Often, when we think of local civil rights issues, we think of things that happened a long time ago. In the early 1800s, for example, immigrants jockeyed for better jobs, higher pay and increased social recognition. Not long after, Catholic and Jewish immigrants challenged the Protestant control of the public schools. And when slavery was still very much a way of life in the south, free blacks struggled against the overt racist hostility that dominated Cincinnati society.

As the city has grown, so has its issues. By the mid 1900s, slavery was a matter of the past, but racism and discrimination had developed into segregation and economic disparity. Women, who had finally earned the right to vote in 1920 (and formed their own League of Women Voters here just one month later), continued to pursue equality on all fronts during the country's feminist movement in the 1960s. And the physically and mentally disabled citizens of Cincinnati (and the rest of the country as well) struggled well into the late twentieth century for equal access to the jobs, reproductive rights, social opportunities and public education that other Cincinnatians had enjoyed for years.

It is easy to label Civil Rights issues a thing of the past, but those same issues play an important role for new groups in Cincinnati today as well. After the terrorist group Al-Qaeda led the 9/11 attacks on America, local Islamic temples suffered threats simply because of their ethnic heritage. Cincinnati's gay community joined the national effort to secure greater acceptance and full rights, most notably the same rights and recognition as married heterosexual couples. And Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods, populated largely with Appalachians and African Americans, are isolated, abandoned and misunderstood by the gentrified urban populace and the suburbanites who surround the city.

Race relations continue to top the chart of problematic civil rights issues in Cincinnati. Many in the Black community continue to view police tactics as racist and brutal. Drug trade has spawned increased violence and "Black on Black" crime not only in the center city, but in the older suburbs as well. And, as Cincinnati's older neighborhoods struggle with poverty, crime and troubled schools, middle class white and black families are abandoning the older city and fueling a sprawling growth into the surrounding counties. The city's leadership has also recognized a drain of what is labeled "the creative class," young professionals who leave this area for culturally diverse communities.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati has built a visionary learning center on the bank of the Ohio River, directly across from Kentucky and on the site where so much Underground Railroad activity took place 150 years ago. The Freedom Center incorporates the themes of cooperation, freedom, perseverance and courage in the stories it tells and it illustrates how people took on the roles of victim, freedom seeker, ally, oppressor or bystander-a framework that serves as a useful tool for looking at modern-day freedom struggles, around the world and in Southwestern Ohio.

As this overview and the accompanying timeline show: civil rights continues to be an important issue facing Cincinnatians.