By Ariel Miller
On the afternoon of Friday, February 7, masked neo-Nazis climbed out of a U-Haul truck on an I-75 overpass, some carrying rifles and handguns. They hung huge flags with swastikas and the slogan “America is for white men” towards the Village of Lincoln Heights just north of Cincinnati. The overpass is just a few blocks from Lincoln Heights Elementary School and St. Simon of Cyrene Episcopal Church.
This is how Black History Month 2025 began in Lincoln Heights, the oldest Black-led municipality north of the Mason-Dixon line.
As the news spread, Episcopalians from two historic Black congregations and the staff of St. Monica’s Recreation Center–a ministry of the Sisters of the Transfiguration in Glendale–sprang into action to protect their community. The physical and emotional safety of the children was their top concern.
Dawn Crook Bailey, member St. Andrew’s, Evanston and principal of Lincoln Heights Elementary School, quickly received the news from parents and swiftly changed the bus routes so that her young students would not see the terrifying armed men. She and other teachers rode the buses to shelter the children.
As they were preparing to welcome children to St. Monica’s after school program, Executive Director Mike Pearl and his colleague, Alice Brown, began to receive frantic texts from older students returning home from Princeton Middle and High Schools in Glendale.
“What happened on Friday was traumatic, shocking, and scary,” says Pearl. “The younger kids are somewhat naive, fortunately. But the junior high and high school students saw what was happening.”
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s department provides the policing for Lincoln Heights. They and officers from neighboring Evendale went to the scene to de-escalate. “Myself and about a hundred Lincoln Heights residents, including some of our teens, confronted the protestors as police arrived and attempted to disperse them,” Pearl reported that night to Sister Diana Doncaster, Superior of the Community of the Transfiguration. “Residents did make it close enough to tear the sign down.”
As the news hit the media, the Rev. Elizabeth Hoster, interim rector serving Ascension and Holy Trinity, Wyoming, emailed an emergency call to action to the ACTS coalition of Episcopal congregations in Lincoln Heights, Glendale, and Wyoming. The ACTS parishes and St. Monica’s have been collaborating to hold annual Peace Leaders Camps with the Center for Social-Emotional Learning to teach middle schoolers how to resolve conflicts peacefully.
“This was intentional. The spot was picked.” says Mike Eck, Christ Church Glendale’s leader in the ACTS ministry. “These Nazi rallies are happening all over the country,” including Springfield and Columbus, where Nazis marched through Hoster’s neighborhood.
“Part of the solution will come from the interfaith community rallying around Lincoln Heights to ask what we can do to help,” Eck says.
The Rev. Mary Laymon, Lutheran pastor and priest-in-charge serving St. Simon’s, invited ACTS members to worship on February 9, when the Rev. Canon Jodi Baron, canon to the ordinary for the Diocese of Southern Ohio, would be preaching in honor of the parish’s 90th anniversary and the Rev. Theorphlis Borden’s 33rd anniversary of ordination; the first Black woman in our diocese ordained as to the diaconate. Sister Diana, three other sisters, and others from Christ Church Glendale and Ascension and Holy Trinity came to celebrate and stand in support of St. Simon’s leadership in Lincoln Heights.
At the end of the service, LaVerne Mitchell, senior warden, who serves on Lincoln Heights Village Council, urged those gathered to join a prayer rally on the overpass immediately after the service, and to the council’s emergency town hall meeting the next day.
Led by Lincoln Heights clergy, hundreds of people marched to the overpass for testimony, song, and prayer, including a fiery call to action from Carlton Collins of the Heights Movement, a leader of the counter-protest to the neo-Nazis. Mitchell, Pearl, Principal Bailey, Pastor Laymon, the Rev. Christopher Slane of St. Andrew’s, Evanston, and the Rev. Libbie Crawford of Ascension and Holy Trinity, Wyoming were among those marching.
On Monday, February 10, over a hundred people answered Principal Bailey’s call to form a cheering squad to welcome the children back to school.
“The kids need to know their community will protect them,” says the Rev. Chris Slane. “As the buses rolled up, the children’s faces were pasted against the windows, lit up with amazement and delight. There were a hundred to a hundred and fifty people cheering and dancing, with a DJ playing music. It was like the parting of the Red Sea, with the kids walking on the dry land.”
In the days that followed, Lincoln Heights clergy and civic raised concerns that the white supremacists were not cited for ethnic intimidation, a crime in Ohio. The Lockland School Board demanded an investigation of an Evendale police officer’s engagement with the white supremacists as they parked and organized their weapons next to the annex housing classes for Lockland elementary school students. The call for an investigation has been echoed by Lincoln Heights clergy.
St. Simon’s senior warden Laverne Mitchell called out the absence of local Evendale leadership at the emergency meeting in Lincoln Heights, despite her personal invitation. Recognizing local concern that this crisis threatens to derail years of delicate relationship between elected officials of Lincoln Heights and Evendale, she named their absence as “benign neglect.” She added, “just one person showing up would have helped,” she said. “It would have been better if Chief Holloway had been there.”
What will happen next? It’s clear that Episcopalians who live, worship, and/or serve in Lincoln Heights will strive to support healing, by insisting on transparency and accountability. But they are equally intent on nurturing joy. You can see this flowering on the Facebook pages of St. Monica’s Recreation Center and St. Andrew’s Cincinnati. St. Monica’s is taking the young Peace Leaders on a President’s Day outing to Top Golf, and will hold an indoor picnic for the whole community on Feb. 22, with ACTS friends bringing friendship and some of the covered dishes.
“It was beautiful to converge on that site where so much hate was, and replace it with so much love,” Mike Pearl says about the prayer march on Feb. 9. “The blessing of working here at St. Monica’s Center is the resilience and the natural joy of the children. We are blessed that they are still coming. They are safe here and they are loved here.”
Ariel Miller is a member of Ascension and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Wyoming.
