{"id":48,"date":"2022-05-03T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/from-across-the-pond-palmond\/?post_type=chapter&p=48"},"modified":"2022-05-20T05:27:38","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T05:27:38","slug":"chapter-5-cleveland-1973","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/from-across-the-pond-palmond\/chapter\/chapter-5-cleveland-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 5. Cleveland, 1973"},"content":{"raw":"Two weeks back from strike-torn Britain and it seems I\u2019ve never been away. Cleveland\u2019s schools are on strike. Surprise!\u00a0Catholic schools last year, public ones this. Under main headline: \u201cKISSINGER WILL GO TO HANOI\u201d on January 31, 1973, is:\r\n\r\n\u201cSTRIKE SHUTS MOST SCHOOLS\u2019<\/strong>\r\n\r\nBy Peter Almond\r\n\r\n\u201cA strike by 2500 non-teaching employees has virtually shut down the entire Cleveland school system in defiance of a no-strike order by the court.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cMost, if not all the 140,000 children were barred from entering the 190 school buildings. In many instances when they did enter they sat in cold classrooms or auditoriums for a while and then were sent home.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cMany teachers refused to cross picket lines in the first strike in the Cleveland schools\u2019 history\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0etc<\/em>\r\n\r\nAh, but was this actually a strike?\u00a0 The five unions involved said they were withholding their labor, and anyway a judge who had issued a restraining order banning a strike had limited pickets outside the schools to just two people. A lot of teachers did sign in to prove they were ready to work \u2013 and then went home.\r\n\r\nThe legalities reached a point that Common Pleas Court Judge David Matia asked WKYC TV to send him news film of three school custodians overheard to say they would strike despite his anti-strike injunction. Press reporter Jim Marino wrote that none of the union representatives in the courtroom could identify the custodians, and since neither the school board nor anyone else had officially told him there actually was a strike there was nothing he could do.\r\n\r\nPolitics, of course. This is a heavily-unionized town, and judges are elected. So, if five powerful unions that cover schools say they have nothing to do with a strike, well\u2026\u2026\u2026\r\n\r\nThere IS no money for higher wages, says Superintendent Briggs. And certainly no money \u2013 no local or state money - for what was about to land on Cleveland\u2019s schools:\u00a0desegregation, which would cause massive change by the end of the decade.\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>The first shot in what would become a sociological, economic and educational war in Cleveland over the next decade was fired by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)\u00a0 <\/strong>on Feb 8, 1973<\/strong>.\u00a0In a letter to the school board it requested the board come up with a voluntary plan to desegregate the city\u2019s public schools immediately, or at least over the next few months \u2013 or else it would file a case in federal court.\r\n\r\n\u201c1973 is going to be the year of the schools,\u201d said the Rev James Stallings, Cleveland director of the NAACP, having just heard the federal court in Dayton, Ohio, was ordering the school board there to come up with a desegregation plan within 60 days. <\/strong>\r\n\r\nStallings told me that 85 of Cleveland\u2019s 190 schools were 90 -100% black, and 72 schools were 90% white, or at least non-black. \u201cIt disturbs us that there seems to be no commitment from the school board to do something about it,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI keep hearing people say \u201cit can\u2019t be done,\u201d but a negative attitude will solve no problems.\u201d\r\n\r\nActually, there had been a mini-plan eight years earlier - in 1964 when Briggs became superintendent. Massive overcrowding of black schools in the Glenville area had led to black students being bused to mostly-white Collinwood schools nearby. But there was so much resentment from the white students and parents that three new schools were quickly built in Glenville, thus re-segregating it.\u00a0In trying to stop that construction one white protester, the Rev Bruce Klunder, tragically fell under the tracks of a bulldozer at Stephen E. Howe elementary school and was killed.\r\n\r\nBut the \u2018can\u2019t be done\u2019 lobby did have a point. Cleveland\u2019s geography alone suggested a significant reason:\u00a0the city is spread out for some 20 miles along the coast of Lake Erie, mostly black on the east side of the Cuyahoga River and mostly white on the west side. Over the next four or five years I would test out for myself what it would be like to be bused from one side to the other:\u00a0mostly an hour or more each way, along routes heavy with traffic, and with after-school events curtailed by lack of time and parents unable to become heavily involved.\r\n\r\nThe fact was that \u2018white flight\u2019 was under way as smaller families, rising incomes, new freeways and new homes made the suburbs more attractive propositions to those who could afford to move. Cleveland school enrolment that fall was down 5,380 from 141,000 a year earlier. Most of those moving were white, leaving inner city schools more black.\r\n\r\nThe only real way to desegregate would be to involve all of the city\u2019s suburban school districts, but that would have to be voluntary, since the NAACP wasn\u2019t planning- or could \u00a0not afford -\u00a0to file court cases against 26 school districts in just one county in the US. And no school district in Cuyahoga County was volunteering.\r\n\r\nBriggs knew this, but he tried to push the concept of at least sharing specialist schools anyway, such as the new Aviation High School at Burke Lakefront airport, which taught aviation industry skills, or the Woodbine ship nearby which involved naval and engineer learning. There were also a number of metropolitan athletic contests, a school for the hearing impaired etc. All of them could accommodate suburban schools.\u00a0In November that year he addressed 38 school superintendents from around the country, hosted in Cleveland by two suburban school superintendents.\r\n\r\nBut to no avail.\u00a0By the end of the year the Cleveland School Board did not have a plan to desegregate its schools.\u00a0The new year would move all the desegregation action into federal court.\r\n
\r\n

