Chapter II: Cleveland’s Reaction

In the aftermath, the simplest solution was to look for villains . . .^[1]

In the immediate first days of the calm following the disorders, relief was promised to the residents of the stricken area. Congressman Michael Feighan said that financial relief would be provided to riot victims and also indicated that the disorders would be the subject of a congressional investigation.^[2] The Small Business Authority announced that it would make loans to Hough area businessmen whose stores had been damaged or destroyed and who wanted to rebuild or relocate.^[3] The Legal Aid Society said that more than thirty experienced criminal lawyers were offering their legal services free to indigent persons who had been arrested during the disturbances.^[4] Even Mayor Locher announced some plans for relief for the area in the near future. He stated that the city planned to advertise for bids on three parcels of land to be developed for 110 low-cost housing units for the Hough area.^[5] But the reaction of the community to the previous week of violence and disorder was not primarily one oriented to reconstructing the damaged black community. The problem, it seemed, was to find out what and specifically who had caused the riots.

Many civic leaders denounced the disturbances as just “lawlessness.” Both Mayor Locher and City Council President Stanton claimed that the riots had no connection with the civil rights movement, but were instead just “a matter of lawlessness.”^[6] Some Negro leaders agreed with this assessment of the situation. Harry Alexander, business manager and secretary of the Negro owned and run Call and Post, said that the riots themselves were not racial, but that they “were triggered . . . because of constant continued discrimination against Negroes.”^[7]  Councilman Leo Jackson of the neighboring Glenville area strongly agreed with the mayor and city council president. He classified the disorders as “a struggle, not for civil rights, but a struggle by thugs for leadership of the Negro community.”^[8] He also went on to describe the rioters as

. . . an element which looks with contempt on the man who holds two jobs to support his family; disrupts schools and takes over playgrounds; snatches purses of women rather than seeking employment; burglarizes homes and stands around street corners treating our women with disrespect.^[9]

Jackson further claimed that the action had been organized and precipitated by “hoodlums.”

Such an attitude was to be heard often in the weeks that followed. Police Chief Wagner called the efforts “criminal syndicalism,” and proposed that simplified riot laws be enacted that would enable the police to charge one person with inciting a riot to replace the existing law which permitted arrests only if there were at least three persons conspiring to riot.^[10] A white councilman, Edward Katalinas, from a neighboring ward, claimed that the riots had been planned purposely for when National Guard units would have difficulty mobilizing quickly. He added that some disturbances along Superior Avenue on the northern boundary of the Hough area that had occurred earlier in June were a planned “dry run” for the Hough disorders. However, Katalinas also mentioned that there did exist some underlying causes for the trouble, and he pointed specifically to Mayor Ralph Locher’s administration as one of them. Plans were made by the administration, he said, for a $385,000,000 highway and a catch basin in the lake that prohibited them from doing more for the East Side depressed areas.^[11] Other leaders focused their attention on both the city government and the frustration of the black community.

Bertram E. Gardner, the executive director of the Cleveland Community Relations Board, thought that the rioting indicated “a combination of frustrations,” which included housing, jobs and education problems. There was, in his words, “a deterioration of the total community” that stemmed from people who were “unwilling or unable” to handle the problems of the city. The war on poverty was not a total failure, but Gardner claimed that it was by no means the total answer to the problems of the ghetto. He asserted that the real provocation for the riots did not come from any of the specific problems that were often mentioned, but instead it came from the “deep frustration” that resulted from the combination of inequities.^[12]

The ineptitude of the city government was also bewailed by Ernest C. Cooper, executive director of the Urban League of Cleveland. He blamed the city’s power structure and the maintenance of the status quo for the disorder. “Authorities appear to be more interested in controlling the situation than attempting to work out the problems that cause violence,” he stated in a press release. He also challenged the city government “to give concrete evidence to those persons who find themselves frustrated . . . that a positive change is taking place around the pressing problems they face in everyday life.”^[13]

State Representative Carl Stokes, a Negro who had narrowly missed unseating Mayor Locher in the election the previous fall, remarked that black leaders had been unable to offer the community any “evidence of hope and progress” because of a “long list of studies, plans, and broken promises” that had been made by the municipal government.^[14] The charge against the city government was further amplified by Councilman M. Morris Jackson. He attributed the causes to a lack of communication between Hough people and the white community and specifically referred to broken promises on urban renewal projects that the government had made to the people. Jackson stated that despite its allocated budget of millions of dollars, the urban renewal program had failed to provide adequate housing or recreation facilities. Insuffi-cient city services and the lack of an integrated police force were also mentioned by Jackson as causes of the riots.^[15] County Judge Thomas Parrino spoke for many of the community leaders when he said, “The seeds of these riotous acts are found in grave social injustice. Poverty and a denial of equal opportunity produces enormous frustrations.”^[16]

Numerous members of the community reflected the sentiments of their leaders, while others exhibited bitter personal feelings toward other members of the community. Many of the neighborbood merchants were shocked and dismayed that the businesses which had taken them a lifetime to build had suddenly been destroyed so quickly and easily.

