Oscar W. Ritchie

Oscar Washington Ritchie (February 16, 1909 – June 16, 1967) was the first African-American professor at a predominantly white university in the state of Ohio.

[3] He immediately enrolled in a graduate program at Kent State University and so impressed the chairman of the Sociology department, James T. Laing, that he was given a teaching position in 1947, taking over from former faculty member Harley Preston.

By fall 1947, Ritchie was appointed full-time faculty member in the Sociology Department, then located in Lowry Hall.

[citation needed] University president Bowman, liberal as he may have been in making Ritchie's appointment to the faculty, considered the NAACP to be "a radical organization", and refused to allow the students to form a local chapter in 1954.

While pursuing his doctorate, Ritchie took a year off from Kent State and studied at the University of Wisconsin after which, in 1949, he resumed his academic duties and he gave the Scholarship Day address in May 1952.

"[9] The amateur chorus donated all of their earnings to the Urban League "for the purchase of music, choir robes and a recording machine.

"[9] With his wife Edith in the choir and him on piano, he managed to keep his musical ambitions alive by presenting Negro spirituals a la Frederick and Harriet Loudin of the neighboring town of Ravenna, Ohio, who led the Fisk Jubilee Singers, for nearly 30 years.

In concert with some of his colleagues at Kent State he also co-founded the Portage County Family Planning, Counseling and Mental Health Center in Ravenna, Ohio, with Dr. Dwight I. Arnold, a KSU Emeritus professor, and Dr. John Guidabaldi (chairman, associate professor, Early Childhood Ed.

It grants $2,000 to $8,000 per year to qualifying African American students who intend to attend Kent State University.

[citation needed] Ritchie died on June 16, 1967, in Ravenna, Ohio's Robinson Memorial Hospital, of lesions on the liver and lung.