Memory flash: Cleveland Playhouse, Spring 1973<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\u00a0Anna and I have come to this theatre to see Pete and Dud, two of our favorite English comedians.\u00a0It\u2019s a bit heavy at work so it\u2019s a real treat to escape for a couple of hours with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore making ridiculous fun of themselves and anyone else who might be a bit pompous or have \u2018attitudes\u2019 about \u2018stuff.\u2019 Especially as done with silly English voices. <\/em>\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s Tarzan, of course:\u00a0\u201cMr Spiggot. You are auditioning, are you not, for the part of Tarzan, a role that is traditionally associated with a two-legged man. And yet I couldn\u2019t help notice, Mr Spiggot, that you are a one-legged person - a uni-dexter.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u00a0\u201cYour right leg, I like. I like your right leg. It\u2019s a lovely leg for the role. I\u2019ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is, Mr Spiggot, neither have you.\u201d<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u00a0And more of the same.\u00a0\u00a0 Until the Shepherds in the Fields sketch.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u00a0Dud plunks himself down next to Pete, both wearing biblical clothing. Dud asks Pete if he can interview him about the birth of Jesus, which he has witnessed as a shepherd abiding in the fields. \u201cI have to say I can\u2019t abide these fields,\u201d complains Pete. He asks Dud for which paper he is working. \u201cThe Bethlehem Star\u2019 comes the obvious answer. To which Pete says: \u201cBethlehem Star? My wife and I take that. Don\u2019t think much of your racing correspondent. I had three shekels on that camel in the 3.30 at Galilee and its still bloody running!\u201d <\/em>\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s all done in modern, cor-blimey style, to which there is general merriment from this Cleveland audience\u2026\u2026 Until the pair break away to banter about \u201cJimmy Christ,\u201d\u00a0Jesus\u2019 \u201cyounger brother\u201d who Pete has just made up, who did all the \u2018real\u2019 carpentry in the family business. There is an exclamation or two of \u201cJesus!\u201d as an expression of surprise.\u00a0 <\/em>\r\n\r\nNow, Anna and I are used to that. Where we come from \u2018Jesus\u2019 and casual banter about His birth are not taken literally, or seriously. But we noticed people in the audience getting out of their seats and leaving.<\/em>\r\n\r\nOnce again I am reminded of the deep-seated religiosity of a majority of Americans, which did not appear to change significantly until 2021, when polls showed that those declaring they have no religion had become the majority.\u00a0The U.S. of A continues as the most religiously-declared nation in the western world. <\/em>\r\n\r\nPete and Dud Shepherd\u2019s sketch:\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=K_RSSDnH0oc\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=K_RSSDnH0oc<\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nIN THE MEANTIME, Almond, what about the actual education of actual kids? H<\/strong>ow are they doing, without all this talk of school desegregation?\r\n\r\nThe old East Tech high school (all black) on E55th Str was knocked down and a new building now replaced it; 2500 bricks were saved, cleaned up and individually sold with the school\u2019s Scarab symbol painted on them. The money would help buy two new buses for the athletes, of whom their most famous graduate was Jesse Owens, the black athlete who defied Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He would be guest speaker at an upcoming major celebration of the school and its community.\r\n\r\nIndeed, some in Cleveland appeared to be doing quite well academically. Third graders, for instance, were as good at reading as anybody else in the country, if not better, according to new national statistics.\r\n\r\nAnd \u201cMark Ridley\u201d was getting help with his perception problems.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMark, (not his real name) was a nine-year-old at a Cleveland elementary school I met who was getting help with his visual\/reading problems because he watched too much TV when he was very young.\u00a0According to Dr Morton Schomer, a Maple Heights optometrist and consultant specialist in perceptual development, \u201cMark\u201d is now unable to tell the difference between b\u2019s and d\u2019s and \u201csaw\u201d and \u201cwas.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe is one of about 15% of all American school children who suffer what doctors and educators describe as \u201clearning disabilities,\u201d I wrote.\u00a0 \u201cThis broad category of children is expanding at an alarming rate and is one of the most important problems facing American educators today.\u201d\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t now recall how much attention learning disabilities received from newspapers in those days, but I felt obliged by a sub editor to spell it out \u2013 or at least inform parents or teachers how to identify it in a youngster, and how it progresses.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know then that the first U.S. report of childhood reading difficulties was published by a Cleveland ophthalmologist, Dr W. E. Bruner, in 1905.\u00a0 I did know that the federal government had got the message by 1969 and that Congress passed the first Children with Specific Learning Disabilities Act in 1970. By 1972 it came with money.\r\n
\r\n

