Akron’s 200th year began Friday, after Gen. Simon Perkins and Paul Williams filed the plat and co-founded the city of Akron on Dec. 6, 1825.
Perkins donated much of the land that would become the Ohio-Erie Canal and the original plots that formed the City of Akron. The new town of Akron happened to be smaller than the town of Middlebury, said Dave Lieberth, the executive secretary of the Akron Bicentennial Commission.
Lieberth spoke to a packed room at Quaker Station Thursday afternoon, the last day of Akron’s 199th year, and shared a glimpse of Akron history with Akron Roundtable attendees.
In addition to his role with Akron’s bicentennial celebration, Lieberth is president of the Akron History Center, set to open this month. Lieberth’s career has included time as a journalist, a lawyer and the deputy mayor of Akron — and he wrote a book on the 40-year history of the Akron Roundtable. He is also a longtime member and former chair of the Summit County Historical Society.
All of which made Lieberth the appropriate candidate for speaking on the eve of Akron’s bicentennial, said Barry Dunaway, president-elect of the Akron Roundtable’s Board of Directors, who introduced Lieberth at the event.
“Dave has spent a good part of his lifetime promoting the city of Akron and recording its history,” Dunaway said.
Checking in on early 2000s visions for Akron
Quoting the Danish poet Piet Hein, Lieberth said, you will “conquer the present suspiciously fast if you smell of the future — and stink of the past.”
Lieberth said that if forced to come up with a “philosophy of life,” this would be his. The last time he appeared in front of the Akron Roundtable, “smelling of the future” in the fall of 2000, he reported on the work of 400 volunteers who spent a year defining a vision for Akron in 2025.
The “Imagine Akron” report, which received its name from the Rev. Norm Douglas, Lieberth said, included predictions for Akron in its bicentennial year.
The report had many successful predictions, Lieberth said, citing the need to prepare for an aging population, the need to invest money in water and sewage infrastructure (although he said no one could have predicted the billion-dollar cost) and the challenges of informing citizens and voters with the movement toward media convergence.
In addition to predicting Akron’s future, the report made arguments for which changes the city should make as it approaches 2025 — for example, the creation of community learning centers, which would put Akron ahead of statewide educational initiatives. And a few of those ideas are still in progress, namely a widely available, publicly funded early childhood education program.
“Imagine Akron smelled of the future that would require citizens to assemble regularly to confront constant and rapid change,” Lieberth said, although the committee could not have predicted that those meetings would be virtual.
When asked about his predictions for the next 25 years, Lieberth said if everything goes right, all road construction in Akron will be completed, which earned him applause and laughter from the audience.
Akron historian acknowledges the negatives of city’s history
In wading through the city’s two-century existence, Lieberth noted the moments where Akron failed.
When the first Europeans arrived in the Cuyahoga Valley, as many as 2,500 Indigenous people were living in the valley, and the “names they used to identify themselves are largely unknown to us,” Lieberth said. But the list includes the Haudenosaunee, the Seneca, the Cuyahoga from the Iroquoian confederacy, the Huron, the Shawnee, the Ojibwe and the Lenni Lenape.
The Indigenous people were forcibly removed from the land they had sustained for hundreds of years, Lieberth said, a history that is remembered every October when the community walks the Portage Path.
Moving further into Akron’s history, Lieberth mentioned how the city’s urban renewal program in the 1960s “effectively destroyed a dozen intact African American neighborhoods.” The consequences of the urban renewal project are still being addressed today, as the city focuses on the Innerbelt Master Plan.
The way Akron’s past residents surmounted their challenges is a piece of the puzzle that Lieberth hopes inspires people as they take a look at Akron’s history.
“People were supporting each other. They looked out for each other, even though the housing stock was deteriorating,” Lieberth said.
Getting Akronites excited about Rubber City history
There was no “earthly reason” why the rubber industry shouldn’t have settled in Akron, Lieberth said.
“We had land, we had water, we had canals, we had trains,” he said.
And when the city was presented with a challenge — the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 resulting in the loss of access to a substantial amount of natural rubber — a team came together to establish synthetic rubber as a viable alternative, Lieberth said.
“That was a team of Avengers,” Lieberth said. “What more do you need? It had drama. It had heroes. It had molecules.”
This “avengers-style” history is the kind of stuff Lieberth thinks will get young people interested in history.
The stories need to be told in a way that engages people directly, Lieberth said. They need to be reflected in the curriculum of digital materials Akron Public Schools’ teachers are developing as a way to teach Akron history to students.
He also added that the artifacts that will be displayed at the Akron History Center will hopefully play a part in inspiring people of all ages to connect with their past.
Additional Akron bicentennial projects:
- The Akron History Center, located at 172 S. Main St. in downtown Akron, opens this month, Lieberth said, and will feature artifacts from Akron’s 200-year history.
- University of Akron Press is publishing an anthology of Akron history written by 24 authors. Lieberth said it should be out in early 2025.
- Katie Beck, co-artistic director of Gum-Dip Theatre and a member of the commission, will direct an outdoor drama planned for Waters Park in Akron’s Cascade Valley neighborhood.
Upcoming Akron bicentennial events:
- Tuesday Musical Association’s premiere of an orchestral fanfare for the bicentennial celebration, to be debuted at a concert at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall on April 22, 2025.
- The Akron Bicentennial Celebration, Tuesday through Sunday, July 3-6, 2025.
- Downtown Festival at the Civic Gateway – Lock 3, Lock 4, Main Street
- Bicentennial Parade, July 5, 2025.