Cleveland’s Arnold Pinkney pioneered role of black sports agent

Politician-Businessman became Triple Threat
representing professional black athletes

Former Browns Halfback goes on a long run against the
Cincinnati Bengals in early 1970s as All Pro guard John Wooten (60)
 is looking to block 15 yards downfield.

By Ryan Puente

Special to The Real Deal

This year’s National Football League draft will go down in history as the first and perhaps the only one to be conducted in a total quarantine. As dramatic and overhyped as that turned out to be, a less pronounced aspect of this year’s draft may prove to be far more consequential in the long run: a majority of the 32 players taken in the first round of the NFL draft — seventeen of them — were represented by African American agents.

That was a first in league history. And while most of those agents, many of whom are less than 40 years old, recognize the late Eugene Parker as the first black “super-agent.” — his client roster included Deion Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Larry Fitzgerald, among many others — they may not appreciate the trailblazing role played by Cleveland’s Arnold R. Pinkney as far back as the mid-sixties.

While Parker’s success may have “set the tone for all black agents”, Pinkney was not only a forerunner in pioneering sports representation by black Americans; he helped pave the way for the future hiring of African American coaches and front-office personnel.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, in the shadows of the steel mills, Pinkney became a kingmaker in Cleveland and one of the nation’s most effective political strategists and influencers. He managed and worked campaigns for notable figures like Mayor Carl Stokes, Congressman Louis Stokes, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and countless others.

Arnold Pinkney was already a successful
businessman in 1964. He would soon make
his mark in the worlds of politics and sports.

Pinkney was an experienced player on the national
political scene when he enjoyed this exchange with
Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1972. Pinkney would go on
manage Jackson's first presidential run in 1984.

Before making his mark in politics, Pinkney was a successful and well-known businessman. He co-founded Pinkney-Perry Insurance, earning the title of “Million Dollar Man” for regularly raking in more than a million dollars of premiums each year. Pinkney’s business smarts and negotiation skills enabled him to serve as a key financial advisor and representative to many of the NFL’s early black players. Pinkney was effective and successful in securing notable contracts for several star Cleveland Browns, including Leroy Kelly, John Wooten and Walter Johnson and running  back Eugene “Mercury” Morris of the Miami Dolphins.

Pinkney’s sports representation was not limited just to football or the Browns. He also led the negotiation team which included ex-Browns linebacker Sam Tidmore, that secured a healthy contract for Larry Doby Johnson from the Cleveland Indians after numerous meetings and several phone calls. Johnson at the time was a hot catcher prospect enrolled at Cleveland's East Tech High School.

Butting heads with Art Modell

It was the battle to earn fair pay for  star running back Leroy Kelly that launched Pinkney into the world of high-stakes sports agency.

Drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the eighth-round in 1964, running back Leroy Kelly seldom played in his first two seasons. After Jim Brown retired before the 1966 season, Kelly stepped in and rushed for more than 1,000 yards in his next three seasons. He won NFL rushing titles in 1967 and 1968 and played in four championship games during his 10 seasons with the Browns.

Pinkney talents and energy were marking him as a rising leader in the black community but he was unknown in wider political circles. Not yet 40 years old, he first gained broad public attention by breaking the impasse between Leroy Kelly and the Cleveland Browns when it appeared the halfback might sit out the 1967 football season because of contract difficulties.

In the summer of 1967, Kelly was one of five black players “holding out” from   Browns training camp along with John Wooten, Sidney Williams, Mike Howell and John Brown.

Jim Brown held a press conference at M-G-M Studios in Hollywood where he was starring in a movie. He blasted Browns owner Art Modell over the players’ salaries. Brown mentioned that Kelly “received the unbelievable salary last year of $20,000.” 

Said Brown, “This man represents the key to a championship for the Cleveland Browns. He is not even close to making the salary that average untried rookies are guaranteed.” These negotiations reached an impasse.

