The questioo
I alts blew two summers ago. and U.S. householders, fast learners in the geogra- phy of disaster, marked it down with Haiphong and Checkpoint Charlie on their lists of distant places Lo worry about They marked wrong, and last summer the proud and placid city of Cleveland. Ohio, proved it. The rest of the country learned that Watts is not in Los Angeles; il's right down the street, bahy. In Cleveland's rat-gnawed Hough section last July an inept and undermanned police force was unable to prevent a barroom squabble from be- coming live nights of sniping, burning and looting, in which four Negroes were killed, blocks of stores and apartment buildings were gutted and damage ran to name-your-ligure. The riots, or "demon- strations," as even moderate, middle-class Negroes in Cleveland pointedly call them, were the worst m the nation during 1966. They settled nothing. Shooting, lire bombing, dynamiting and denunciation since then have sputtered at sub-not level. Hough, a 50-block-by- 10-block infection of crumbling three-story apart- ment buildings and huge, rotted frame houses dat- ing from a time when summer meant sweet corn and Citronella. is still owned by rats that can't be frightened and landlords who can't be found, ft* backyards are still splattered with rain-soaked gar- bage and burst mattresses. Derelict building; stand empty and gutted, as before. Streets are stiil scavenged by prostitutes, numbers runners, hos- tile coiK. fatherless 14-year-old dropouts high on pills, five-year-old children dull from not eating enough, muttering winos and social workers with hopeless case loads. Of the area's 89.000 people, 78.000 are Negro (Cleveland, with 810.000 people, is 35 percaiit Negro, and the percentage is rising fast). Perhaps 25 percent of its men are unemployed: no one re- ally knows. One third of its families live on less than $3,000 a year, A few thin^ are better now: The city has built a large playground tinirisei years ago and paved a few streets. A new feJer;l job-training program has begun, and although ev- ery job program tried so far m Cleveland li.".; flopped, this one should work. Church groups, busi- nesses and a union are rehabilitating housing. But bombed-out, riot-wrecked build ings still stand:the streets have graduated more professional muggers: a while patrolman was shot and killed by a snipfr; stores and an elementary scluxil have been burned; businesses have packed up because they can t get insurance: a traditional City Hall indifference has hardened into stubborn contempt. Hough has been Hough for one more year. During the relative safety of the winter, white Clevt'landers irritably asked, "Why us?" No« thi- question is, "When?" U is hard to find a city resi- dent who believes Cleveland will go bl through the summer. "Oh. ves." admits By John Skow he ghetto; CAN ClfVELAND ESCAPE BURNING?
Safety Director John McCormick. "a lot of people haved, spread-eagling the young men against cars, fair. To members ofa grand jury that investigated have t)een buying guns, out of fear." cracking them with sticks if they moved." the riot, tbis selectivity showed that the whole For whatever consolation it brings to Cleveland, The Hough war ended, appropriately, in a final thint; had been planned, and the jury concluded the city bas plenty- of compan\'. One by one. in this grotesque act of violence. The Rev. Willie Wright, solemnly that the devastation had been brought second summer After Watts, the cities of the U.S. a 33-year-old Negro pastor in the Church of God, down on the city by Communists, Cleveland's are exploding hke so many jars of spoiled pre- was patrolling with his wife in a church station mayor, an amiable and ineffective time-server serves^Tampa. Dayton. Cincinnati—and a pru- wagon, trying to help calm things down. It was named Ralph S, Loeber, solemnly agreed. dent guess IS that the whole batch is tainted: hot, and he had taken off his suit coat and clerical Communist fire bombers, even imaginary ones, ever\' city in the nation with enough Negroes to collar. He noticed a National Guardsman arguing would be a salvation to Ralph Locher if he could get make a ghetto. "Why us?" makes less and less with two angry Negroes. "It was payday." Wright the city to believe in them. (Nicholas