Kahiki Supper Club Read online

  Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

  —Stitch, Lilo & Stitch

  In the spring of 1975, the Kahiki Supper Club became the epicenter of one of the ugliest affairs to ever occur between the Columbus Division of Police and the local minority community. The incident involved three African Americans and a handful of police officers who had been summoned to the restaurant because of a disputed bill. In the end, the U.S. Department of Justice was called in to investigate allegations of civil rights abuses. Ironically, the Justice Department was denied access to the police division’s internal records by U.S. district judge Robert M. Duncan.28

  The Kahiki incident and its aftermath inflamed racial tensions in the city. Eleven people, including eight police officers, were injured, and two officers were fired (although they later were reinstated with all but thirty days’ back pay). City councilman Jerry Hammond later commented, “It was an intense situation, because the African-American community was justifiably angry.” Hammond, who is black, found himself “squeezed” between city officials who wanted to cover it up and black activists who wanted answers. In many other cities, it might have culminated in race riots. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the whole episode was allowed to play out in the criminal court system. But whether justice was served in the end is still being debated.

  On the evening of Friday, May 30, 1975, twenty-three-year-old Samuel Bryant was dining with his common-law wife, Jo Anne Johnson, twenty-one; her brother Jerome Johnson, twenty-three, a graduate student at Ohio State University; and, apparently, Jerome’s girlfriend. When presented with a bill for $98.96, Samuel, a Vietnam War veteran, got into a dispute with the waiter. He insisted they could not possibly owe that much and that they were being charged for items they didn’t order. (The facts are unclear, but it is possible that a gratuity had been added.) The group, all African Americans, were said to have left without paying. According to Diana Tanaka, a gift shop employee, they had reached their car in the parking lot when they were invited up to the office of general manager “Chills” Verne to settle the matter.

  Once in Verne’s office, they were joined by assistant manager Johnny Gim. Columbus police officer Ronald Bentley and auxiliary officer Rocco Eramo arrived a few minutes later, having been summoned at Verne’s request. According to Bentley, he suggested that Jerome pay the bill and later seek legal recourse in civil court. So Jerome paid up, and the unhappy customers started to depart. At this point, the accounts of what happened start to diverge. Officer Bentley testified that Jo Anne, who was holding her nine-month-old baby in her arms, struck him on her way out. Other witnesses say that the one-hundred-pound woman elbowed him.

  It was JoAnne’s contention that she accidentally bumped the officer as she passed by him. Then, as she was being placed under arrest, she dropped the baby, who, luckily, was caught by Samuel. (Apparently, he then handed the child over to Jerome’s girlfriend.) JoAnne was then taken back to the office. At some point, Officer Bentley called for back up. The message apparently went out over the radio as “officer-in-trouble.” After no more than ten minutes, up to thirty police officers arrived at the scene, including members of the Special Weapons and Tactics Team. Among them were Officer Harlan G. Hill, Sergeant Harold E. Moore, policeman Ira P. Benedict, policeman John Hunt, Robert W. Stout and policeman Rick A. Newpoff—all of them white men. What occurred next is described in court records as a “mêlée or free-for-all.”

  Officer Hill admitted that he struck Jo Anne with his flashlight after she allegedly attacked his face and bit his leg. She also fell headfirst into the fountain in the foyer, either in an attempt to escape (as the officers claimed) or as the result of police brutality (as she claimed). Jo Anne was subsequently carried out the front door and placed on the floor of the police van. Officer Hunt claimed that during the trip to jail, Jo Anne, while in handcuffs, reached up and unsnapped his holster in an attempt to grab his service revolver. Officer Newpoff testified that she also bit him. Both officers retaliated by punching her. Officer Newpoff got out of the wagon at Champion Avenue and Broad Street and transferred to a cruiser so he could be taken to Grant Hospital. Jerome and Samuel were also removed from the wagon, while Officer Hunt remained with Jo Anne, joined by Officer Stout. It is believed that Officer Stout hit her several times with his baton. They all then drove straight to Grant Hospital. Jo Anne received seventeen stitches and was taken to the Women’s Correctional Institute. Samuel also received stitches.