Pinkney had known Kelly since he was drafted and wrote a substantial insurance policy on him in 1966. By December 1967, he had gained the authority to conduct Kelly’s contract negotiations with Browns ownership.

In early 1968, after a four-hour bargaining session, Kelly signed a four-year, $320,000 deal — the longest contract ever awarded a Browns player at a time when the average salary in the 1960s and 1970s was between $10,000-$20,000.

Former teammates and local news coverage credited Pinkney for finalizing Kelly’s contract negotiations. The Cleveland Plain Dealer at the time reported:

“Modell and the Browns were fortunate, however, that Kelly selected a solid person such as Pinkney to help work out his problems. Matters between the team’s president and the National Football League’s leading rusher had reached something of an impasse. There was need for a third party.” 

I recently interviewed retired All-Pro guard and civil rights activist John B. Wooten about his former brother-in-law, Pinkney, and their early days serving together in the Negro Industrial and Economic Union (NIEU), later known as the Black Economic Union.

Headquartered in Cleveland, the NIEU was a first of its kind organization. Founded in 1966 by Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown, NIEU’s mission focused on eliminating poverty in African American communities and improving economic conditions through financial literacy, education, programming and other resources. Wooten served as Vice President, Pinkney was Secretary-Treasurer and soon-to-be mayor Carl B. Stokes was Legal-Secretary.

Pinkney began advising Wooten in 1968 during his ninth season with the Browns after Wooten was released following a dispute with a teammate, cornerback Ross Fichtner. Fichtner who held an annual golf tournament, called Wooten to say that because of complaints about the behavior of several of the Browns’ black players the year before, no blacks would be invited to play in that summer’s tournament.

Wooten offered to make amends to resolve the allegations but Fichtner remained adamant: no black players would be invited to the tournament. When Browns owner Art Modell read about the incident in the newspaper — Wooten spoke to a local columnist about the issue — he waived both players.

“I was very upset because I had been chosen earlier that season as one of the best guards in the league and here I am getting waived,” Wooten said.

Wooten, wearing a dashiki, and Pinkney met with then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle while he was in Canton for the annual Hall of Fame game. They threatened to file a discrimination lawsuit if Wooten was not reinstated.

High-powered New York attorney Louis Nizer, whose client list included Johnny Carson, Charlie Chaplin, Julius Erving, Salvador Dali and others, offered to represent Wooten at no cost. Pinkney negotiated a solution for Wooten to play for new owner Edward Bennett Williams of the Washington Redskins.

“Arnold was involved in all of that with us, in terms of meeting with the commissioner, explaining to the commissioner what we were going to do and how we were going to do it, “Wooten said. “Arnold did all of the talking.”

During that same summer of 1968, as the Browns were preparing for a season of championship expectations, Pinkney and other black community leaders publicly pressured the owner to hire more black coaches and front-office personnel.

On August 6, owner Art Modell, along with his general manager and personnel director, met with Pinkney and ten other leaders in the black community for three hours to discuss the team’s hiring practices. Pinkney and his allies demanded the Browns hire more black coaching and front-office personnel. Modell took the position that the “Browns record of equal opportunity for the Negro player is legendary.” 

Later that month, in response to public protest organized by Pinkney and other black leaders, Modell and the Browns repeated their position in a statement that said, “We shall continue as we have in the past our practice of hiring people whether they be players or executives solely on their qualifications and fitness for the particular job with total disregard to the applicant’s color or national origin.”

In a 2017 interview, former Browns safety Walter Beach III, recalled owner Art Modell once telling him, “Walt, I’ve done more for black people than they’ve done for themselves.”

Beach also described an instance on the team plane when Modell instructed him not to read a book about Elijah Muhammad. Beach fired back: “A man can’t tell another man what to read. I play football for you. If you don’t want me on this team, when we get home, give me a check and I’ll leave. But, don’t ever think you can tell me what to read.”

“He actually believed he owned me,” Beach said.  “Not only me, but I think he believed he owned all of them guys. That’s that ownership mentality. That’s the mentality that I was dealing with. That was a contentious relationship.” 

