Chapter V: Epilogue–Hough After the Riots

Little change came to Hough in the months following the disorders of the 1966 summer. As a result, the spring of 1967 saw the area inundated with newspaper reporters and journalists, all of whom drew similar conclusions — Hough was going to burn again that summer. Many of the city’s residents also expressed such fears, and only hoped that the violence would not spread to outlying areas. The white community demonstrated a fatalistic attitude of helplessness and did not act constructively to stem the tide of frustration in the ghetto.

The physical appearance of Hough did not change from its appearance of the previous summer. The burned-out and vandalized buildings provided an atmosphere of even greater desolation than before. The vacant structures served to further intensify the wasteland appearance of the entire area, and little repair had been done on buildings damaged in the disorders. Overflowing garbage cans still lined the streets accompanied by the unpleasant sight of underclothed and underfed children. Violence and crime continued after the riots throughout the rest of the year. Three white grocers were murdered in the ghetto, and robberies increased by 300%. Fire bombings occurred sporadically, and in April, teenagers mashed some store windows in a twenty-block area of Hough. Between September and March, fifty-nine teachers were assaulted in schools in the neighborhood. Drop-out and unemployment rates continued to be the highest in the city, and welfare payments stayed below the poverty existence level. The Police Department still employed only one hundred and fifty Negroes on the 2100 man force, and the urban renewal program remained ineffective. City leaders still found the conditions of the neighborhood deplorable, but no massive effort to improve these conditions was launched. In the words of one writer, Hough had “been Hough for one more year.”^[1]

Violence and disorder were predicted by everyone. Bertram Gardner joined the Cassandra-like chorus by predicting that the violence of 1967 would be worse than in 1966. He advocated that the city’s best course of action for Hough would be “to tear down the whole section.”^[2]

Most observers and residents recognized that there was still very little communication between the ghetto and the political leadership, and the local government continued to be rather unresponsive to the needs of the ghetto. Mayor Ralph Locher remained unempathetic and insensitive to the problems of the black people. When Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. announced that Cleveland was to be a summer project of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference and that he personally planned to visit Cleve-· land, Locher was asked if he planned to meet with Reverend King. He responded that he would not meet with any “extremists.”^[3] The urban renewal funds for new projects were formally cut off to Cleveland in January, 1967. The city’s urban renewal efforts were also hampered by personal disagreements between Locher and Ralph Besse, chairman of the Inner-City Action Committee. Besse offered Locher help in the area of urban renewal on the condition that Locher would appoint the Vice-Chairman of the Inner-City Action Committee to be Urban Renewal Director. Locher refused the offer and help, and so Besse severed relations with Locher, claiming, “The causes (of the problems in Cleveland) are to be found primarily in the inadequacies of executive personnel and almost complete lack of (administrative) coordination.”^[4]

A few token gains were achieved during the year. Private organlzat1ons such as HOPE (Housing Our People Economically) and others succeeded in renewing some of the deteriorated housing in the area, and the city put in new and brighter street lighting throughout the Hough area. Garbage was collected more frequently, and some new training and employment programs were initiated. For example. the Cleveland Economic Opportunity Office established a program called AIM-Jobs. The program was designed to actively seek the unemployed and guarantee them good jobs with advancement opportunities once they completed the training. Each trainee was to have a “coach” in the program who helped him along, and a specially assigned “friend” in his first job. To eliminate early discouragement, those persons who failed the program in their first attempt were placed in the next group of trainees. ^[5] However, the gains that were made were only a fraction of what was needed in the city, and so predictions of summer violence and destruction proliferated.

Lewis Robinson said that a peaceful summer in Hough depended on many things. Cooperation from City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce, success of the efforts of Martin Luther King to obtain concessions, and a complete program for the development of the Negro’s life in Cleveland were the prerequisites for a “cool summer” in Cleveland according to Robinson. “If all these things happen,” Robinson said, “then I’ll be out there on the streets telling the kids, ‘Cool it. cool it baby. We’ll be there in a couple of years.'”^[6] But prospects appeared grim.