  A photo of the fireplace moai, which appears to have been used in designing the menu. Authors’ collection.

  As Stout later recalled, “When we opened up the back of that van, [Officer Rick] Newpoff was being bitten by this woman, through to the bone. Some other officers restrained the two males, and I went to Newpoff’s assistance.” He denied striking her with a club but did admit to using “the force that was necessary to get her off Newpoff.”

  General manager for WVKO radio, Les Brown was doing a report on the “Project ’75” voter registration drive when Tom Catron, a white man, called in to relate what he was seeing. At the time, WVKO reached 80 percent of the black audience in Columbus. Catron was listening to his police scanner in his home at 278 Grubb Street when he heard the distress call go out. He got in his car and followed the police to Grant Hospital. There, he witnessed Jo Anne being beaten. He would later describe his disgust at the officers’ lack of respect for her modesty. He subsequently filed police brutality charges.

  Another witness at the hospital was Frederick Gouch. There to visit a friend, he saw Jo Anne, Jerome and Samuel being brought in. He asserted that he saw an officer push one of the men against the wall. He also claimed that Jo Anne was dragged in on her face while the officers were uttering racial slurs.

  In January 1976, the “Kahiki Three” were found guilty of a total of nine charges relating to the incident and not guilty of four others. Jo Anne was convicted of five charges of assault and one of resisting arrest. Jerome was found guilty of resisting arrest but not guilty of obstructing official business and two charges of assault. Samuel was guilty of one count each of assault and resisting arrest but not of obstructing official business. They were originally given twenty-five charges, but twelve were dropped by the prosecution before trial. In total, Jo Anne was sentenced to six months in jail and a $1,500 fine. Jerome and Samuel both received sixty days and a $500 fine, although the judge commended Samuel on his attempts to peacefully pay the bill. Samuel made the statement “I don’t feel that I’m guilty, but I assume every man or woman who comes into court feels that way. I don’t feel that I was found justly guilty, but whatever your honor would choose to enforce, so be it.” They lost all appeals.

  Before going to trial, all three defendants met with then mayor Tom Moody, who promised them, African American leaders, the Committee Against Racism (CAR) and community members that he would personally follow up on their allegations. He was also contacted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) over concerns that Jo Anne was beaten while serving time in the Women’s Workhouse.

  A photo of the Kahiki showing the “good luck” pelican figure extending out from the roof. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  In the subsequent investigation by Chief Earl Burden, 165 interviews were conducted with 139 witnesses. Twenty-seven officers were ordered to take lie-detector tests. Two of them—Robert Stout and Robert Morgan—were suspended without pay on June 11, 1975, for their roles in the incident. Later, city safety director Bernard Chupka fired them for using excessive force. Morgan, who had been the turnkey29 at the city jail, was specifically charged with striking Bryant during the booking process. Stout became involved when he was summoned to East Broad Street and Champion Avenue after a squabble broke out in the police paddy wagon that was en route to Grant Hospital with the three prisoners.

  In July, following an investigation by the Columbus Police Internal Affairs Division, Officers Stout and Robert A. Morgan were fired. Curiously, Frederick Gouch had refused
to give a statement. When the official 716-page report was released, Officers Stout and Morgan were the only ones listed by name. Morgan had not previously been mentioned in any of the news accounts.

  Morgan might have first met Samuel Bryant during the booking process and was charged with misconduct for hitting him with his nightstick. He was condemned by the testimony of fellow officers Michael Thomas and Ralph Davis. A video of the room where the abuse was alleged to have taken place did not provide confirmation, but the recording was of poor quality and might have malfunctioned during taping. Stout was charged with violence against both Samuel and Jo Anne, as well as failure to report use of force and lying to investigating officers.

  Neither the People’s Coalition for Justice nor the Fraternal Order of Police was happy with the report. The former felt it was too easy and the latter too hard on the officers involved. Diana L. Morgan felt that her husband was being treated as a scapegoat. A group marched on city hall in support of the police.