Memory flash: Cleveland Public Library, May 1973<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\u00a0My schools work also covers the Cleveland Public Library, so I\u2019m here at the main library downtown to write a long caption to a photo of a newly-arrived collection of ancient Chinese vases. I won\u2019t name the photographer, but he\u2019s very experienced. <\/em>\r\n\r\nOne vase in particular stands out in its striking colors, but it is not easy to photograph. I suggest moving it closer to the light by a window. The young library assistant is not so sure. She wants to wait for the curator. We wait. Five minutes, ten.\u00a0No curator. Neither photographer nor I can wait any longer, we have other assignments. I assure her it won\u2019t be a problem, that we can help her move it. She and the photographer start to move the vase on a tray towards the light. <\/em>\r\n\r\nYou\u2019ve already guessed the rest. It took quite a bit of negotiating between the library and the Press as to whose insurance company would pay the thousands of dollars in compensation for the smashed vase. I do remember I was not a popular visitor to the Cleveland Public Library for quite a while.\u00a0I also remember overcoming that, slightly, by agreeing to write every PR puff piece that was sent to us \u2013 for the next year anyway. <\/em>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe schools beat in Cleveland, in fact, was throwing up ever more challenges for youngsters in an increasing era of uncertainty. \u00a0\u00a0Sex and drugs and rock and roll, for instance, were bothering more and more kids across the country.\r\n\r\n\u201cSex is acceptable to teens, study finds\u2019\u201d<\/strong>said the headline on one of my stories on April 18.\u00a0\u201cGo to bed with a friend,\u201d quoted a bumper sticker from WNCR, a Cleveland rock radio station. \u201cAnd many American teenagers are doing just that.\u201d\r\n\r\nAccording to an in-depth study, the first massive survey to be made of adolescent sexual attitudes in this country, 52% of all 13 to 18-year-olds have had sexual intercourse: 59% of the boys and 45% of the girls,\u201d I quoted from the three-year 555-page academic study, whose author Professor Robert Sorensen had come to Cleveland, told me: \u201cSex, to teenagers, is a natural, acceptable fact generally between two persons who really like each other.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt finds teenage sex is grounded in a set of good personal values contradictory to the ideas many adults have about teenagers being interested in sex for purely physical reasons.\u201d\u00a0There\u2019s a lot more to the story, including the finding that \u2018there is no evidence that the availability of drugs leads to sex, or vice versa. \u201cDrugs are sometimes used to enhance sex but are not the cause of it.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhich is interesting, because since Woodstock in the late 1960s drugs were a growing phenomenum with almost everyone under the age of 25, and I was hearing about it more and more in relation to schools. \u201cGo to bed with a friend\u201d perfectly fitted a bumper sticker for a rock radio station in the city that coined the phrase \u2018Rock n\u2019 Roll\u201d (Alan Freed, WJW Radio, 1954).\r\n
\r\n

