I am so excited! I slept about six hours before I woke up and gave my monthly Findlay Market tour this morning. For the past month, I had been communicating with a visitor from Iowa who was in town for the Reds vs Cubs game tonight @ Great American Ballpark, emailing her some links to some of our local tourism websites on things to do while she and her family are in town this weekend and gave her and her family a tour of Findlay Market, and sent her some Cincy swag ahead of her arrival at her hotel.
Today I rode the Cincinnati Bell Connector to the main library downtown. I logged into one of the computers and started to do some more research for a future tour, and just so happens, I came across some interesting black history surrounding our local streetcar history.
Sarah Mayrant Fossett was a trailblazer in Cincinnati's early days of the streetcar. In 1860, she tried to board the streetcar, but the conductor refused to board. The conductor drags her for about a block, and she then sues the streetcar company-and won! The conductor was found guilty and fined $10. This act of courage lead to the desegregation of the Cincinnati streetcar for African American women only as the African American men were viewed as the stronger sex and more capable of walking. What the conductor did not know was that Fossett was the wife of an Underground Railroad conductor and a hair stylist to Cincinnati's Caucasian elite at the time. She was also an associate of Levi Coffin and a supporter of the Colored Orphan Asylum.
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| Sarah Mayrant Fossett |
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