On April 3rd, 1974, a tornado touched down in Greene County.
In the years since much attention has been paid to the impact on Xenia. But the neighboring town of Wilberforce was also hit hard. That includes the town's two HBCUs, Central State and Wilberforce Universities.
The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce is working with the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO this spring to gather and broadcast oral histories of the disaster.
This interview is from Lloyd Edwin, a freshman at Central State when the tornado hit in 1974.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
The tornado
We were in Lane Hall. We were in my room and saw the wind and the debris. We heard the rumbling sound, which sounded like a locomotive.
I remember saying to my friend, 'Hey, man, this looks crazy. It looks like Zeus is upset.'
And my friend Phil said, 'Yeah, he's throwing darts.'
Then the resident advisor said, 'You guys need to stay away from the windows. This is a tornado.'
I said, 'A tornado? like as in The Wizard of Oz.'
He's like, 'yeah,'
We're like, 'Well, we're not in Kansas.'
He said, 'No, we have them out here.'
Aftermath
Real shock and devastation, and to see the demolition of buildings, just walking around the campus and trying to get a sense of where everything was, was unbelievable.
It was incredible to see the impact of the devastation. I remember experiencing it just walking around in awe of the severe damage that the tornado had done to the university,
I remember we were taken to hotels in Dayton. We congregated in one room with friends and just tried to unpack what had happened, make sense of it, and then figure out what the future looks like.
What are we going to do?
And from there, we could make phone calls to our respective homes.
And I remember telling my mother what happened, and she was shocked.
She asked, 'Are you okay? Are you hurt, or are you injured?
I said, 'No. Not injured. Not physically, anyhow. Just emotionally in a state of disorientation and shock.'
And then from there, you know, we were sent home by the university.
Brooklyn
When I got back to Brooklyn, Brooklyn changed.
Actually, Brooklyn didn't change. I changed.
Being away, having independence and freedom, doing things differently. I had immersed myself in a classroom, engaged in an environment where there were a lot of people who looked like me. And so I knew that I couldn't stay home. I was thinking about, okay, where I should go from here.
Then I got home one evening and, not shortly after the tornado. My mother said Doctor Lionel Newsom called and said that school will be reopened and that he expects all students to return.
And so my mother said, 'School's open, so that's where you're going.'
There was a little bit of ambivalence, of course, but at the same time, I knew that I needed to be away from where I was because I had changed. I needed to go back.
Return to Central
So I returned, and we had classes in makeshift facilities and trailers. But I remember Doctor Lionel H. Newsome telling us that the school would be rebuilt and that he would do everything he could to ensure that the Central State would continue to exist. And that was very encouraging.
I believe Central State University's continued life is the result of the class of 1974. Those of us who were there in the spring and those who came in September sustained Central State University because I don't know where it would be had we not been there and graduated from the university.
Kevin Lydy from the Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center conducted the interview for this story.
