Akron resident Anna E. Wasler didn’t intend to be a civil rights pioneer.
But then she died.
When the beloved, 83-year-old grandmother passed away in 1962, her heirs made funeral arrangements and selected a local cemetery as her final resting place.
Grief turned to disbelief, however, when Rose Hill Burial Park refused to sell the family a plot.
The cemetery’s graves were for white people only — and Wasler was black.
Born in 1879, Wasler was a native of Washington, Pa., who moved to Akron about 1956 to live closer to relatives. She was the widow of William J. Wasler, a factory laborer and coal hauler.
In declining health, Wasler moved in with her granddaughter Ann Smith on Winton Avenue in West Akron. The elderly woman spent her final days at Holy Family Home in Parma, where she died Sept. 18, 1962, leaving behind Smith, great-grandson William Henry Anderson, also of Akron, and four great-great grandchildren.
The Rev. G. Lincoln Caddell, pastor of St. Paul AME Church, conducted rites at Turner Funeral Home. “Burial will be in Rose Hill Burial Park,” a Beacon Journal obituary noted.
In making arrangements, Smith recalled an advertising brochure that was mailed to her home from the cemetery at Smith and Medina roads. She inquired about purchasing a plot, but Rose Hill officials turned her down because her grandmother was black.
Five months earlier, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had told a crowd in Memorial Hall at the University of Akron:
“Segregation is not something encountered merely in the South, although there we find it in its most glaring and conspicuous form. As long as we have discrimination in housing — where the Negro cannot buy or rent a house wherever he has money capable of placing him — we will always have segregation.”
Obviously, that applied to cemeteries as well.
Complaint filed
Smith believed that Rose Hill was violating the Ohio Civil Rights Act of 1959, which guaranteed fair access to “places of public accommodation.” She filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the law’s enforcing body, and stored her grandmother’s casket in a crypt at Glendale Cemetery until the dispute could be resolved.
The Ohio Civil Rights Commission scheduled a public hearing Nov. 2 in Akron with Cleveland attorney Jack G. Day serving as special examiner.
William R. McClenathen, attorney for Rose Hill, testified that the cemetery had “contractual relationships” with local congregations and fraternal groups to restrict burial plots “in certain prescribed sections.”
“The rules and regulations have been in effect approximately 40 years and state that ‘Rose Hill Burial Park is maintained for the interment of persons of the white race,’ ” McClenathen testified.
Furthermore, he claimed, the cemetery was not a place of public accommodation, the Civil Rights Act of Ohio applied only to living persons, and lot owners and their heirs would lose their right to fraternize as they wished.
Cleveland attorney John E. Duda, representing the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, testified that Rose Hill most certainly was a place of public accommodation because it “advertises its burial park and its cemetery function by direct mailing advertisement to the public, among other advertising media.”
According to Duda, the Civil Rights Act covered cemeteries as public facilities “because the language of the law extends beyond restaurants, barbershops, amusement places, travel facilities and the like.”
Examiner Jack Day ordered both sides to file briefs by Dec. 7 before he made a recommendation.
“After that, either side may appeal,” Day said. “The appeal probably will be taken to Summit County Common Pleas Court and then it is up to the courts to make a final decision.”
Decision reached
Day studied the opposing arguments for two months before making his report Feb. 13, 1963.
He concluded that the state law did indeed apply to public cemeteries and he recommended that the Ohio Civil Rights Commission order Rose Hill to accept Wasler’s remains for burial and refrain from further “discriminatory practices.”
Legal proceedings continued for four months. Then the cemetery backed down.
“On advice of counsel, we decided not to take this to court,” Rose Hill Vice President Walter Bittner Jr. told the Beacon Journal on June 19, 1962. “I’d rather not comment beyond that.”
Commission member Duda was jubilant, predicting that the test case would have “a far-reaching effect.”
“This is a great victory for civil rights in Ohio,” he said.
Three days later, the commission integrated all public cemeteries in the state, ruling that no citizen should be excluded from burial because of race. The ruling exempted religious and military cemeteries.
Ten months after Wasler’s death, her remains were removed from the crypt at Glendale and carried by hearse to Rose Hill Burial Park.
Graveside services were conducted Aug. 3, 1963, officially integrating the cemetery 50 years ago. The Akron woman was laid to rest in a quiet corner near a maintenance building. It was off to the side, but by gosh, she was there.
Among the well-known people buried at Rose Hill are Akron publisher John S. Knight, evangelist Rex Humbard, Major League Baseball catcher Luke Sewell, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Dwite H. Schaffner and Akron radio magnate Allen T. Simmons. Their final resting places are surrounded by graves of people from all races, ages and creeds.
Among the lesser-known names at Rose Hill is a civil -rights pioneer buried in Section 7, Lot 229.
A flat, marble stone bears the simple inscription:
ANNA E. WASLER
BELOVED
GRANDMOTHER
1879-1962.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.