Memory flash: Press newsroom. April 10, 1973<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\nI\u2019m in a bit of shock, or confusion. In the letters page of the paper today are a couple of letters complaining about the publishing of a long story I had written a few days earlier. This was about a 15-year-old girl who had pulled a gun on a teacher at a well-respected, almost all-white high school in suburban Lyndhurst. <\/em>\r\n\r\nAt the foot of the two letters is an EDITOR\u2019S NOTE that suggests I have misquoted the girl as saying most students at the school had taken drugs of some kind.<\/em>\r\n\r\nI wasn\u2019t expecting this. <\/em>\r\n\r\nMy almost full page story \u2013 with drawn sketch \u2013 was primarily an interview in front of the girl\u2019s mother and sister, during which she had conceded she had been taking drugs for more than two years.\u00a0 <\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t on drugs that day. You can\u2019t say I was high on drugs,\u201d I quoted the girl at the \u00a0start of the story. \u201cBut I think the drugs I\u2019d been taking regularly over the months must have had an effect,\u201d (I called her \u2018Judy\u2019 in my piece, which wasn\u2019t her actual name).<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cI just pulled the gun out and pointed it her (the teacher). It was on safety. I told her I wouldn\u2019t hurt her. Then we went out the door and out of school.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why except to say it must have been the drugs. I couldn\u2019t think straight. My awareness wasn\u2019t good. I lost part of my memory.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>\r\n\r\nI wrote this story at length primarily for the benefit of kids, parents and teachers who otherwise had only anecdotal information about drug taking by reading or seeing police or news reports of incidents involving drugs. When I talked to \u2019Judy\u2019 she was awaiting trial after being confronted by a teacher who saw what appeared to be a gun in her waistband. As she was about to be searched by the female teacher in a girls bathroom she pulled out the gun \u2013 a small tear-gas pistol type \u2013 marched her out of the building past hundreds of students in the hallways, and ran into nearby woods, where she was found by police. <\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cJudy\u201d went into considerable detail, starting two years earlier with a friend revealing marijuana in the hallways of her junior high school, and how this got her on to sopers, tuonol, reds, speed, almost all the soft drugs. But, she insisted, not hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Her parents fought at home, she said, and argued with her about her clothing and her declining school scores. They even argued in front of me. Mother and daughter agreed they had not had a family vacation for years.\u00a0 She had been arrested several times, even after having drug education at school. But it didn\u2019t help much, she said.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cThe teachers were just reading from books. They should have had someone we could relate to, someone who really started like us and then told us what happened to them. That\u2019s real.\u2019<\/em>\r\n\r\nI concluded my story with her telling me that maybe she could be that person, who could help other kids.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want to go through this again. Maybe some of the kids can learn something from me.\u201d <\/em>\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd maybe some parents\u201d was my last line.\r\n\r\nThis story did not end there. In one line I quoted \u2018Judy\u2019 as saying \u201cYou know, all the kids are doing it. It\u2019s not just me. I\u2019d say just about everyone in the sophomore class at Brush has at least experimented with drugs, and that <\/em>includes (<\/em>my emphasis) the straights (non-drug-takers).\u201d<\/em>\r\n\r\nThe girl\u2019s mother \u2013 and other students who wrote in - complained to the Press that her daughter should have been quoted as saying that most students \u2018<\/em>except <\/em>the straights\u2019 had tried a mild drug. By my \u2018misquoting\u2019 her, they alleged, I had damaged the reputation of more than 700 students and that of the school.\u00a0Some students said they would boycott The Press. A teacher called up to cancel The Press, saying: \u201cI\u2019ll never buy that Goddam paper again\u201d. <\/em>\r\n\r\nHeavy stuff for my editor.\u00a0I no longer have my notebook of 50 years ago, so I can\u2019t prove what she actually said. Maybe I misheard. Maybe I read my shorthand back wrongly (after all, my shorthand exam result back in England five years previously was only 98% accuracy). But I do concede she may not have MEANT it.<\/em>\r\n\r\nA teenager saying \u201cbut EVERYBODY is doing it\u201d?\u00a0C\u2019mon!\u00a0I used to pull that stunt when I was a kid! <\/em>\r\n\r\nToo late. The Press ran the two objecting letters along with an Editor\u2019s note that said \u201cJudy\u2019s\u201d mother, who was present at the interview, should have been quoted as saying most students \u2018except\u2019 the straights have tried a mild drug. <\/em>\r\n\r\nWhich dodged the bullet and hopefully mollified the readers. Even if it left me hung out to dry somewhat. But let that be a lesson:<\/em>\r\n\r\nGet a tape recorder!<\/em>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nOct 6, 1973:\u00a0Yom Kippur<\/strong>, one of the holiest days in Israel\u2019s calendar, when the whole country was shut down, when Syrian and Egyptian-led Arab forces launched a surprise attack, seized swathes of Israeli territory, caused major casualties and severely damaged the economies of the Middle East and the West .\r\n\r\nIn the eastern Cleveland suburb of Beachwood on that first day of the 4th Arab-Israeli war I watched the area\u2019s most prominent Jews gather together to express their outrage and to present a united front with Israel.\u00a0I think U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew from Washington to address them.