Joe Berman, owner of the Starlite Delicatessen for twelve years, had locked the front door of his store with six-inch spikes the day after the first outbreak of violence. That night the spokes didn’t hold the door past six o’ clock, and when Berman returned the next morning, he found looters running throughout his food store in full daylight while the police cruised nearby. His reaction was typical. “I’ve been here twelve years and never had any serious trouble with anyone. But whether you’re good or bad makes no difference when a riot comes. We all got it.”^[17]

The riots ended twenty-one years of work for Al and Louis Rosenberg, owners of the Corner Cut-Rate Drug Store, and nineteen years of labor for the owner of a meat market, Earl Gamer. The Rosenbergs, like most other merchants, could not understand why their business had been a target for destruction but the fact that two black-owned businesses across the street and next door had been left unscathed helped to ex-plain the reasons. Gamer was somewhat bitter, and his attitude probably exemplified the feelings of fellow merchants who had been wiped out. Upon viewing his ruined business, he announced, “I can’t and will not open again. I’m completely ruined.” He went on to add, “When I moved in here nineteen years ago, there were very few Negroes. They came to me, I didn’t come to them.” As to the charges of low quality food at high prices, Gamer replied, “They say we are capitalizing on them. Well, that’s not true.”^[18]

Many of the area’s residents, however, did not agree with Gamer’s assessment of the situation. Mrs. Daisy Craggett, a leader in the Hough Community Council, claimed that the store owners that had suffered had made up for their losses in advance “over and over again . . . in bad service and high prices for inferior merchandise.”^[19] She also recalled her experience of walking through the violence-torn neighborhood on the third day of the disorders:

I walked through the area. I saw those high-price stores burning down. I couldn’t feel too badly.^[20]

Many of the local residents echoed the sentiments of Mrs. Craggett. Julius X, the operator of a Hough beauty salon, showed obvious resentment toward the white man. “The white man is reaping what he has sown. He is learning you can’t push people around. This trouble is here because the white man won’t treat the black man right,” he commented after the second night of trouble. The same militancy was apparent in the attitude of James Jackson, a young resident of Hough, who claimed that “about ninety percent of the people out here want to get whitey.” A black dry cleaner in Hough whose business had not been harmed in the riots lamented that the disorders had “been a long time coming and it’s about time; it’s too bad some of our own people have to suffer. . .”^[21]

Most of the older residents of the neighborhood were most concerned with this fact that some of “their own” people did have to suffer, and as a result, they questioned both the motives and purposes underlying the urban disorder. Mrs. Ceola King, a worker in the area anti-poverty office, wondered if the people of Hough had done all the damage. “Why would people want to harm themselves?” she asked. “The hardships that are created are going to be the hardships of the people who live in Hough,” she later observed.^[22] Agreement with this attitude prevailed only among some of the older people. A shoestore manager in the area commented after a few days of rioting, “They are burning up their homes and their jobs. They are burning up their payday and hurting our own people.”^[23] The director of Halfway House, a transition center in Hough for released convicts, Reverend James Redding, said that the released convicts “shook their heads, bewildered by the foolish destruction.” He added:

This is all so useless and senseless. Here we are, trying to rebuild people into decent, law-abiding citizens, trying to give them a better chance — and they spend a night watching people trying to destroy themselves.

As an after thought, Reverend Redding said, “Maybe one of the problems is that no one has been listening to what we have been saying.”^[24] Even among those people who opposed the violence because of its self-destructive effects, there remained the gnawing feeling of frustration.

