Fr. Michael Scanlan, TOR is most fondly remembered as the president who resurrected Catholicism at the College of Steubenville and hosted Franciscan University Presents on EWTN. Relatively few individuals recall that Fr. Scanlan worked extensively with the Steubenville community, particularly while he was dean of the College of Steubenville. Fr. Scanlan tried to make Vatican II’s ecumenical vision a reality in the Ohio Valley by joining ecumenical commissions and boards, preaching in Protestant churches, giving retreats to Protestant groups, and encouraging other Catholic leaders in Steubenville to do the same. He also became a civil rights activist, and as an official at the College of Steubenville, he was in a powerful position to influence others.
In the mid-1960s, Steubenville was still a very segregated town. Views were so polarized that the first interracial civil rights group split into separate African-American and white organizations. Fr. Scanlan was head of the white group, CONCERN, but he was also on good terms with the leader of COMBAT, the African-American group. COMBAT hired minister and community organizer Dick Prosser who had been an assistant to the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky. COMBAT meant business.
On the last weekend of July 1968, Fr. Scanlan walked into his office in the college’s administrative building to find Prosser and Andy Miller, the mayor of Steubenville, awaiting his arrival. Miller informed Fr. Scanlan that the African-Americans were going to burn Steubenville down.
The trouble started in Weirton, WV. Despite the passage of the civil rights bill two years previous, the Weirton Community Center still had a policy against interracial dancing. A young African-American man was dismissed the night before for dancing with a white girl at a high-school dance. Angry members of the African-American community marched down the street to the police station to complain, only to be met by nervous police officers in riot gear who rushed the crowd. Looting of stores, random vandalism, arson, and mass arrests of African-American youths followed.
Exaggerated rumors only made this challenging situation worse. Locals reported that carloads of African-Americans armed with rifles were roaming white neighborhoods, and that white gangs were in search of African-Americans to kill. The last report said that African-American gangs were on their way across the Ohio River to burn down the racist city of Steubenville.
In the words of Fr. Scanlan, in his book “Let the Fire Fall”:
None of this surprised me. Three months before, I had sent the mayor a proposal that he set up a rumor control center to prevent exactly this situation. As I listened to Miller and Prosser, I beat down an impulse to say, “ I told you so.”
“It sounds bad,” I agreed after they had finished. “What can I do to help?”
“We want you to take over the city, Father,” the mayor said. His face was grim. He wasn’t kidding.
“What did you say?”
“We want you to take over,” said Prosser. “Everybody trusts you, or at least more people trust you than trust the mayor, or the police chief, or me.”
The mayor spoke. “Remember that report you sent me about riot situations and rumors? Well, I didn’t look at it until last night. It looks good. Why don’t you just come downtown and put it into effect?”
It was obvious that the mayor didn’t have a clue as to what to do in a riot situation, so Fr. Scanlan agreed to take over the city for a few days. Mayor Miller handed the City Building over, and Fr. Scanlan immediately set up at a desk and began giving orders to the mayor, police chief, fire chief, and Dick Prosser.
First, they had to remedy the attitude towards police authority. There were no African-American police officers, so respected leaders in the African-American community were found and placed in every police car in Steubenville along with a white officer, at the suggestion of Prosser.
Then, Fr. Scanlan set up the rumor control center - residents were asked to investigate rumors they heard and report them to the center. The center promised to respond to citizens within the hour with the real story.
The most effective action that Fr. Scanlan took was to override the sacred constitutional right of the press to gather and construe news as it saw fit. All newspaper editors and TV and radio station managers in the area were ordered to check with Fr. Scanlan before reporting anything involving the violence between African-Americans and whites. He threatened to publicly denounce any executive who disregarded this decree, and sure enough:
That afternoon, some whites and African-Americans exchanged taunting words on a street corner in Steubenville, then went their way. On one radio station, however, this incident became a brawl between two gangs, and the reporter said that there were reported injuries and property damage. The station hadn’t checked with me, so I sent a press release to all media denouncing the station and its management. The newspapers and TV reported the denunciation, and the management of the offending station apologized.
The next evening, a store window was smashed. Other than that, the Steubenville riots never materialized. After three days on the job, Fr. Michael Scanlan returned governing of the city to mayor Miller and went back to his normal duties at the college.