\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t remember much of that meeting, except for a lot of crying and shouting - and that by the end of the evening the Jewish community of Cleveland had raised \u00a36 million (about $36 million value in 2021) to pay for emergency supplies of American aid and military equipment.\u00a0 I remember it primarily because of the immense and passionate commitment of everyone there; A few of those raised hands I knew could well afford to give a hundred thousand dollars or more, but many \u2013 including two school teachers and a baker I knew personally - certainly could not.\r\n\r\nHaving twice stood in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in Germany where hundreds of thousands of Jews had been murdered in World War II I could well imagine the torment of the Cleveland area Jews at that time of crisis for Israel.\r\n\r\nSo I didn\u2019t really mind that my series on the upcoming Cleveland School Board elections started and stayed well inside The Press on its Community Page on Oct 15.\u00a0Where else was it going to go when a major Middle East war was under way that would cost Americans billions in higher fuel prices, jobs lost and unsettled economies for years to come?\r\n\r\nSo humor me with this. Part 1: \u201cMost Cleveland parents like their schools,\u201d says the full eight-column headline. Wow! At least it makes more cheerful reading than \u201cBiggest tank battle of all time in Sinai\u201d with about 1,000 Egyptian tanks losing out to Israeli tanks and planes.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nOK, I was a little bit miffed:\u00a0It had taken me weeks to put together scores of interviews and analysis of data. Couldn\u2019t those generals in Cairo and Damascus have given a little more attention to reading in The Press that over 57% of parents interviewed in Cleveland, Ohio, thought their children were getting a good education, that 15% thought their children\u2019s education was poor, or that 27% said the education was indifferent?\r\n\r\nWould they not have learned that 28% of parents (11 of those questioned) thought that discipline was a major issue, that 25% thought it was math and\/or reading programs, that 10% thought there should be better English programs, that 20% thought the teaching was inadequate but that only 10% cited race differences as a concern?\r\n\r\nThe second part of the series was more fun:\u00a0Do parents know who is on the Cleveland School Board?<\/strong> Or that it is the city\u2019s biggest employer, with the largest number of staff, that spends the most of their tax dollars?\u00a0 And who, anyway, is this man Arnold Pinkney (School Board President).\r\n\r\n\u201cHe\u2019s some kind of politician, but I don\u2019t know what,\u201d said the parents of a child at Charles H. Lake School.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what Pinkney does,\u201d added a Mount Carmel Rd woman. \"Who\u2019s the School Board president? I don\u2019t know. Used to be Briggs was on the board, but I don\u2019t think he\u2019s there now.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere were, in fact, four board members up for re-election on Nov 6: Arnold Pinkney, George Dobrea, Gerald Sweeney and William Nagy.\u00a0 Against 11 candidates, one of whom - John E. Gallagher Jr - was only 22, went to Catholic schools and had never been to a school board meeting. There was already a Gallagher on the board: Joseph Gallagher, a 20-year board veteran who wasn\u2019t up for re-election that year.\r\n\r\nIf your name was O\u2019Flaherty, you looked and sounded like a Leprechaun but hardly spoke a word you would probably be elected to the Cleveland School Board. <\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u201cIt helps explain why some board members feel they don\u2019t need a lot of publicity about School Board affairs to get into power or to stay there,\u201d I wrote.\u00a0\u201cAnother reason why the public generally knows little about its board members is that, unlike City Council meetings, School Board meetings are usually very dull affairs, with no speeches or arguments between members.\r\n\r\n\u201cAlmost all disagreements are worked out in private caucus meetings. The public is discouraged from addressing the board directly at meetings. The result is that the school system appears to run itself, with complaints and questions from the public absorbed by \u2018the administration.\u2019\u00a0Even questions raised by members of the public at a hearing on the\u00a0annual budget recently were not answered directly, but in writing, several weeks later.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs expected, my series went down like a lead balloon in the administrative offices of the Cleveland School Board. It particularly irked Briggs, who was forever trying to sweep \u201cdiscomforts\u201d under the carpet and continue the public perception that he was in full control. I didn\u2019t know until years later, however, that he tried to get me fired, but was frustrated by Press management.\r\n\r\n\u201cAlmond clashed often with Supt Paul Briggs, one of the city\u2019s institutional powers then,\u201d Managing Editor Bill Tanner would write in February, 1980, in support of my application for a journalism fellowship at Stanford University, California. \u201cBriggs, in fact, asked us on more than one occasion to find another education writer. We were happy to pat Almond on the back and send him back out there\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>\r\n\r\nFortunately, there was one candidate vying for election on the school board in 1973 who thought like me: that same outsider with no direct experience of Cleveland public schools, John Edward Gallagher Jr.\u00a0And surprise, surprise, on Nov 6 he won a seat on the board.\u00a0 Nothing would be quite the same on the Cleveland School Board again. <\/strong>\r\n\r\nOn Dec 12, 1973, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed its case for desegregation against the State of Ohio and Cleveland School Board<\/strong>.","rendered":"

