By Kathy Wray Coleman, Publisher, Editor-n-Chief,Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog
Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist and 20 year investigative journalist who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black press with print newspapers in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio- The East Cleveland Library Board of Trustees has rehired Executive Director Sheba Marcus Bey (pictured), whom they fired last year amid a fallout between the four male trustees, and the three women members. And the controversial library board, whose members are appointed by the East Cleveland Board of Education, is back down from nine to the seven members as required by state law and following a non-binding opinion by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on the removal of two of its members.
That opinion says that the school board had no authority to remove then president William Fambrough and trustee Devin Branch earlier this year, both of whom had refused to leave their positions, saying the school board had no authority to remove them.
Otis O'Mays, a former East Cleveland councilman and Arlene Anderson, secretary for the Cleveland Chapter NAACP, had been appointed by the school board, which is led by Una H.R. Kennon, a former East Cleveland Municipal Court Judge and president of the Black Women's Political Action Committee of greater Cleveland, to replace Fambrough and Branch, bringing the number of library board members to nine.
All nine of them are Black, as is Keenon.
Keenon did not return phone calls seeking comment, though she had pushed for the ouster of Fambrough and Branch saying their behavior relative to Marcus-Bey was allegedly arbitrary and capricious, and otherwise unwarranted.
Exactly what entity, if any, can remove the library board members for cause is not clear.
O'Mays and Anderson both received letters stating that they are now off of the library board, which is now led by President Charles E. Bibb Sr, with Fambrough as vice president.
The library trustees voted 4-3 late last year to terminate Marcus-Bey from her $105,000- a-year job just seven months into her tenure there and in the absence of either written charges or a formal complaint, or even a performance review since her hiring in June.
Fambrough, Branch, Bibb and Edward Parker, who has since quit and was replaced by Gerald Silvera, voted to terminate Marcus Bey while the three women library board members, Dr. Mary Rice, Leontine Synor and Terra Turner, voted against the termination saying the actions by their four male colleagues were irresponsible, unjust, and likely illegal.
"They terminated her without any information, charges or a complaint," said Rice at the time of the firing.
The male regime of the library board had said that Marcus-Bey, a Black female, was at the time of her firing allegedly insubordinate to them.
During the height of the discrepancy police and Cuyahoga County deputy sheriffs were routinely called and sent to monitor the then hostile meetings.
Marcus-Bey worked for the Cleveland Public Library for 13 years before getting hired in East Cleveland and had been replaced with interim executive director Monisa Ramseur, who subsequently resigned and was life flighted to a hospital earlier this year relative to an alleged brain aneurysm. She had complained that she did not know how to handle the controversy.
East Cleveland is a majority Black impoverished suburb of Cleveland, a largely Black major American city. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
