Along with a few dozen Columbus-area residents of diverse age, occupation, gender, and race, my wife and I delighted in the monthly First Things event on Saturday, March 18.

Sponsored by Four Seasons City Farm—“one organization, many growing sites”—First Things is a monthly “fund raiser and friend raiser” using the exceptional, truly historic rooms of the landmark, all but forgotten Old First Presbyterian Church on Bryden Road in Old Town East, Columbus.

First Things calls us to celebrate Columbus’ best preserved, if neglected, historic area. Missing from the embarrassing AIA Guide to Columbus, the church—the oldest in Columbus—was founded in 1806.

Now on the third Saturday of each month, from 7-11 pm, the church is home to First Things.

The THC. Testing. Taxes. Testimony. Timeline.

In 1978 the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, a case about affirmative action in higher education. It opined that colleges and universities could not use race as an exclusive basis for granting admission to an institution of higher learning because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Allan Bakke was a white man, an engineer, and a veteran of the United States Marines. When he was thirty-two years old, he applied to a number of medical schools, including the University of California Davis School of Medicine without success. U Cal Davis rejected both his applications. (When I initially read the facts of the case back in the day, my first reaction was that he was probably turned down because of his age. At thirty-two, he was eight years older than the average first-year medical student. Indeed, two institutions rejected his application citing that reason. This was not an uncommon practice at the time.)  

Columbus, Ohio is the United States’ oldest and largest city that lacks both identity and history. By history, I mean a tradition of serious, researched, and documented historical writing by trained professionals, with or without advanced degrees. What passes for history in the Sunday edition of the Columbus Dispatch is not historical writing with close attention to context, relevance, and significance. At best, it is anachronistic antiquarianism.

Rooted in disconnected anecdotes, mainly discovered in old newspapers, it bears no relationship to the results of historical study and historical analysis. Let me be clear, this excludes The Ohio State University District: A Neighborhood History and The Ohio State University Neighborhoods—both vanity press publications; Ohio State University Press’ volumes on university presidents and selected decades; Ed Lentz; and the Ohio History Connection.

Underscoring my conclusion is that the city of Columbus has no history—human or natural—museum. That’s a major absence for a 225-year-old city with more than 900,000 population.