The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission. Phillip J. Obermiller

the Migration Services Committee of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and the Mayor’s Committee on New Residents held an Institute on Cultural Patterns of Newcomers in October of 1957. Four sessions were held “dealing with the four major immigrant groups in Chicago: the Southern Negro, the Southern Mountain White, the Puerto Rican, and the Mexican.”

      Nominations to the MFRC and its board were made by the committee itself and forwarded to the mayor, who made the appointments. Although the years between 1955 and 1960 marked the peak of Appalachian migration to the city, the MFRC never nominated an Appalachian representative to serve on the board or the committee at large. The racial turmoil of the 1960s would distract the committee from this constituency, but a reconstituted Cincinnati Human Relations Commission would return to an Appalachian focus in the 1970s.