Oscar Ritchie was born in 1909 in Hallendale, Fla. Ritchie quit school to help with family expenses after his father died and dropped out of college after the Great Depression hit in 1929.
He played banjo in a band and moved to Chicago, where he started his family with wife, Edith, and son, George. They moved to Massillon in 1933 where Ritchie worked for Republic Steel.
Ritchie got his first teaching experience helping immigrants study for their citizenship tests through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Program Administration. He began studying pre-law at Kent State in 1942 and later changed his major to sociology, eventually becoming a doctor of sociology.
In 1947 Ritchie became the first African-American to be part of the Kent State faculty and also the first at any predominantly white university in Ohio. Ritchie remained at Kent State even after being offered the prestigious W.E.B. DuBois Chair of Sociology at Atlanta University.
Oscar Ritchie died on June 16, 1967, at the age of 58. The old Student Union building was dedicated as Oscar Ritchie Hall in 1977, in response to a proposal made by Black United Students. This made him the first African-American to have a predominantly white public university building named in his honor.
— Brianne Carlon
Information from Hierographics.org
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