And finally, a year later at only 38-years-old, Pinkney represented his third African American athlete, Browns defensive tackle Walter Johnson. Johnson agreed to terms on July 24, 1969, after final negotiations between Pinkney and the Browns general manager. Johnson played 13 seasons, including 12 with the Browns, and became a three-time Pro Bowler.

A Man for All Seasons

It’s fascinating to consider the dynamics that had Pinkney, now a prominent political figure with his friend Carl Stokes sitting in the mayor’s chair, growing a national representation at the height of the Civil Rights movement, negotiating head to head with the all-white Browns ownership that radiated a plantation mentality.   

While Eugene Parker is no doubt justly celebrated for his work as one of the earliest black sports agents, he would have only been a teenager in the mid-to-late 1960s when Pinkney was juggling balls on many fronts. And though Pinkney’s client list may not have included top first-round picks, many of the players he represented were Pro Bowlers.

Beyond just representing players, Pinkney was championing the hiring of blacks in leadership positions more than 50 years ago and helping to pave the way for those who followed. While he has not received the recognition, Pinkney was clearly a pioneer.

Former Cleveland Browns
All-Pro Guard John Wooten

“That's true,” Wooten said. “It's true and I know Eugene and all those guys. The point of it all is that Arnold never put on that particular hat and said, ‘You know I'm going to be an agent.’ He never got credit for that yet he was involved in all of these negotiations.”

As I told him early on, ‘You know, we just need you to help. We need your help, your expertise, your knowledge.’ Above  all, he just had a calmness about him. He had that legal thing in his mind and that's why he did such a great job for all of us. There's me with Rozelle, but also with Kelly, Walt Johnson and those guys but he never took on the vision of agent.”

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CDC Reverses Course Again on Using Race As Testing Criteria

Minority Groups with Higher Case and Death Rates Deemed a Priority, Then Not

By Afi Scruggs

This public service journalism article provided by nonprofit nonpartisan Eye on Ohio, the Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism. 

After changing the guidelines to test ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19, the CDC reversed course again last week, saying that African Americans exposed to the virus could not get tested without symptoms.

A May 3 directive allowed physicians to test “persons without symptoms who come from racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by adverse COVID-19 outcomes—currently African Americans, Hispanics, and some American Indian tribes (e.g., Navajo Nation).” 

On May 6, however, all mention of race and ethnicity disappeared. The agency once again advised prioritizing persons with symptoms, especially if they were hospitalized, or were healthcare workers. Asymptomatic persons could be tested if  local health departments deemed it necessary for surveillance or monitoring, the CDC said.

Nationally, CDC statistics reveal Blacks comprise 28 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million COVID cases and 21 percent of fatalities — more than double their percentage of the nation’s population. It’s a change that the National Medical Association, the nation’s oldest organization advocating for African American physicians and patients, has been advocating for since April 15. The organization, along with The Rainbow Coalition, released a public letter demanding  “high-risk groups including persons who are African American, Latinx, American Indian/Alaskan Native should be assigned a high priority risk score to enable testing.”

After numerous calls starting at 10 a.m. Wednesday, CDC officials said they would check into the change and issue a statement soon.

Leon McDougle M.D.
Professor of Family Medicine at
The Ohio State University 

Dr. Leon McDougle, is a professor of family medicine at the Ohio State University, and the president-elect of the National Medical Association, the nation’s oldest professional and advocacy organization for African American physicians. His group was among those lobbying for considering race and ethnicity when screening for COVID19 tests.  In an email, he said he was “disappointed with the reversal.” 

“Rescinding of this update retains yet another barrier to diagnostic testing with the nasal swab for racial and ethnic groups who may be less likely to move beyond the screening questions for testing and have been disproportionately impacted by untimely deaths related to COVID-19. The reasoning behind this policy reversal must be explained to the public,” he wrote. 

The state’s latest guidelines consider race and ethnicity if the patient has symptoms as well as underlying conditions that make the virus more severe.