Katzenbach, sense. But Cleveland is an excellent place to ask, recalls, "and those two were going to have a fight, then U.S. Attorney General, dismissed the grand simply, •"\Miy?" In the words of Dr. Kenneth riot or not. I told them we had enough trouble, and jury's red scare impatiently, and two Cleveland Clark, a Negro psychologist who convened the they said, 'Yeah. Rev.' About that time tbe ixilice patrolmen who had inliltrated the threadbare Ohio nation's top civil-rights leaders last montb to plan roared up in four or five paddy wagons and tbree Communist party said that its members were not an approach to Cleveland's problems. "Causes station wagons. They didn't ask any questions. I active in the Hough riots.) A lanky rube of a man, of unrest and despair among urban-ghetto Negroes, got knocked down with a gun butt between the Locher is widely blamed in Cleveland for blunder- as well as their grim, sobering and costly conse- shoulders, and then kicked. They fractured two ing tbe city into its present race mess, and he lacks quences, are found in classic form in Cleveland." ribs. Later I called tbe station, and tiiey said.' Rev- the [K)htical agility to get out from under the charge. The consequences began on a hot Monday night erend, you must be drunk.' I went down to show Recently, hearing that tbe Rev. Martin Luther last July, In the 79'ers Club, a bar at 79th Street them I w asn't, Tbey apologized then, but tbey said King was in town and planned to make Cleveland and Hough Avenue, where relations had turned the>' didn't want to make a report because it would a summer project of his Southern Christian Lead- sour between the white owners and Negro patrons, get in the papers and stir things up again." ership Conference, Locher announced, " 1 w ill not a white manager told a Negro barmaid to "serve The riots burned through the ghetto, but the meet w'ith extremists." iMuch later, with no better no niggers no damn water." A sign went uj) out- destruction was selective. Tbe Hough Opixirtunity grace, he said he might see King, i The mayor side the bar: Xo WATER FOR NIGGERS. The man- Center was not touched. Neither were the houses grumbles about tbe "bum raps" Cleveland has ager and another white man strutted in front of the of wbite slum families, nor, for the most part, been getting from the national press, but for the bar with shotguns. In five minutes a crowd ol 300 stores whose owners had a reputation for being last few weeks he has refused sulkily to talk with people was milling about. Several wagonloads of out-of-town reixirters. police arrived- The crowd yelled, in anger or lor Photographs by Frank Dandrldge The mayor's position is that Cleveland's prob- exercise. Scared, sweating cops pushed the Negroes back. There was a sharp, cracking explosion—a sniper's bullet or. as some say now, a thrown cherry bomb. Police tired into tbe air and began to back the Negroes down Hough Avenue. The crowd threw bottles and bricks, and now there was no question about it; snipers were shoot- ing trom windows along Hough Avenue. Cops shot back where\'er a head showed at a window, and a woman looking out to call her children was killed. Gunfiff was now genera!; jxilice were shooting out all the streetlights along a four-block section to make themselves less visible to snipers. Police- men chased Negroes into houses along the avenue. "They came into the houses Hke Gestapo," says one witness. As the retreating mob of rioters began to disperse, tbe police raged through the buildings along Hough. The fire sirens had alread\' begun, and the>' did not stop for five days. Fred Barclay, a Negro who 13 the neighborhood poverty-program director. kept the Opportunity Center open 24 hours a day during the riots. The National Guard, called in early on the third day, used the center as a haven. So did young Negro looters, their hands cut and sniellingof gasoline, who came in to talk out their grievances, "They kept talking about rats, and crowding, and filth and high rent," recalls Bar- clay. "And they kept coming back to broken prom- ises—job-training programs whose graduates couldn't get jobs-and the way the police be- Hough'^\-opn, who patrol wilh riot guns, are hah-d by most Negwee, who accuse Iheyn of braUility and indiSfererwe.
