One place, among many, for the common good

I’ve lived in Ithaca for 30 years, but it’s rare a week goes by that I don’t learn something new about my second “hometown,” the first being Canandaigua, two lakes over.

As many of you know, there is an abundance of great history in Tompkins County, where generations of residents have and continue to work for the common good.

One of many local institutions that has benefitted from that spirit is the Ithaca Rotary Club, founded in 1915 and the first club approved for a city with a population less than 25,000. (Today, Rotary is in 46 nations with 1.4 million members.)

The names of the club’s past presidents represent a high-profile slice of local history, many with Cornell University connections, from Allan and Robert Treman to Claude Kulp and Homer Thompson. But perhaps most important in Ithaca Rotary’s leadership history is James L. Gibbs.

As captured in an Ithaca Journal article, Gibbs was a trailblazer who improved life in countless ways for Ithaca’s African Americans in the mid-20th century.

“He was a man who took community service seriously and spent his whole life working tirelessly for the betterment of the African American community in Ithaca,” Donna Eschenbrenner wrote (tinyurl.com/2mldafp4). “He did it at a time … when there were no black teachers in the Ithaca schools, when many businesses wouldn’t hire blacks, when realtors wouldn’t show houses to blacks outside of certain neighborhoods, when some restaurants wouldn’t serve black customers, and when labor unions wouldn’t take blacks into apprenticeship programs.”

In 1937, Gibbs became the first director of the new Southside Community Center, which offered a range of critical services, including job training, recreational activities and a nutrition clinic for preschool children.

During his seven-year tenure at Southside, Gibbs and his wife, Hortense, played a vital role in expanding the limited job opportunities available to African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s. High school students who participated in the job-training programs Southside offered were among the first African Americans, Eschenbrenner noted, “to break the color barrier in professional Ithaca.”

Recognizing Gibbs’ legacy, the Ithaca Rotary Club in 1984 created a $1,500 annual scholarship for students who are dedicated to human relations and interracial understanding. Last June, the club awarded the James L Gibbs Scholarship to Fatoumata Alima Fofana, a 2022 graduate of Ithaca High School who helped organize the school’s first Student of Color Summit (tinyurl.com/2em6v9df).

The Ithaca Rotary Club is now led by Mary Kane, president of Concept Systems Inc. You can find out more about the Ithaca Rotary Club by visiting its website at ithacarotary.com. And if you’d like to attend a meeting, please attend Rotary Visitors Day from noon to 1:30 p.m. Nov. 9. You can register for this event by contacting Rotarian Sherrie Negrea at sherrie@versatilewriting.com.

This is the first in a series of occasional articles touching on long-standing local entities in and around Tompkins County. East Hill Notes are published the first and third Wednesdays of each month. Gary Stewart is the associate vice president for community relations at Cornell University.