  By September, both officers had been reinstated by the Civil Service Commission, a group of two white men and one black man, after having their dismissals commuted to thirty-day suspensions. Both votes were 2–1 with David Barker, the only African American, dissenting. The suspensions were served retroactively, and both men received backpay covering the end of their suspensions to their official returns. The officers were subsequently given assignments that kept them away from the public, with Stout on the dispatch radio and Morgan in the police garage.

  The reinstatement of the officers was protested by a number of mixed-race groups, including CAR and “Yes We Can,” a proto-PAC founded by Les Brown to create political literacy in the African American community.

  Following the Kahiki incident, there was a boycott of the Columbus Dispatch that led to the loss of two thousand subscribers, according to Ohio State’s newspaper, the Lantern. Reverend Cameron W. Jackson of the First African Episcopal Church acted as de facto spokesperson for the boycott. He and his followers targeted the Dispatch because they felt it would cause the most economic stress in Columbus.

  U.S. district judge Robert Duncan, who would later oversee the desegregation of Columbus public schools, issued a court order forcing the Columbus police to maintain a percentage of African American officers equal to the black population of Columbus (at the time 18.5 percent). Until they reached that point, 45 percent of police academy recruits had to be black. One of the 1976 recruits was George Garrett from Sandusky. He applied to the force after hearing a recruitment ad on Les Brown’s WVKO. To adhere to regulations, he needed to shave his full beard and cut his Afro.

  Les Brown was fired from his job at the radio station after a 1975 free-style editorial regarding the Kahiki incident and police brutality, during which he locked himself in the studio. He went on to become state representative for Columbus and a motivational speaker. He was also briefly married to Grammy Award–winning singer Gladys Knight.

  In 1990, Officer Morgan retired from the Police Division. Over the next decade, his health declined precipitously. Ten years afterward, he told a reporter, “It was a long time ago; let sleeping dogs lie.” Officer Robert Stout was dismissed from the Columbus Police Department for the second and final time in 1993, after being found guilty of six departmental charges. He retired while appealing the dismissal. Between 1974 and 1989, he had been investigated fourteen times for excessive use of force. In twelve of the incidents, his actions were ruled justified. In 1969, Stout was shot by a suspect fleeing a burglary; he returned fire and killed the man. Four years later, he was shot again. The same year, the Exchange Club named him Officer of the Year. But that is not how he will be remembered, and in the end, he would prefer not to be remembered at all.

  16

  NATIONAL TREASURE

  I don’t like to do firsts and biggests and bests and lasts, but I can say with certainty that this is the only Tiki listed.

  —Beth Savage, architectural historian

  By 1997, preservationists realized that they could not count on the Kahiki Supper Club, let alone the magnificent building, to be around forever. They had undoubtedly begun to notice that the neighborhood was changing (had, in fact, changed) and that the structure was beginning to show its age. In the hope that they could somehow forestall its possible demolition, they pushed to have it listed among the seventy thousand other sites on the National Register of Historic Places. While experience has shown that a listing on the register does not guarantee that a building will be preserved, it can help garner publicity, mobilize public sentiment and support and, less frequently, attract investors.

  Placing the Kahiki on the list was in large measure due to the dogged determination of Nathalie Wright, the National Register coordinator at the Ohio Historic Preservation Office. And not everyone agreed it belonged there. Wayne Curtis in the Atlantic Monthly posed the question, “How do we distinguish the historic from the sentimental?”

  Built in 1961, the Kahiki wasn’t the first Tiki restaurant in the nation (that honor goes to Don The Beachcomber’s, in Hollywood, which opened in 1934), but it may have been the most elaborate. Last June, The New York Times dubbed the Kahiki “the grandest and best-preserved of a nearly extinct form of culinary recreation.” Otto Von Stroheim, the publisher of Tiki News, a newsletter devoted to Polynesian pop, once called the Kahiki “the first or second most important Tiki restaurant in the world.”

