Trust, Power, and the Work Left Undone
Updated: 14 hours ago
Part Three of “Wheeling Under Investigation,” a three-part series examining the 1971 West Virginia Human Rights Commission report. Part one. Part two.
The most difficult section of the 1971 West Virginia Human Rights Commission report concerns the relationship between Wheeling’s police and its Black community.
The public hearing did not produce one uncontested account of the January weekend. Instead, it revealed two sharply opposing realities—and warned that the city could not restore peace merely by insisting that one side’s perception was correct and the other’s was false.
The commission’s final challenge was not simply to improve community relations.
It was to build public institutions capable of earning trust and enforcing rights.
Two Beliefs and One Dangerous Divide
Black witnesses believed police had entered their neighborhood prepared for a full-scale race riot.
They alleged that officers made mass arrests, detained Black bystanders who had not participated in violence, and used excessive force and verbal abuse against people who happened to be present when the disturbances occurred.
Police representatives described the weekend differently.
They believed they had faced a situation that could have developed into widespread violence and vandalism. They maintained that officers used only the force necessary to control the disturbances and arrest those responsible.
Police witnesses attributed much of the unrest to a small number of “troublemakers,” “outsiders,” or “agitators.” They denied that Wheeling officers had engaged in abuse, brutality, or discriminatory treatment.
The commissioners did not attempt to determine conclusively whether the police had overreacted.
They did conclude that a significant portion of Wheeling’s Black community believed that police abuse and brutality existed. The elimination of that belief, the report stated, had to become a top priority if racial tensions were to ease.
The commission warned that the confrontation could not be resolved by either side simply becoming more emphatic in defending its position.
Dialogue was necessary—but the report did not stop at dialogue.
Acknowledging the Reputation of Individual Officers
The commission cited evidence that several Wheeling police officers had acquired reputations within the Black community for being:
“Tough,” “unfair,” or “prejudiced.”
That finding gave the report considerable moral and institutional weight.
The commissioners warned that automatically denying the possibility of misconduct—or protecting officers from recurring community complaints—would reinforce the belief that the entire police force was hostile toward Black residents.
This did not mean that every officer was accused of misconduct. The report specifically recognized that police departments included both good and bad officers.
Its argument was that the behavior and reputation of even a few officers could damage public confidence in the entire department.
The report also praised the officer then assigned to police-community relations. Nevertheless, it concluded that the efforts of one individual could not overcome the larger institutional problem.
The community-relations program, the commissioners warned, was “doomed to failure” unless the police department recruited, trained, and assigned Black officers.
Representation Was Only the Beginning
The commission recommended an intensive campaign to recruit and employ Black police officers in Wheeling.
Black organizations and residents were to be included in that recruitment effort so that young Black men could be encouraged to consider careers in law enforcement and supported after entering the department.
The report also called for:
Higher professional standards
Better salaries
Expanded training and educational opportunities
Merit-based promotion
A larger and better-trained community-relations staff
The inclusion of Black officers in community-relations work
Consultation with successful programs in cities such as Dayton, Ohio
A police-cadet program involving both Black and white youth
The commission understood that trust could not be manufactured through public relations alone.
Trust required personnel, professional standards, accountability, advancement opportunities, and sustained contact with the community.
Representation mattered because public authority should not appear completely external to the community being policed. Training and advancement mattered because reform could not depend on one sympathetic officer or one temporary program.
A Human Rights Commission Without the Power to Act
The report then examined the institution that was supposed to address discrimination locally: the Wheeling Human Rights Commission.
Its assessment was severe.
There appeared to be broad agreement that the local commission had been ineffective because it lacked official support, adequate funding, professional staff, and essential enforcement powers.
Its members met monthly, but the report said they operated almost entirely in isolation from the larger community. As a result, the Black community no longer viewed the commission as a viable organization for addressing racial problems.
The problem was not necessarily the commitment of its individual members. The problem was the structure in which they were expected to operate.
They had responsibility without sufficient authority.
The state commissioners recommended replacing the resolution that created the local commission with modern human-rights legislation paralleling the West Virginia Human Rights Act.
The reconstructed commission should have at least one professional staff member and clerical support. It should be authorized to investigate discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and housing.
The report recommended using conference and conciliation whenever possible. But if voluntary resolution failed, the commission needed the power to hold public hearings, issue cease-and-desist orders, and seek enforcement in court.
This distinction remains essential.
Community relations asks people to understand one another. Civil-rights enforcement determines what happens when understanding is absent and discrimination continues.
The 1971 report called for both.
Wheeling Already Possessed the Necessary Resources
The report was not without hope.
The commissioners identified what they called a “wealth of resources” among Wheeling’s people and organizations.
The Wheeling NAACP and the newly formed WE EXIST represented a strong nucleus of Black leadership. The Greater Wheeling Community Development Council could provide an interracial bridge. The Chamber of Commerce, churches, public agencies, unions, and civic organizations could bring their resources to a united effort.
The commissioners cited a Wheeling News-Register editorial titled “Uniting For a Better City.” The editorial called for improved housing, expanded recreational facilities, more employment opportunities, and continuing progress in race relations—all directed toward building a better Wheeling for all citizens.
The commission also noted encouraging developments following the hearing. The J.O.B.S. employment program was being launched, the Chamber of Commerce was publicly supporting employment initiatives, and the Greater Wheeling Community Development Council was conducting follow-up meetings.
But hope in this report was conditional.
Goodwill had to become policy, staffing, recruitment, transportation, housing access, and enforcement.
The question was not whether Wheeling could agree with the language of unity. The question was whether the city would change its institutions to make that promise real.
An Unfinished Archive—and an Invitation
Near the end of its report, the commission acknowledged how much of the hearing had been omitted from the published summary.
The certified transcript was to remain on file at the state commission’s office in Charleston. A city-made recording of the testimony was expected to be available in Wheeling.
The report specifically suggested that scholars and students might return to those records for a more comprehensive study than the commissioners had been able to complete.
That invitation now belongs to us.
Locating the transcript and recording could restore voices compressed into the official report: the full testimony of Black residents, the exact responses of public officials, and the exchanges that shaped the commission’s conclusions.
For a foundation committed to preserving and interpreting Wheeling’s African American history, those records are not merely supporting documents. They are part of the city’s unfinished public memory.
The lasting value of the 1971 investigation is not that it resolved Wheeling’s racial conflict. It did not.
Its value is that it named the city’s obligations with unusual clarity:
Opportunity must be accessible.
Rights must be enforceable.
Public institutions must earn trust.
And when a community’s warnings have been ignored for years, the return of calm is not proof that justice has been achieved.
-T
Historical Terminology Note
This article includes historical terms such as “colored” and “Negro” when quoting original sources or identifying organizations as they were known at the time. These terms reflect the language and racial conditions of their era; their inclusion is not an endorsement of their use today.
In our own narrative, we use Black and African American, as appropriate. We preserve historical wording to document the past faithfully while honoring the dignity, humanity, and experiences of the people whose stories we share.
Source: Report to the West Virginia Human Rights Commission of the Public Hearing in Wheeling on February 1, 2, 3, 1971 Relative to the Racial Tension Situation in Wheeling on the Weekend of January 2, 1971, approved April 8, 1971, particularly report pages 9–14.