Fred A. Evans, a black nationalist leader in Hough, known as Ahmed to his followers, predicted racial violence for May 9, to coincide with a scheduled eclipse of the sun. As the date for the riots approached, the city braced in anxious anticipation, but when the predicted “doomsday” arrived, mass violence did not occur. However, the day was not without a comic incident. Some detectives of the city broke into the editorial offices of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, looking for NBC cameramen who supposedly knew where the riot was going to start.^[7] Police also broke into Ahmed’s astrological headquarters in Hough but did not discover anything. There were no riots, and the residents of Cleveland breathed a collective sigh of relief, grateful that they were spared the inevitable for the time being.

The summer of 1967 witnessed the worst series of civil and racial disorders in the history of the United States. Forty-one serious incidents of civil disorder erupted across the country, resulting in almost one hundred deaths and property losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Relations between blacks and whites in America had reached a crucial point in history, and President Lyndon Johnson appointed an Advisory Commission to study the causes and possible solutions of the many civil disorders. However, despite the many predictions of violence for the summer months, despite the violence and destruction that occurred widely around it in all parts of the country, and despite the fact that conditions had hardly improved in the ghetto, Hough did not explode again.

The explanation behind the cool summer in Cleveland was not a very complex one. State Representative Carl Stokes had once again decided to run far Mayor of Cleveland. To win election in the fall, it was necessary for Stokes, a Negro, to receive more than just the black votes. About twenty-five per cent of the white voters of Cleveland would have to cast their ballots for Stokes to give him a majority, assuming that the black votes were unanimously cast for him. Any disorder or eruption in Hough, therefore, would have greatly diminished Stokes’ chances of being elected the first black mayor of a major metropolitan city. As a result, civic leaders of the black community, neighborhood leaders throughout the ghetto, and youth organizations combined to spread the word to “cool it for Stokes.” Even leaders like Ahmed Evans participated in this effort to keep the ghetto from exploding, and it worked very well. Some incidents that could have become precipitants for disorder were quickly extinguished, and the hotter individuals were soothed by many farsighted blacks who looked ahead to the fall election.^[8]

Much of Cleveland’s white “establishment” finally realized that the ineffective and inefficient Locher administration had allowed the city to slide into a sad state of disrepair. Consequently, many of the industrial leaders of the city gave their influential support to Stokes, and he was also endorsed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the daily morning newspaper. The Press, the afternoon paper, merely came out against Locher, and thus for either one of his challengers in the Democratic primary — Frank Celeste, the former mayor of a western suburb who had moved into the city to run for mayor (and who had been told that he would receive the Press’ endorsement), or Representative Stokes. With the help of these sources of white support and a solid block organization of the black vote, Stokes swept to victory in the October primary to receive the Democratic party nomination.

The only remaining obstacle between Carl Stokes and the mayor’s office was the Republican challenger, Seth Taft. Cleveland had a strong Democratic tradition, and Stokes showed great strength in the opinion polls, but the possibility remained that Taft would gain enough white support to nip Stokes in the final election. As the campaign closed, it appeared that Taft had gained some strength, and final public opinion polls showed the contest to be a toss-up.^[9]

November 7, 1967 was an historic day in Cleveland and the country. Aided by a turnover of over ninety-five per cent of the registered voters in the black wards, while polling almost twenty-five per cent of the white vote, Carl Stokes slipped by Seth Taft into the office of Mayor of Cleveland. When all the returns were in, they showed Stokes with 50.1% of the vote against Taft’s 49.9%^[10] Pandemonium engulfed the black sections of Cleveland that night, for it was a victory long in coming. The delirium subsided after a few days, and the community settled back to observe the Stokes administration go to work.

Mayor Stokes encountered some trouble at the beginning of his administration. First, his early appointments showed that he was going to repay his political debts promptly. One of his major appointments was the inexperienced thirty-one year old son of the president of a large Cleveland bank who had avidly supported Stokes’ campaign. Then later, when he was vacationing in Puerto Rico, a Press reporter discovered that Stokes’ Executive Secretary was also the secretary of a neighborhood illegal bar. She was immediately fired by the Mayor from his vacation spot without his hearing her side of the story, although many observers hinted that Stokes had known the information all along. Both events cost Stokes some support within the black community, and the second incident cost Stokes some respect from both whites and blacks for opposite reasons. The whites were upset about the “scandal” that had been uncovered so early in the administration, while the black community was disturbed by the way in which the incident was handled.