As disease has spread across the nation, African Americans have become a significant percentage of fatalities. And the state’s guidelines require a physician’s statement for testing — a qualification many African Americans don’t have, doctors say.

By May 6, for example, the Ohio Department of Health reported 20,072 confirmed cases and 1,097 confirmed deaths. Blacks comprised 26 percent of those cases, although they are only about 13 percent of the state’s population. 

Ohio’s numbers mirrored trends in nearby states such as Illinois, where Blacks comprised 23 percent of confirmed cases, although they are only about 14 percent of Illinois residents. And in Indiana, African Americans accounted for almost 16 percent of confirmed cases, although they’re barely 10 percent of the population.

The trends were evident, even though Ohio lagged when it came to testing for the novel coronavirus. 

By May 6, Ohio administered 160,735 tests, or 1.37 percent of the population. That was well behind Illinois, which had tested 2.73 percent of its population, and Indiana, which had tested 1.72 percent of the population. Nationally, 2.29 percent of the nation’s population had been tested for COVID-19. 

The percentages come from dividing state testing figures compiled by the COVID19 Tracking Project, by state population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Blacks may be more susceptible to COVID because of health conditions that make the virus more deadly, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which are prevalent among African Americans. The American Heart Association says 40 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks have high blood pressure, the highest rate in the world.  

Additionally, employment puts African Americans at risk for COVID19. According to census data, 25 percent of African Americans work in service sector jobs, compared to 18 percent of all Americans. These types of jobs don’t offer the opportunity to work at home and thus sequester during the lockdowns.

Terry Allan
Cuyahoga County
Health Commissioner

“These frontline workers, these essential workers are often low-income workers of color,” said Terry Allan, the Cuyahoga County Health Commissioner. “They’re working in fast food restaurants, they’re working in long-term care facilities. They’re working in hospitals, often in support roles. They’re out there interacting with people more than people who are home, in terms of shelter in place.”

Societal and occupational factors hampered Blacks from getting tested during the first weeks of the pandemic, when CDC guidelines dictated who to test and scarcity of kits determined testing sites. 

“One of the biggest things right now is the stratification of who’s at risk: the risk being certain symptoms or certain employment exposures, and that doesn’t get people tested as broadly as testing needs to be done,”  Dr. Alonzo Patterson said in April. 

What does it take to get tested?

In late March, CDC created three priorities for tests. The highest priority went to hospitalized patients and healthcare workers. Next on the list were elderly, residents of long-term care facilities, patients with underlying conditions that make them more susceptible to the novel coronavirus and first responders. All four had to be symptomatic to be tested for the disease.

If resources allowed, the CDC recommended testing “individuals in the surrounding community of rapidly increasing hospital cases to decrease community spread and ensure health of essential workers.” That third level included critical infrastructure workers with symptoms; folks with mild symptoms who live in a coronavirus hotspot; healthcare workers and  first responders; and anyone else with symptoms. 

But folks who didn’t show any signs of the disease — fever, cough and shortness of breath — were classified as “non-priority.” The Ohio Health Department has a similar rubric.

Then, as now, CDC urges physicians to “use their judgment to determine if a patient has signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and whether the patient should be tested.” 

Patterson is a pediatrician who practices in Dayton. He said he has tests in his office. But the question was allocation of resources and adhering to the guidelines. 

“It’s not really a barrier for me to do the tests. The question is, do the guidelines warrant doing the tests on just everybody, or anybody with mild symptoms. Right now, it’s not recommending that,” he said.

He had tested five patients, all of whom were negative. They  had “minor symptoms,” but lived with folks who were at high-risk for getting the disease. 

“Three siblings lived with elderly grandparents, one lived with an immunocompromised parent and the other patient was immunocompromised himself,” he wrote in an email. “I’m still deciding if I will test all patients just based on race/ethnicity with the tests for active infection (nasal swabs) versus waiting on reliable antibody testing (blood test) as a better way to determine who was infected during this pandemic.