  The application for the listing noted that “as Ohio’s only Polynesian restaurant and a significant example of the once popular national restaurant trend and unique building type, the Kahiki is being nominated under criteria A and C, consideration G at the state level of significance.” It emphasized the “rarity and fragility” of the property.

  Criterion A requires that the structure is “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.” In brief, the application makes the case for the Kahiki being “an important representative of 1950s and early ’60s entertainment. It is part of a broader pattern of national restaurant and entertainment trends from that era. The Polynesian restaurant motif was the beginning of today’s theme restaurant fad.”

  To support the argument, a review of U.S.-Polynesian relations was presented, highlighting its treatment in popular culture.

  Polynesian restaurants…sought to transport the dining guests away from reality to a distant tropical island free of worries. An atmosphere of enchantment was created. The food was exotic in comparison to other restaurants. It arrived on fire or billowing with smoke, created by dry ice. Entertainment was provided by a live band or a floor show featuring hula and sword dancers. In essence Polynesian restaurants were more than eating establishments; they were places of entertainment where customers could spend a few leisurely hours.

  Under Criterion C, the structure is required to “embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.”

  It was also argued that the Kahiki was “an excellent and remarkably intact example of the Polynesian restaurant building type.” The structure represented an amalgamation of architectural traditions drawn from various Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian cultures. Not only was the exterior modeled after “young men’s houses of the Yap Islands and the men’s ceremonial houses of New Guinea,” but also the interior included a number of dining huts that were based on the grass huts seen in Hawaiian villages.

  Continuing the Polynesian theme, the basement party rooms were also popular spots for events of all kinds. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  A certain level of decorative elements had to be present in order to carry the diner’s imagination to the South Seas. Tiki statues, shells, glass fishing weights, fountains, and aquariums were always used for creating atmosphere. The Kahiki designers took these pre-requisites seriously, employing an abundance of the d
ecorative items. Combining them with other design features the Kahiki truly does transport dining guests to a magical island paradise.

  Author Michael J. Rosen, longtime literary director of the Thurber House in Columbus, gave the following response to the suggestion that the Kahiki was “kitschy”:

  You do know that what your suggestion of the place as kitschy (admittedly!) has to take into account that it was an authentic Papau New Guinea long house, created with incredible authenticity, unique to the time. Okay, the Polynesian valet parking was a little eccentric. And maybe the dry ice in the various “tropical” drinks. Okay, and maybe the blue-light entrance with waterfalls. Okay, maybe the birds in the “rain forest” and the series of aquaria…the whole enterprise. But I know the place from childhood birthdays to the moment of its closing.

  Finally, Consideration G calls for “a property achieving significance within the past 50 years if it is of exceptional importance.” The application stated that

  it is a significant representation of a form of entertainment and building type that was once popular at mid-century. It provides physical evidence of a larger societal enchantment with Hawaiian culture (often a perceived culture) and a reflection of Cold War escapism. Thirty to forty years have passed since the popularity of these restaurants were at their peak, thus allowing sufficient time to pass to examine their place in American culture.

  In conclusion, it was argued that

  Polynesian palaces were America’s first theme restaurants. In as much as these seem to be the future of the food-service business in this country, Polynesian restaurants may prove to be almost as important to our national heritage as the first automobile assembly line.

  Although Nathalie Wright and the others involved succeeded in having the Kahiki added to list, in the end it did nothing to change or even delay the restaurant’s fate. Ironically, the same year the Kahiki was going up, the Alfred Kelley Mansion was coming down. An outstanding example of Greek Revival architecture with four porticos supported by massive stone columns, this was once the home of Alfred Kelley, “Father of the Ohio-Erie Canal,” and one of Columbus’s most prominent citizens. Built in 1838, the mansion stood at 282 East Broad Street, once the very outskirts of town. Four years later, Kelley “singlehandedly propped up the state’s credit, pledging his personal property, including the mansion, to back a note to pay the overdue interest” owed the U.S. government on bonds issued to build the canal system. By 1961, however, Kelley’s home was a sad shadow of its former self, having been purchased in 1907 by the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, which used it as a school. A year earlier, the church had sold the building to a developer who had big plans for the site.