39 SERPENT 5NAKE
CLEVELAND GHETTO. Association for the Advancement of Colored clear that City Hall under Locher was not going to People, says this of Mayor Locher: "The distin- touch it- Yet the business community and both iems are no worse than those of other large cities. guishing factor about Cleveland is that it is the newspapers supported Locher. i It seems clear thai His critics acknowledge that he is no racist. But only major city we know in which the mayor has they could not face the prospect of a Negro mayor; he is sensitive to the prejudices of white voters who rebuffed a committee of downtown, white busi- as things turnedout, with the white votesplit among are racists, and he speaks frequently about the nessmen who were trying to suggest ways of easing three candidates, a young Negro lawyer and civil- need for "law ami order"—a truism that can't be tension, and in effect told them to go to hell." rights activist. State Representative Carl Stokes, argued with, but which can be read b>' whites as a Two ]W)ints should be made about the criticism came within 2,200 votes of upsetting Locher.i code jihrase showing a get-tough attitude toward the mayor is getting in Cleveland. The first is that The second point is that by 1965 Cleveland Negroes. Loclier told a Senate committee last it is very tardy. Locher's failure is no sudden would have been in bad trouble even if all of^its year that the city did have problems, and did need collapse; he is finishing his third two-year term residents had been colored a soothing pink. The federal funds, but he wanted the city to control land will run for a fourth in November). Cleve- city was worn out and feeble. Its hands shook. the use of them. land's race mess was severe by 1965, and it was People were calling it "the mistake on the lake Cleveland businessmen, who would like to get (meanwhile-Lake Erie, foul with pollution, had it- the city's racial problems settled and olT the front self been recognized as a mistakei. Cleveiands pages, arc- noisily disgusted with Locher. (At a re- school s\-stem, excellent 25 years before, was a cent lamjxKjn night of tlie imwerful and moneyed shabby, dispirited bureaucracy. The city was rf City Club, a businessman acting the part of the 'There are kids who mayor said he felt i)ersecuted and askud u psy- underfinanced lhat it could afford to collect rub- chiatrist if he were neurotic. "You probably' are bisli only once a month. The police department simpiy incompetent," was the snaiiiier.i Both was antiquated, low-paid and 20 percent under newspapers, the /'ress and the Plain Dealer, now would shoot a cop and never strength; its vehicles were creaky and its anciem cover the mayor as if he were a civic disaster. communications s\-stem often could not ^"'^tiiem fast enough to send help where it was needed, .-ui Roy Wilkins. executive director of the National think about it.' overblown urban-renewal program- by far the na-
40 A»ti-ivl,,l.' ..f,,|,,,,,» ,„„; r,,,iti.iu» {trfl, rwrr thr l,.,,,l- 'lixiiinH o] Ahmrd. n Illark Niilw,,,>l.i,l oxIroUmn whu "'<''''•'"'• <-l
CLEVELAND GHETTO. enough tenants have moved, drifters break in. Opportunity's local center. "I was watching, and Plumbing fixtures are stolen, and their copper and I called the cops. They came four hours later. are made: "Ever see Hungarians throw garbage lead sold to buy wine or heroin. Kids take over. Yeah. four. What good's that?" A reporter in out the window?" "You (lnd women in Little Eventually someone is bound t.o start a lire. When Hough hears a similar story a dozen times a day. Italy with no husbands, letting the city pay them the fire department goes away, whatever is left is The police department's own statistics show that to have babies?"' The questions are asked by peo- left. On some streets in Hough there are more hulks response to calls for assistance in the Hough area ple who do not want answers. than houses. is the slowest in the city (although m the police The largest of Cleveland's walled villages has its At night no stores are open. Few enough are left version the average delay is a matter of minutes, gates barred from the outside. It is the Negro slum during the day; the storekeepers have been gunned not hours). on the east side of the Cuyahoga River: theCen- down or burned out, or merely starved out. A Negro State Legislator Carl Stokes, who is run- tral-Hough-Glenville area. Its people stay there street that is half abandoned houses has few cus- ning for mayor again, calls Police Chief Richard because the surrounding ethnic neighborhoods and tomers. A storekeeper who raises prices on days Wagner "completely unsuited for the job. He is the suburbs will not let them out, Superior Avenue when relief checks are distributed—a practice com- a man eaten up by racial animosity." (Waper is the northern