When Harvey H. Alston, his parents and his four siblings moved from North Carolina to Columbus in 1913, his family was one of many Black families who moved from the South to Ohio during the First Great Migration.
The 1910 Census estimated that 12,739 Black citizens lived in Columbus, and by 1913, the year the Alston family moved to the city, approximately 21,500 Black residents lived here.
Most of the new families settled in a burgeoning neighborhood that would later be named Bronzeville or King-Lincoln. The Alston family bought a home at 515 N. Ohio Ave. in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, not far from the Norfolk & Western railyard on Mt. Vernon Avenue where Harvey D. Alston worked for decades as a stationary fireman.
The first son of Harvey D. and Mary Alston, Harvey H. Alston was born in 1906 in Graham, North Carolina. When he arrived in Columbus with his family he was just 6 years old. He attended Champion Elementary School and Mt. Vernon Ave. Junior High, graduating from East High School in 1925.