Hough still did not change much. The people living there awakened each morning with their deplorable conditions unaltered. At Christmas of 1967 Hough did not show many decorations, and the area still appeared desolate and depressing. Signs of new construction and renewal appeared sporadically in the neighborhood, but boarded up buildings and vacant lots cast a gloomy pall over the entire area.^[11]

After a few months, the Stokes administration began achieving some of its promised goals. Police were ordered to crack down in arrests involving prostitution by arresting the male participant as well as the female. Such action was ordered to help eliminate the vice from the streets of the ghetto, and to answer some of the criticism that had previously been directed at the Police Department. Mayor Stokes also succeeded in renewing the flow of federal funds for urban renewal projects, although one cynical observer had written that Stokes could have submitted his requests for cash “on Cheerio box tops” and had them “expeditiously approved.”^[12] A new urban renewal director was attracted by raising the pay to a level higher than that of the Mayor, and the appointment of Richard Greene, an urban expert from Boston, was welcomed by the city as a positive step toward improving the lagging urban renewal effort. Recent studies also showed that some Hough residents were moving out to the suburbs, an opportunity never before afforded the ghetto’s residents. As the Stokes administration entered its sixth month, the outlook for the black people of Cleveland was very encouraging.

Some black leaders were less optimistic about the future. Lewis Robinson thought that Stokes’ major contribution would only be a psychological one, showing black children that the American dream might still come true.^[13] Wendell Erwin, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, thought that Stokes had made some progress so far by working within the system. He believed, however, that substantial gains for the black community would have to wait until “the establishment died out.”^[14]

Progress was being made, though, and its momentum seemed to increase every day of the new administration. It appeared that the election of Carl Stokes would benefit the entire City of Cleveland, and especially its black residents. Assuming that Stokes’ election would be an asset to the black community and to Hough specifically, it is clear that the disorders of 1966 played an important role in the progress of the black people.

The riots affected Cleveland’s white “establishment” in two different ways. First, by increasing the white awareness of the ghetto’s problems, the riots and subsequent events demonstrated effectively that the Locher administration had neither the foresight nor the competence to deal with the pressing problems of the city. Secondly, the industrial and financial leaders were concerned that violence and disorder would erupt in Cleveland again, posing a serious economic and financial hazard for capital investment throughout the entire city. The election of Carl Stokes would increase the competence and responsiveness of the city government as well as lower the probability of future racial disorder. For these reasons, influential business and civic leaders threw their support behind Stokes’ candidacy. Many other liberal whites followed the same course of action.

The support of the white leaders was crucial, however, to Stokes’ success in the election. Without their endorsement, it is doubtful that he would have received the necessary twenty-five per cent of the white vote that made him a winner. Thus, the Hough riots aided directly in Stokes’ election.

Had the conditions of Cleveland been different, the city’s black citizens would not have gained as much in the long run. If the civic and business leaders had not been perceptive enough to see the need for change, the city would have made little progress, if any. If the administration in power when the disorder erupted had been slightly more responsive and understanding, the white leadership would have been less likely to support the candidacy of Mayor Stokes, resulting in the sacrifice of long range gains for the Negroes for short term concessions from a white, moderate mayor. And if the black community had not been so united and organized, it is doubtful that Stokes would have won. Thus a combination of newly enlightened civic leadership, an inept incumbent city government, and a unified and organized black community produced the environment that led to the election of Carl Stokes and the possibility of many long term gains for the black citizens of Cleveland.

Tragically, a riot had been necessary to move the City of Cleveland to action. The election of Carl Stokes began a new and brighter period in the history of Cleveland, Ohio. The events of July, 1966, hastened the end of an earlier and more frustrating era.