Everyone in Hough seemed to be angry with everyone else. A newspaper reporter wrote that along Hough Avenue, people “talked in expressions of shame and defiance, anger and anxiety. Young men spoke of their grievances against the white man, old men of their grievances against the young.”^[25]

Reactions varied as to the amount of support that the violent actions commanded in the black community. Bertram Gardner felt that perhaps “ninety to ninety-five percent of the people” did not approve of the methods of destruction, and that the riots did not have “community approval.”^[26] However, many of the residents disagreed with Gardner’s appraisal. Phil Mason, a fieldworker in the Hough area, felt that a sub-stantial portion of the community supported and participated in the action by noting that “people who were just sitting on their porches would run over to a store after the windows were broken and steal stuff.”^[27]

Other community residents and leaders directed their efforts toward determining the specific nature of the problems that helped to foment the trouble. The pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church, Reverend Bruere, pinpointed several specific causes of the riots which he had observed in his work of helping his church pioneer projects to alleviate some inner-city problems. He blamed the disorder on everyone in the community, and cited specifically the churches which had moved out of the inner city as the Negro moved in, the city administration’s incompetence, apathetic citizens of the city, suburbs that wanted “to remain aloof from the problems of the city,” “absentee landlords and irresponsible tenants,” and “people who produce large families of illegitimate children . . . people who loaf and expect to be supported by some welfare agency.”^[28] No one was spared in Bruere’s sweeping indictment of the entire community, but most other people, such as Guy Goens, a supervisor at the Hough anti-poverty office, were less broad in their diagnoses of the problem. He emphasized that one of the principle causes of the disorder was “the general frustration in Hough.”^[29]

Many organizations across the city joined in the search for underlying causes for the riots, but most of their findings seemed to echo those sentiments expressed by individual citizens. The East Side Community Union, a group of seventy-five Glenville residents once again expressed the dominant view of the Negro community. Its report stated:

These so-called disturbances are not isolated uprisings of teen-age vandals, nor are they the result of ‘outside agitators.’ They are the expression of a despair, of an anger that is deeply ingrained into the Negro community; a despair and anger caused by years of exploitation, suppression and discrimination.^[30]

The Congress on Racial Equality chapter charged all responsible businessmen and administrators of the city with the failure to address themselves to the problems faced by the ghettos substandard housing, poor education, large unemployment, and minimum welfare programs.^[31] The city leaders were also singled out by the Council of Churches of Christ as a major factor behind the disorders. It claimed that the leadership’s inability to understand “the depth of discontent and desperation felt by large numbers of Cleveland Negroes” had caused the riots and made them so dangerous.^[32] The Americans for Democratic Action suggested that the city could raise the level of welfare to a decent standard and thus break the two bonds of misery, poverty and segregation, that united the Hough ghetto.^[33]

Analyses of the trouble continued to emanate from many individuals in the stricken area. At an area meeting near the Hough area held on Sunday, July 25, speakers said that the troubles there had been bad, but that they were what the city deserved. These opinions flowed from a broad spectrum of opinion — from ministers to Black Nationalists and from middle-aged people to the more militant youth.^[34] The black youth and teens were almost unanimous in their feelings of hatred and distrust for the whites. Examples of their reactions follow:

You (whitey) reap what you have sown. . .
We showed we ain’t scared of them. . .
We’ve done the city a favor. Look at the urban renewal we’ve accomplished. . .^[35]

Whitey, however, also reacted to the black community in less than congenial terms. Firemen talked of quitting because they were not paid to “fight a guerrilla war” with the black man. Fire Chief William Barry stated the opinions of many of his men when he said, almost incredulously, “We came out to protect lives and these people attacked us.” A staff member of the University-Euclid Urban Renewal Project illustrated a large segment of sentiment in the white community as well as an unenlightened view of the underlying causes of the disorders when he said, “Police should be ordered to shoot all looters. . .”^[36]

Still confused and bewildered by the events that shattered the calm summer, Clevelanders groped to find answers to the questions raised by the riots. The mixed emotions toward violence accompanied by a general feeling of frustration and a deeply ingrained resentment of whites which characterized the black community only demonstrated the need for lasting solutions to the city’s problems. The black attitudes were not widely shared throughout the rest of the community by either the majority of whites or the city’s leadership. If anything, the disorders served in the short run to further polarize the city’s “establishment” and the black community — two groups which, in the previous few years, had been drifting further apart. The differences and problems had become more apparent as well as more intractable.

It appeared doubtful that a non-partisan investigation of the disorders by a group of “respected” citizens, such as the Grand Jury, would resolve any differences or settle any quarrels. Such an investigation might only further alienate the black community without resulting in any positive good. Thus, as the hot summer began to cool down, the city stood frustrated in its efforts to understand itself.