Dr. Nancy Mathieu is a Haitian-American physician who practices family medicine in Mansfield. She had similar experiences with her patients.

“(To be tested) You have to say,  ‘I’m short of breath, I have a cough, I have a fever.’ If someone has anything related to that, they will be tested. Contact is not enough because we are limited (in tests),” she said in April before release of the latest CDC guidelines. 

Scarcity of tests was the reason the Cuyahoga County Health Department focused on “congregate facilities” — nursing homes, hospice, residential care facilities.

Romona Brazile

But finding enough tests for residents in those locations was difficult. Romona Brazile, acting co-director of prevention and wellness for the Cuyahoga County Department of Health, said her agency scrambled  and often came up empty-handed. 

“We got a notification that some testing kits were available. We immediately tried to order them. We got a confirmation number and (they) were supposed to come the next day. The next day comes and the order was canceled. No more supplies were available and costs at other places had skyrocketed, like times four,” she said. 

Getting past the screeners doesn’t automatically guarantee a test, however.

After telephone screening, suspected patients are directed to their personal care physician or PCP for a prescription. Having a personal physician is a requirement for University Hospitals in Cleveland, even as it increases the number of places where folks can get tested. In a statement, the hospital said it is expanding testing sites to locations, “ near an existing UH facility, or accessible from a major highway or accessible via public transportation. .... All patients will need to have a healthcare provider’s order for testing before they arrive at any location.

But a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of 2018 census data found 25 percent of Black Ohioans lack a personal doctor, and 10 percent of nonelderly African Americans are uninsured. 

“The larger hospitals are doing the testing, and that’s usually through having a primary care physician to write the order for that test,” Mathieu said. “(Patients who)  don’t have PCP, they can’t get a test.” Mathieu said, adding emergency rooms will take walk-in patients if their symptoms are severe enough.

If a patient is positive with mild symptoms or suspected of being positive, they’re usually advised to undergo self-quarantine for 14 days. The treatment is onerous. The CDC says the patient should stay home and limit contact with others. Those who are sick should isolate themselves in a specific room and “using a different bathroom (if possible).”

But Dr. Mathieu notes the prescription can be difficult, especially for folks who don't have a doctor’s note.

“We prefer someone who is self-quarantined should not be going to the store, not going to work, basically staying home. But you don’t have a doctor’s order.”

And for people living with others in tight circumstances, self-quarantining “is not possible, honestly,” Mathieu said. 

“If you’re lucky enough to have three or four baths in your home, and you’re sick, you stay in that bath ... You could self-quarantine easily.  It is hard to really self-quarantine and that’s why this can go through an entire household and affect everyone.”

What are the state’s plans for further testing and how do African Americans fit in? 

The most recent CDC guidelines demonstrate a change in focus when it comes to COVID. Healthcare experts say determining the percentage of non-symptomatic carriers is critical to controlling the virus. That’s one reason Ohio plans on conducting random testing of roughly 100 citizens, according to several published reports. The Ohio Department of Health didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment on the testing. 

The methodology would divide the state into 30 clusters, and randomly sample residents from each of them. The results would be used to formulate additional policies, said Dr. Greg Rempala, who is a professor in the college of public health at Ohio State University, as well as a member of the state’s COVID19 response team. 

“There’s this theory that there’s lots of people who have no symptoms and they are infecting others,” he said. “Part of the effort here, is to make sure we understand whether this is true or not.”

The state hasn’t released when the testing will begin, how regions will be decided, nor the demographics of the random samples. 

But Gov. Mike DeWine on May 4  announced plans to test up to 22,000 per day by the end of May. 

In Cincinnati, a coalition of 20 African-American organizations has organized to get information to their constituents. They’ve created a website, covid19communityresources.com that’s a one-stop shop for information about the disease.  And CoHear, a community engagement organization, has issued a report urging a next step: making testing and masks convenient and accessible for  African American neighborhoods.

“Healthcare providers and leaders must work in collaboration with trusted and reliable institutions like schools, churches, and community organizations to host testing sites and disseminate masks,” the report said. 

