My students over the years have been shocked when they learn I am from little Mount Vernon, Ohio. They can’t believe I grew up in a rural community like Mount Vernon. They didn’t believe any black people lived there,” Sheffield said.

He said he lived for more than 40 years in rural Ohio and many people did not hear much about rural black families. Sheffeld said when he was in school, the only African Americans he learned about were Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass.

“Anything else that had to do with black people when I was in school was about slavery. For me I was a child sitting in a classroom of no other black or brown faces,” he said.

Sheffield said the only four other black students in the elementary school when he was there were his siblings and cousins and through high school, he was the only black student in his class.

“People would say they never saw any black people in Knox County. I was one of only five black students in my school. People would say they never saw us. It was like we were invisible,” he said.

He said when he did walk into the local stores in Mount Vernon, he was often met by stares from the adults, which showed he was visible to people there.

“I felt at times like I was on display whether I wanted to be or not,” he said.

RURAL TV SHOWS

Sheffield said he remembers television shows of the 1960s such as “Andy Griffith Show” and “Beverly Hillbillies” rarely showed black people.

“Where are these rural towns that have no black people whatsoever? I remember actor Rockne Tarkington showed up on the ‘Andy Griffith Show’ in 1967 as the football coach for Opie Taylor. Actress Jean Bell showed up on the ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ as Mr. Drysdale’s secretary for several episodes,” Sheffield said.

He said often there were movies and books about black people being victimized by white people in rural America, and black families living in rural communities faced dangers.

“I looked back at pop culture with fiction and films and scenes from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in the early 1960s,” he said.

He said he knew black people in Mount Vernon who were born and raised there. Sheffield said he did research on other small rural communities and found many incidences of mixed race families with indigenous heritages.

Sheffield said through his research, he learned many black families came to Mount Vernon and Knox County for work in factories and mills, coal furnaces, domestic work such as maids, and to farm the land.

“Many black families moved from the south to the north to have their own plot of land to farm,”’ Sheffield said.

He said in Knox County there were black churches, dances and other social events that many black families attended on weekends.

“I remember hearing that Mount Vernon had a Colored Women’s Glee Club. In the early 1900s there were Masonic chapters for black people. Black women were part of Eastern Star,” he said.

He said he saw newspaper articles of black women who were in Miss Ohio-type pageants such as Miss Bronze Ohio pageants in the 1940s.

Sheffield said like most parts of the nation, he dealt with segregation when going to movie theaters and other public places, which had separate lines for black people.