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Ken Spruce Returns, Reveals, Apologizes, Donates

Sojourner’s Truth Staff

Toledo native, and current Cincinnati resident, Ken Spruce was back in town this month to explain some past incidents that happened when he was an employee of the City of Toledo and also to present some information about a book he has penned about that part of his life. One such incident during the Mayor Jack Ford administration, he related, has been a closely held “secret” over the past decade and a half.
 

As Spruce explained, during a press conference he held at The Truth Art Gallery, while he was working for Ford, as manager of Business Retention/Expansion in the City Department of Economic & Community Development, he was asked by the mayor to do some business “reconnaissance work on behalf of his administration.”

As a result of his reconnaissance, Spruce compiled a report for the mayor concluding that businesses were abandoning Toledo for the suburbs for a variety of reasons: abundant real estate, a more upscale environment, proximity to customers, additional financial assistance, better telephone/internet capacity, better public safety and the inattentiveness of City of Toledo officials.

That report, said Spruce at his conference, was never publicly revealed – a “secret” for the past 14 years.

“The city of Toledo was a major city when I was growing up … there were six Fortune 500 companies within the boundaries when I was growing up in the 50’s,” he said as he began detailing the downward spiral that Toledo has undergone in population and relative wealth that began in the latter half of the 20th century. “Toledo has lost one third of its population – it has been declining.”

Spruce, an educator and political scientist, had been living in Atlanta when Ford became mayor. He had relocated there in the early 1990s when he was accepted into the PhD program at Clark Atlanta University. Over the course of that decade, he would work his way up the educational ladder – assistant professor, associate professor and then, a professor with tenure. Ford, he said, lured him back to his hometown in 2002, at the start of his term in office.

In 2004, however, after Spruce had completed his report, he was involved in a domestic dispute with his then wife. He was arrested and held on domestic violence, assault charges as he attempted to protect the report he had compiled from being destroyed during the altercation.

In more recent times, Spruce has written a book, soon to be released, titled I Apologize.

“I want to apologize to my wife, to Jack Ford, to the City of Toledo,” he said. “I never reached my potential here. I have not fulfilled the potential that God has instilled in me. My aspiration was to be the first black mayor of the City of Toledo.

Spruce, however, did make note of some of the accomplishments here in Toledo that he is proud of. Former Mayor Donna Owens appointed to her administration; he was named in 1984 as the Lucas County co-chairman of the Jesse Jackson campaign for president; his work in this area has been cited by two other academicians in their books. Now, upon his return, he is donating all his personal, professional and political papers for safekeeping to the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.

Spruce is now president of UMOJA Publishing & Speechmaking Company, in which he serves as a literary agent, writing consultant and financial assistant.
 

 

   
   


Copyright © 2019 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 12/31/20 12:07:28 -0500.


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