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Black Lives Matter

The erasure of black life

By R. T. Andrews

It’s no surprise that the phrase Black Lives Matter remains contentious six years after it sparked a new movement for social justice. Two murderous vigilantes are in jail and the public eye today because they denied a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, his life. Their community was complicit in that denial until the uproar of a larger community made that silence and denial untenable.

At home here in Greater Cleveland we have been studying the denial of black life through another lens: our disappearance from the communal record. 

I came of age as the son of a minister and a choir director. I came to love and appreciate literally hundreds of people through my church, most of them black. These people were a core part of my identity, although I certainly didn’t think of it that way as an adolescent.

Both my parents died when I was in my twenties. I still remember many of the details of their funerals, notwithstanding my numbness at the time. The kindness of church members and others was a great source of comfort as I processed my grief. The deaths of my mother at 51 and of my father at 61 were noted in the daily papers, acknowledgments of their contributions to the community.

"Obituaries have disappeared without last rites."

Not long after my Dad died, I became a deacon. I began to attend a lot more funerals. I learned more about the grieving process. As I listened to eulogies and read obituaries in funeral programs, I was routinely surprised to learn details about the rich lives of people I had grown up around and whom I thought I knew.

I came to understand that we all have stories. I also came to regret my superficial attention to some of my predecessors and their stories, which I learned only belatedly and often incompletely. I was late to recognize that I had grown up amongst pioneers, world-class scholars, Tuskegee Airmen, everyday heroes and sheroes.

The world has changed in many ways since my adolescence and my deacon days. One critical way is the loss of common sources of basic information. In Greater Cleveland we are down to less than half a daily newspaper and a diminished crop of community newspapers. Obituaries have become a casualty of the relentless economics of corporate publishers. When your newsroom has been reduced by 90%, the economies of publishing declare that obituaries are an unaffordable luxury.

So, obituaries have disappeared without last rites. Their only surviving relatives are death notices, paid announcements of a loved one’s passing. The cost of such notices, which are now renamed as obits, will give you sticker shock: they run in The Plain Dealer at a cost of hundreds of dollars.

I spoke earlier this week with a funeral director who told me that because of the cost, only about one in ten families chooses to purchase a death notice.

Our community has been reduced to announcing loss of life on Facebook. This seems inadequate to me. Moreover, it seems wrong.

I have written a few obituaries in my life. I have talked to obit writers. The Plain Dealer once assigned a friend of mine, Dick Peery, to the obit beat in seeming punishment for being an outspoken employee and union activist. Another obit writer, Jim Sheeler, who now teaches at Case Western Reserve University, won a Pulitzer Prize for his excellent work in memorializing the dead.

If we do not treasure the lives of those who preceded us and those who have led the way, how can we say we value black lives, or for that matter, any life?

For perspective on that question we reached out to Rev. Marvin McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church and president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School until he retired and returned to Cleveland last year. Via email, he addressed end of life rituals from the experience of one who has preached over a thousand eulogies in churches, funeral parlors, at grave sites, and in mausoleums where bodies had already been cremated:

  “It is part of our African DNA to remember and honor our ancestors. In honoring them at death we remind ourselves of the things that link the past, the present, and the future.”

Exactly! The failure to link our past, present and future, leaves us adrift as a community, without understanding, direction or vision.

Over the past few months, we have written and posted some obituaries here. The responses we  received have been deeply moving. They speak to the sense of community that we still have, even as we grieve independently over the fact that physical distancing means we cannot grieve collectively. The messages have reinforced the fact that there is a cost when we do not provide appropriate remembrance and closure.

In some ways, our sense of community has been reinforced by the COVID-19 crisis that is laying siege to our values. We are feeding each other, checking up on one another, being more patient and solicitous with one another. Millions of us are masking up for one another, in open defiance of leaders who are ramping up their efforts to divide us. And some elected officials, business leaders, and groups like Ohio Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, D-Akron, State Senator Sandra Williams, D-Cleveland, businessman LaRese Purnell and the United Pastors in Mission, have stepped up in their respective lanes to provide information, resources, and prod those in power to respond with a greater sense of urgency.

