{"id":672,"date":"2015-02-05T19:04:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T19:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=672"},"modified":"2015-05-25T14:25:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T14:25:24","slug":"wheeling-memory-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wheeling-memory-project","title":{"rendered":"The Wheeling Memory Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>The Ohio County Public Library launched the Wheeling Memory Project as a contribution to the ongoing community effort to record oral histories from Wheeling\u2019s residents. The project will focus on stories of life in Wheeling\u2019s diverse neighborhoods.\u00a0\n

\n

Series\u00a0One: Ann Thomas, Growing Up in Jim Crow Wheeling<\/h2>\n
Series\u00a0one features Ann Prince Thomas<\/a>, a pioneer and witness to history. She was just six months old when her mother moved to Wheeling from a North Carolina tobacco farm to help Ann\u2019s aunt and uncle run the New Dixie Restaurant on Chapline Street in the middle of what was, at the time, an established African-American neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t $\"Ann$ <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tAnn Thomas was the first African American to graduate from the Ohio Valley General Hospital’s school of nursing. She passed her boards and worked at Ohio Valley General Hospital for 12 years, then as an Ohio County school nurse for 30 more. \n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t $\"Ann's$ <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tAnn’s husband Clyde Thomas was a star running back for the Wheeling Ironmen. After retiring from football, he ran for City Council, won by a landslide, and served four terms. He was the first and, to date, the only African American ever elected to Wheeling\u2019s City Council.\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n
Ann grew up during the era of \u201cJim Crow\u201d (government sanctioned, racial segregation) and witnessed the turbulent transition to desegregation. From first grade, she attended Lincoln (Wheeling\u2019s segregated school), but thanks to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown<\/em> vs. Board of Education<\/em><\/a> (1954), she graduated from Wheeling High School in 1956.<\/p>\n
$\"Wheeling$ <\/a>
Wheeling News-Register, May 17, 1954<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
After graduation, Ann enrolled in the Ohio Valley General Hospital\u2019s school of nursing, and in 1959, she became the first African American to graduate.<\/p>\n
The Wheeling Memory Project is pleased to present Ann Thomas\u2019s story, in her own words.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Like what you\u2019ve read here? \u25bc Please share! We\u2019ve made it easy with these buttons below.\u00a0\u25bc<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ohio County Public Library launched the Wheeling Memory Project as a contribution to the ongoing community effort to record oral histories from Wheeling\u2019s residents. The project will focus on stories of life in Wheeling\u2019s diverse neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[91,97,96,98,101,92,122,93,90,94,100,99],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contributor-ocpl","tag-african-american-history","tag-brown-v-board-of-education","tag-jim-crow","tag-lincoln-school","tag-ohio-valley-general-hospital","tag-oral-histories","tag-personal-stories","tag-spoken-histories","tag-the-wheeling-memory-project","tag-videos","tag-wheeling-city-council","tag-wheeling-ironmen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/F-Ann-Thomas.jpg?fit=738%2C282&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pkc7-aQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":696,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}