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Ric S. Sheffield  

Author on Gender, Race & Ethnicity; Professor of Legal Studies and Sociology at Kenyon College

Ric S. Sheffield is Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies and Sociology at Kenyon College. He was the founding Director of the John Adams Summer Scholars Program in Socio-legal Studies and the inaugural appointee as the Peter M. Rutkoff Distinguished Teaching Professor of American Studies, Diversity & Inclusion

Before coming to Kenyon, he served for a decade as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio. He began his legal career as a civil rights lawyer handling primarily sex and racial discrimination cases. Subsequently, he held the position of chief attorney and head of the state’s consumer protection division.

In addition to research that has focused upon the relationship between law and issues of gender, race, and ethnicity, he has spent several years examining issues involving the history and experience of African Americans in rural Ohio. He is among a select group of scholars chosen to participate in the Ohio Humanities Council’s speakers’ bureau, lecturing widely on issues of race and law as well as rural diversity. He has published articles, reviews, and book chapters on topics including legal history, the legal profession, and African American social and legal history. He is the author of We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland (2022, Ohio State University Press – Trillium Imprint). His forthcoming book, False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800s Ohio (Swallow Press), examines early voting rights cases and the brave men who brought them in the state of Ohio in the mid-to-late 1800s.

He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University where he attended college, graduate school in sociology, and law school. He has extensive administrative experience that includes serving on various statewide policy-making and regulatory boards, chairing academic departments and programs, and several years on Kenyon College’s senior staff as an associate provost. He is the founding director of the Knox County (Ohio) Black History Digital Archives, one of the first and few of its kind with a focus on rural life, and has led workshops on researching and exploring local Black history and rural diversity.

Speech Topics

Diversity in the Heartland: Exploring the Impact of Increasing Diversity on Small-town Culture

The rural Midwest region of this nation has been home to various racial and ethnic groups, albeit in small numbers, from the earliest days of settlement by non-indigenous people. This absence of a significant numerical presence resulted in the lives and experiences of these people being largely overlooked, if not outright ignored, by the mainstream press, academicians, and local historians. Even popular culture, by the absence of the depiction of rural folks of color, suggests that their presence was either non-existent or didn’t have any meaningful impact upon the region. Among the earliest migrants to the area were African Americans, both free and formerly enslaved. The migration patterns throughout the Midwest saw many, if not most, Black families head north out of southern states during Reconstruction and again after the World Wars largely to seek work in rapidly industrializing urban areas like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland. A much smaller proportion of the Black migrants chose to settle in rural areas where they could take up farming or engage in other types of wage labor within small-town environments with which they were familiar. European immigrants came to the rural Midwest to join family and former townsmen who had settled in these areas. Regardless of their countries of origin or the fact that many were non-English speakers, white migrants more easily integrated into the social fabric of small towns because of race. For most other nonwhite persons, there were few of the traditional draws to settle there: no specialized labor market or economic attractions; no existing ethnic or cultural enclaves; and few familial ties. As a consequence, racial and cultural differences became and have remained major factors in how communities are organized and experienced despite the fact that white residents tend not to see or even accept that to be the case. This program sheds light on these hidden “communities within.”

A History of Race and the Right to Vote: The Example of the Reconstruction Era Ohio Cases

The right to vote, long hailed as the embodiment, sine qua non, of liberty in American society has special historical significance for persons of African descent in the United States. While many northern newspapers were quick to condemn the recalcitrant southern states’ resistance to granting suffrage to Black men, few citizens appreciated how often African Americans suffered the same indignities in the regions north of the Mason-Dixon line. The quest for this quintessential right of citizenship was fraught with challenges and frustration, even in free states like Ohio, especially in rural communities. In weighing the often-dire consequences of resistance to attempts to vote against the potential gains thought to come from the elective franchise, Black Americans in the upper Midwest literally risked life, limb, and livelihood to claim their places at the polls.

The Community Within: Discovering African American History in the Rural Midwest

Many rural areas throughout the Midwest have long-established Black communities that are often invisible to the larger white communities in which they reside. This program relates the adventure of discovering and reclaiming the lost history of African Americans in rural Knox County, Ohio as a typical example. It also seeks to explain the benefits and critical importance of including minority populations within celebrations of heritage while sharing strategies for undertaking such projects in communities of various sizes and racial and ethnic makeups.

Bricks & Mortar Won’t Do: Building Bridges for Rural Diversity on the Shoulders of Empathy and Compassion

This talk is intended to explore the question: “Why empathy, necessary for true racial reckoning in any environment, seems harder to come by in rural America.” Sometimes, it seems like simply a numbers game: there aren’t enough of “them” to gain an understanding of people not like yourself. When probing a bit deeper, it becomes clear that residents of rural areas have fewer opportunities to disabuse themselves of racial stereotypes as well as less exposure to both reasons for and strategies to change negative attitudes about others. Drawing upon examples of cross-racial encounters and exchanges in rural America, the program seeks to reveal many of the primary reasons that it is so common and easy for white people to profess not to “see race.” Until they do, they will be stuck in a space fraught with fear of accusation of insensitivity and racism. It can be a bumpy road to travel, but it is more likely to lead somewhere than continuing to deny that racial issues and tension exist in those friendly little towns.

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