Engaging the Community: APIA History Talks in Cincinnati

In May 2024, I had the honor of presenting my research on Vincent Hambright at the Avondale Branch Library. His story, forgotten and silenced, has long lingered at the margins of memory, vibrating between tattered documents in the archive, fragmented in the community’s memory.

I first came across Vincent in 2022 during a search to reclaim overlooked Asian American experiences in Cincinnati. After hundreds of clicks through the digital newspaper archives, I stumbled upon a 1926 article about one of his boxing matches. It was brief, almost wordless, just a small blurb celebrating his win. I paused. Vincent Hambright? Why did this article surface in my search? How could he be connected to Asian American history in Cincinnati?

Wrestling with my own bias and assumptions about who gets remembered in history, I found a line that stopped me: “Filipino kayo artist added another knockout victim to his list…”The phrase was illuminating and revelaing, suggesting visability without recognition and forced me to review how racial narratives are framed and remembered.

Those words opened a door to a possibility. A history once silenced. I began to uncover dozens of articles: “Filipino Assassin,” “Powerful Right Hand,” “Knockout Artist.” It stunned me that a Filipino American pugilist had made such a name for himself in 1920s Cincinnati, yet he had been entirely erased from the city’s historical memory. Even more troubling was the fact that every article focused solely on his prowess in the ring. Not one mentioned him as a person.

Vincent Hambright made his boxing debut in the summer of 1926 at the Tacoma Bowl in Dayton, Kentucky. Under the mentorship of Fred Batsche, he quickly rose as a local favorite. By August, a Cincinnati Post article predicted that a win over Leo Haney would elevate him to the main event scene.

His career peaked in 1931 when he won the New York National Guard Welterweight Championship with a 45-second knockout over Alf Schell. He later earned the General Haskell Gold Belt. The following year, even in defeat, he was praised for holding his own against Teddy Yarosz, who would go on to become the World Middleweight Champion in 1934.

My research eventually led to a darker chapter. On April 20, 1946, Vincent Hambright was murdered outside the Green Tree Café, at the corner of Race and Court Streets.

It was a sweltering spring evening, just months after Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri. While the city appeared to be transitioning toward peace, racial animosity still simmered beneath the surface. That night, the postwar veneer cracked. Gunshots rang out, and Vincent’s life was violently cut short.

At 40, he was shot multiple times, once in the back of his leg, and four bullets below near his neck. This happened while he was standing near the doorway of his Race Street apartment. The shooter, Arnold Spivey, a white Navy sailor, had been overheard saying he was “going to see a dead Jap,” and specifically referred to Vincent and another person at the café.

The case that followed would expose deep fissures in Cincinnati’s racial and judicial landscape. Despite multiple eyewitnesses, Spivey’s confession, and the recovery of the murder weapon, defense attorneys Loyal S. Martin and Augustus Beall Jr. succeeded in shifting the narrative. They portrayed Vincent as a troublemaker, deflecting attention from Spivey’s own words and intent.

Spivey was acquitted of first-degree murder after a three-day trial. One of the jurors, Fred Wessel, who, troublingly, lived at the same address as Spivey, urged the defendant to treat the trial as a lesson. The irony was chilling: Spivey had armed himself, returned to the café, followed Vincent to his apartment, and murdered a person in cold blood. Yet the system failed to hold him accountable.

This research is not just about boxing or loss. It’s about who gets remembered, who gets erased, and how power operates through historical silence. Vincent Hambright lived, loved, fought, and died in Cincinnati, and he deserves more than a fleeting headline. He deserves a place in our collective memory. Reclaiming stories like his is a radical act, one that confronts the systems and silences that have erased too many voices from our history.