We know the black community is suffering disproportionately from this virus. While the disease is no respecter of persons, ethnicities, or classes, the results are foreordained to be unequal when unleashed in unequal spaces.

Even as we wrestle with that fact, and work to mitigate negative outcomes, we must continue to honor the lives of our deceased while we protect and support one another.

We will be reaching out to area funeral directors and clergy to see how we might work together to ensure that every life lost, whether to COVID-19 or some other cost, is appropriately honored as a part of the chain that links our past to our future.

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Editor’s Note: As we prepared to post this story, one of our readers sent us this link from the Washington Post describing how the pandemic is tragically unfolding in the northern Italian province of Bergamo. This screenshot illustrates how that community is suffering and how the lives lost to the disease are being recognized in their local news.

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Giants in Our Midst

Valeria McPherson, 90

November 2, 1929 — May 6, 2020

OBITUARY

 

Created space for herself and others in cosmetology, politics

By R. T. Andrews

Loyal and loquacious, Valeria McPherson could be counted upon to put her energy and her voice in service to the old-school values she espoused. A strong sense of community led to her enduring commitments to her fellow beauticians and to a Republican Party that faded and disappeared before she did.

McPherson passed away peacefully on May 6 at the McGregor Nursing Home.

Valeria was born Nov 2, 1929 to the late Ralph and Asilee McPherson in Cleveland, Ohio.  She was a retired Bailiff with Cleveland Municipal Court, a former member of the State of Ohio Board of Cosmetology and was very active in the Republican party politics in the Cleveland area. She started her working career operating a hair salon in Cleveland.    

She hailed from the “do for self” era that honored independent small businesspeople, barbers and beauticians and purveyors of retail goods and services who constituted the essential workers in the black side of Jim Crow America. She was driven by the belief that opportunity and independence for black people could best be advanced through cooperative efforts in the civic and commercial arenas.

McPherson’s dedication made her a dependable presence in Columbus where she could be counted upon to advocate for the black beautician she represented as president of the Ohio Association of Beauticians.  Her Republican bona fides enabled her to secure multiple appointments to the state cosmetology board where she continued her advocacy.

Dr. Brenda Holsey of Toledo, OAB’s current state president, recalls McPherson’s decades-long record of advocacy. “She was always trying to help, to share information. She wanted to add value.”

Back home in Cleveland, McPherson’s passions secured her a spot as a personal bailiff to then-Cleveland Municipal Court judge Sara J. Harper.

Wholesale beauty supplier Leroy Sharp and serial entrepreneur Vel Scott are among those who remember McPherson fondly. Scott and McPherson were frequent lunch companions. Sharp saw his friend as a staunch advocate for the people she represented even as she toiled in the minority.

Cuyahoga GOP chairwoman Lucy Stickan describes McPherson as a “pillar of the party” but said their relationship was so much richer than that. “She was wonderful”, recalls Stickan. “Loyal. Intelligent. Honorable. Kind. You were blessed to call her friend.”   

McPherson is survived by her brother Ralph (Ruthie) McPherson Jr, sister-in-law Juanita McPherson, and (13) nieces and nephews — Ellen Ruth McPherson, Michele Hauser, Sterling Hauser, Russell (Renee) Hauser, Sherrie Hauser Simmons, Reginald McPherson, Jeffrey (Donna) McPherson, Patricia McPherson, Karen McPherson, Teri (Kevin) Robinson, Marlon McPherson, Anthony McPherson, and Gregory McPherson — as well as a host of grand and great-grand nieces and nephews.

There will be a graveside service tomorrow, Wednesday, May 13, at 1PM at Lake View Cemetery, 12316 Euclid Ave [44106].

Arrangements have been entrusted to Lucas Funeral Home, 9010 Garfield Blvd. [44125].

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