CINCINNATI — Edmund Spillers said it’s getting hard to find birthday gifts for his 102-year-old grandmother.
But Spillers’ grandmother, Cincinnati civil rights icon Marjorie Parham, was gifted something special this year: City officials renamed a street after her.
City officials renamed Lincoln Avenue to Marjorie Parham Way on Wednesday, her 102nd birthday.
“This is definitely awe inspiring,” Spillers said. “We live in the legacy of Grandma.”
Parham, the longtime publisher of “The Cincinnati Herald,” was instrumental in publishing “perspectives that other people didn’t understand,” Cincinnati city council member Wendell Young said.
“You (Parham) gave us news other people wouldn’t print,” Young said. “You took the time to understand what was going on in our community and give an accurate accounting and give us one that we could believe in.”
Parham changed the landscape for Cincinnati and the African American community by creating the only true documentation of the accomplishments of black people in the city, Young said.
“There’s always a need for another perspective,” Young said. “There’s always a need of the real truth to be told. Mrs. Parham, you are a truth teller.”
But Parham said she was just doing her job.
“I’ve done the things that I saw needed to be done. That’s all. I don’t really feel there’s anything unusual about it,” Parham said.