Two weeks back from strike-torn Britain and it seems I\u2019ve never been away. Cleveland\u2019s schools are on strike. Surprise!\u00a0Catholic schools last year, public ones this. Under main headline: \u201cKISSINGER WILL GO TO HANOI\u201d on January 31, 1973, is:<\/p>\n

\u201cSTRIKE SHUTS MOST SCHOOLS\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Peter Almond<\/p>\n

\u201cA strike by 2500 non-teaching employees has virtually shut down the entire Cleveland school system in defiance of a no-strike order by the court.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMost, if not all the 140,000 children were barred from entering the 190 school buildings. In many instances when they did enter they sat in cold classrooms or auditoriums for a while and then were sent home.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMany teachers refused to cross picket lines in the first strike in the Cleveland schools\u2019 history\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0etc<\/em><\/p>\n

Ah, but was this actually a strike?\u00a0 The five unions involved said they were withholding their labor, and anyway a judge who had issued a restraining order banning a strike had limited pickets outside the schools to just two people. A lot of teachers did sign in to prove they were ready to work \u2013 and then went home.<\/p>\n

The legalities reached a point that Common Pleas Court Judge David Matia asked WKYC TV to send him news film of three school custodians overheard to say they would strike despite his anti-strike injunction. Press reporter Jim Marino wrote that none of the union representatives in the courtroom could identify the custodians, and since neither the school board nor anyone else had officially told him there actually was a strike there was nothing he could do.<\/p>\n

Politics, of course. This is a heavily-unionized town, and judges are elected. So, if five powerful unions that cover schools say they have nothing to do with a strike, well\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

There IS no money for higher wages, says Superintendent Briggs. And certainly no money \u2013 no local or state money – for what was about to land on Cleveland\u2019s schools:\u00a0desegregation, which would cause massive change by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The first shot in what would become a sociological, economic and educational war in Cleveland over the next decade was fired by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)\u00a0 <\/strong>on Feb 8, 1973<\/strong>.\u00a0In a letter to the school board it requested the board come up with a voluntary plan to desegregate the city\u2019s public schools immediately, or at least over the next few months \u2013 or else it would file a case in federal court.<\/p>\n

\u201c1973 is going to be the year of the schools,\u201d said the Rev James Stallings, Cleveland director of the NAACP, having just heard the federal court in Dayton, Ohio, was ordering the school board there to come up with a desegregation plan within 60 days. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Stallings told me that 85 of Cleveland\u2019s 190 schools were 90 -100% black, and 72 schools were 90% white, or at least non-black. \u201cIt disturbs us that there seems to be no commitment from the school board to do something about it,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI keep hearing people say \u201cit can\u2019t be done,\u201d but a negative attitude will solve no problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, there had been a mini-plan eight years earlier – in 1964 when Briggs became superintendent. Massive overcrowding of black schools in the Glenville area had led to black students being bused to mostly-white Collinwood schools nearby. But there was so much resentment from the white students and parents that three new schools were quickly built in Glenville, thus re-segregating it.\u00a0In trying to stop that construction one white protester, the Rev Bruce Klunder, tragically fell under the tracks of a bulldozer at Stephen E. Howe elementary school and was killed.<\/p>\n

