Letter Submitting Report
REGIONAL CHURCH PLANNING OFFICE
2230 EUCLID AVENUE • CLEVELAND, OHIO 44115
EXECUTIVE COMMITEE
LOUIS M. BRERETON: Chairman, Protestant Episcopal Church
JOHN R. COMPTON: Vice Chairman, Christian Church
M. PARKER BURROUGHS: Secretary Treasurer, Cleveland Baptist Association
OTTO W. TOELKE: Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
HARVEY M. LUCE: United Presbyterian Church
ALBERT B. DENTON: Council of Churches of Greater Akron
LYLE E. SCHALLER: Director
771-48115
July 22, 1968
The Rev. Louis M. Brereton, Chrmn.
Regional Church Planning Office
2230 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44115
Dear Dr. Brereton,
Perhaps no event of this decade has had a greater impact on the conscience of the religious community of Greater Cleveland than the riot that occurred in Hough in July 1966.
The events of that week supplied the central theme for scores of sermons. The shock of those events sparked the involvement of dozens of suburban congregations in the affairs of the inner city. The impact of those events aroused hundreds of laymen living in all parts of Cuyahoga County to a recognition that the problems of Hough are the problems of the entire Cleveland community.
As time passes the actual events of such a week tend to been shrouded in a growing collection of romanticized recollections and misleading myths. This report is published in an effort to make available to a larger audience a chronology of the events of that week and to offer an interpretation of why the riots occurred.
The text of this report was written by Mr. Marc E. Lackritz as a senior thesis. It was presented to the Faculty of the Department of History and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree. Mr. Lackritz is a resident of Shaker Heights and has had the opportunity to make a first hand investigation of the problems of Hough.
Respectfully submitted,
Lyle A. Schaller