Queen City History

Research & Writing

Among a wide range of interests, Morgan identifies most personally with the role of writer. This vein of work ranges from authoring books and freelance writing to legal research and drafting, generating and curating museum exhibits and public installations, podcast research and content production, and promotional business biographies and outreach. Some examples of work includes:

      Books:   

• Tanked In Cincinnati: Fortune & Calamity In The Beer Business (History Press 2024)
• Cincinnati Beer (History Press 2019)
• Over-the-Rhine: When Beer Was King (History Press 2010)

     Recent Feature Articles:

• “The Belle, The Cad, and the Sex Scandal,” Cincinnati Magazine (March 2024)
• “Uncovering The Harrison Horror,” Cincinnati Magazine (Jan. 2021)
• “The Story Behind the (Mostly) Friendly Spirits Who Roam Arnold’s Bar & Grill” CityBeat (Oct. 2022)
• “A 140-Year-Old Mayoral Scandal: Sketchy Citizenship, Rampant Corruption and Voter Fraud,” CityBeat. (Nov. 4, 2020)
• “Proposed Federal Legislation Could Help Restore Ohio’s First Black Cemetery, Madisonville’s United American Cemetery,” CityBeat. (Aug. 12, 2020)
• “Price Hill’s Neglected 170-Year-Old Potter’s Field Cemetery Has a Dark and Shameful Past,” CityBeat (July 22, 2020)
• “Examining the Complex History, Multiple Conflagrations and Reasons to Hope for Over-the-Rhine’s 1800s Jackson Brewery,” CityBeat (Feb. 18, 2020)

Community Engagement & Planning

Queen City History, through Michael D. Morgan, along with our collaborators and partners bring a fresh and effective approach to a broad range of community challenges and opportunities. Some of our current and past work includes:

• The Potter’s Field Initiative: QCH defined a project, identified partners, obtained a federal grant, and managed a team of exceptional archeologists, historic consultants, other experts, and volunteers who began mapping burial locations in Cincinnati’s Potter’s Field Cemetery and starting a multi-tiered process for bringing dignity to a site that has been overgrown and neglected since 1981. In this first phase of the work, we successfully obtained National Historic Register designation, the first time in U.S. history that a public, indigent burial ground has been given this status; and through a tactical combination of approaches, we determined that thousands of people are buried in an area that has been used as a city park since the 1930s. QCH will continue to work with neighborhood stakeholders, the City, and the best expert partners in the years ahead to transform a shameful history of neglect into a community assets, properly telling the story of the site for the first time, and bringing dignity to the memory of the roughly 20,000 people laid to rest there.
• Sohn-Mohawk Historic District: Over five years of persistent work and creative problem solving created this unique historic district. The guidelines for the Sohn-Mohawk Historic District are the first in the U.S. to present Secretary of Interior preservation standards in a more visual, user-friendly, form-based code approach to local historic guidelines. This results in more consistent application of standards, simultaneously benefiting both preservationists and developers.
• Chair, Historic Building Loss Task Force: The group was created by Cincinnati City Council to identify the root causes for Cincinnati’s persistent loss of historically significant buildings, and to propose solutions. This work directly resulted in several pieces of legislation that improved and better integrated preservation goals into the city’s approach to planning, building and housing code enforcement.
• Co-Chair, Charter Review Task Force: Created by Cincinnati City Council to conduct a holistic review of Cincinnati’s city charter, this diverse and disparate group conducted public meetings and work sessions over a two-year period that resulted in recommendations that were adopted by a 73% majority of city voters in November 2014, and a 72% majority of city voters in November 2015. In 2018, 77% of voting citizens enabled council to conduct executive sessions for greater transparency, and the most recent part of the recommendations — eliminating the mayoral “pocket veto” to check executive power — was adopted by 80% of voters in 2022. Discussions to enact the remaining recommendations are still active and positive.
• Over-the-Rhine Green Historic Project: This nationally significant, cross-disciplinary project examined how the LEED point system corresponds with federal historic tax credit requirements.  The process involved managing and coordinating architects, developers, contractors, preservation consultants, a University of Cincinnati design studio and graduate seminar. Findings of the study were presented at national and international conferences, and drove changes to the LEED point system.

“Community engagement” has become a buzzword, and the world is full of “professional facilitators” who promise to apply their preordained, patented methods to reach solutions to neighborhood or institutional problems. What we do is different in principle because it is different in action every time. We do not have a playbook. We have a flexible skillset based on real life experience.

Truth Deferred: The National Guard Massacre

In 1884, Cincinnati was still one of America’s largest cities. Nicknamed “the Paris of America,” it had a vibrant nightlife and a bit of a drinking problem, but it was a politically moderate, relatively peaceful town, which made it an unlikely site for the largest massacre of civilians by National Guard troops in American history.

Could similar events occur again on the streets of a modern American city? In short, yes, partly because we failed to learn any lessons from the tragic event. To the extent that this forgotten episode in our history is remembered, it is called “the Courthouse Riot,” and the version of the story that has been retold since the summer of 1884 has largely been a lie.

In Season One of “Truth Deferred: The National Guard Massacre,” hosts Mike and Amy Morgan peel back the layers of murder, media bias, Gilded Age corruption, personal rivalries between attorney T.C. Campbell and a rising young legal star named William Howard Taft, and how it all led to the slaughter of dozens of innocent people and a whitewash that covered up the truth for over 140 years — until now!

Subscribe now through Grab Bag Collective to get all 9 episodes ad free!

If you would like to learn more about our work and services, please send a message and we will get back to you asap.