But the \u2018can\u2019t be done\u2019 lobby did have a point. Cleveland\u2019s geography alone suggested a significant reason:\u00a0the city is spread out for some 20 miles along the coast of Lake Erie, mostly black on the east side of the Cuyahoga River and mostly white on the west side. Over the next four or five years I would test out for myself what it would be like to be bused from one side to the other:\u00a0mostly an hour or more each way, along routes heavy with traffic, and with after-school events curtailed by lack of time and parents unable to become heavily involved.<\/p>\n

The fact was that \u2018white flight\u2019 was under way as smaller families, rising incomes, new freeways and new homes made the suburbs more attractive propositions to those who could afford to move. Cleveland school enrolment that fall was down 5,380 from 141,000 a year earlier. Most of those moving were white, leaving inner city schools more black.<\/p>\n

The only real way to desegregate would be to involve all of the city\u2019s suburban school districts, but that would have to be voluntary, since the NAACP wasn\u2019t planning- or could \u00a0not afford –\u00a0to file court cases against 26 school districts in just one county in the US. And no school district in Cuyahoga County was volunteering.<\/p>\n

Briggs knew this, but he tried to push the concept of at least sharing specialist schools anyway, such as the new Aviation High School at Burke Lakefront airport, which taught aviation industry skills, or the Woodbine ship nearby which involved naval and engineer learning. There were also a number of metropolitan athletic contests, a school for the hearing impaired etc. All of them could accommodate suburban schools.\u00a0In November that year he addressed 38 school superintendents from around the country, hosted in Cleveland by two suburban school superintendents.<\/p>\n

But to no avail.\u00a0By the end of the year the Cleveland School Board did not have a plan to desegregate its schools.\u00a0The new year would move all the desegregation action into federal court.<\/p>\n

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Memory flash: Cleveland Playhouse, Spring 1973<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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\u00a0Anna and I have come to this theatre to see Pete and Dud, two of our favorite English comedians.\u00a0It\u2019s a bit heavy at work so it\u2019s a real treat to escape for a couple of hours with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore making ridiculous fun of themselves and anyone else who might be a bit pompous or have \u2018attitudes\u2019 about \u2018stuff.\u2019 Especially as done with silly English voices. <\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s Tarzan, of course:\u00a0\u201cMr Spiggot. You are auditioning, are you not, for the part of Tarzan, a role that is traditionally associated with a two-legged man. And yet I couldn\u2019t help notice, Mr Spiggot, that you are a one-legged person – a uni-dexter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cYour right leg, I like. I like your right leg. It\u2019s a lovely leg for the role. I\u2019ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is, Mr Spiggot, neither have you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0And more of the same.\u00a0\u00a0 Until the Shepherds in the Fields sketch.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Dud plunks himself down next to Pete, both wearing biblical clothing. Dud asks Pete if he can interview him about the birth of Jesus, which he has witnessed as a shepherd abiding in the fields. \u201cI have to say I can\u2019t abide these fields,\u201d complains Pete. He asks Dud for which paper he is working. \u201cThe Bethlehem Star\u2019 comes the obvious answer. To which Pete says: \u201cBethlehem Star? My wife and I take that. Don\u2019t think much of your racing correspondent. I had three shekels on that camel in the 3.30 at Galilee and its still bloody running!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all done in modern, cor-blimey style, to which there is general merriment from this Cleveland audience\u2026\u2026 Until the pair break away to banter about \u201cJimmy Christ,\u201d\u00a0Jesus\u2019 \u201cyounger brother\u201d who Pete has just made up, who did all the \u2018real\u2019 carpentry in the family business. There is an exclamation or two of \u201cJesus!\u201d as an expression of surprise.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Now, Anna and I are used to that. Where we come from \u2018Jesus\u2019 and casual banter about His birth are not taken literally, or seriously. But we noticed people in the audience getting out of their seats and leaving.<\/em><\/p>\n

Once again I am reminded of the deep-seated religiosity of a majority of Americans, which did not appear to change significantly until 2021, when polls showed that those declaring they have no religion had become the majority.\u00a0The U.S. of A continues as the most religiously-declared nation in the western world. <\/em><\/p>\n

Pete and Dud Shepherd\u2019s sketch:<\/p>\n