boundary of Hough; on its northern mon in Hough—has few friends when a riot starts. was unavailable for interview during the Post's side, toward the lake, is Norwood, a neighborhood Yet price-raising may be forced by defaulting stay in Cleveland.) The chief has his defenders. of Polish cosmos. The boundary is strictly ob- credit customers. A slum devours itself. "He's not a racist, but he's a stubborn, old school served; Negroes walk on the south side of Superior, Bars, storefront churches and the streets them- cop. and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference," whites on the north. Early last summer cosmo selves stay open. Hough is, among other things, said one social-agency official. teen-agers armed with bicycle chains began driv- the rug under which much of Cleveland's prosti- Wagner's popularity did not rise in Hough ing Negro mothers and their children out of So- tution is swept. At night Negro whores in mini- when, two years ago, he testified in favor of capital winski Park on this northern border. Negro teen- skirts are gaudily visible at 79th and Euclid. Two punishment at legislative hearings in Columbus, agers struck back, then rioted for three days along of them wiggle their hips at a cruising out-of- giving as one of his reasons the prevalence in the Superior. It was a look at what was to come a state car. Unmarked special task force police cars nation of bloodthirsty Black Nationalists. Civil- month later. cruise the streets, recognizable because in each one rights leaders protested to Mayor Locher. or tned Drive through white Norwood at 10 P.M. Neat, a riot shotgun stands on the front seat between to. Locher would not see them. A farce followed old, single-family houses with front porches com- the driver and his partner. in which a prominent Negro attorney, three pas- fortable as an alderman's paunch. Tiny lawns The mildest feeling expressed by Cleveland tors and the local director of CORE were arrested watered earlier in the evening. Cars off the streets. Negroes for their police force is cynicism. Most are for sitting in the ma>'or's waiting room for three Few people about. Here and there a lighted win- bitterly angry, and the anger is expressed not days. "We didn't have any signs, and we weren't dow, and a night-owl grocery still open. merely by the street-corner mumbler whose ribs singing; we just sat there quietly." recalls Richard Roll up the windows, push down the door locks ache from the last beating absorbed while "resist- Gunn, the attorney. "On the third day we decided and ch-ive across Superior into Hough. Here the ing arrest," but by Negro city officials and profes- not to go home at five o'clock, when City Hall houses, built like Norwood's 60 or 70 years ago, are sional men. Job-and-mortgage householders in closed. At five-twenty we were arrested and taken bigger and more solid. There are maids' rooms on Hough complain that patrol cars arrive hours late. to jail." the third floors of most of them. The front-pjjrch "In the middle of the afternoon someone mugged The Cleveland police force is integrated, but in columns that upheld the Sunday-pot-roast re- an insurance collector right across from my house." little more than token numbers. There are a few spectability of the McKinley Administration art recalled Mrs. Juanita Stepps, a 60-year-old widow more than UX") Negro patrolmen, four sergeants huge and fluted; wood pretending to be stone. The who is a social worker at the Office of Economic and no officers in a uniformed force of about J.-OO pretense is over; the columns are split and peeling. men. Hough Negroes are critical of their Negro The single-family houses behind them hold four police, "You got just as good, maybe a better families and, as often as not, an after-hours joint. chance of getting worked over with some of those Most of the garbage that is thrown ("Airmail!") colored cats." says a Negro who knows Houghs out of the windows lands in the backyards, but it Some whites shouted; streets. "They got to prove themselves to the finds its way into the streets, and stays there. rest." The question of brutality is hard for a re- Hough IS both crowded and empty. When a porter to judge. Safet\' Director McCormick sa\-s neighboriirjod deteriorates to slum level, even a 'Jesus Christ wasn't blaok! he has never hoard of any. and that no Cleveland decent landlord sees no point in lixing a stopped policeman in his memor\' has been punished lor toilet, repairing a furnace, replacing a broken win- using excessive force. On the other hand the dt- dow. Tenants solve things by moving. When God isn't hiack!' partment lacks an (ContiniU'i on pn^t Jo
42 Rrotliiof ixiliccmcn, all while. I've seen U)ri()'R began, WHH urban (lc»tructi(tn. CLEVELAND GHETTO Public ;>olicy had decreed a Hlum. iriir six months frfffn new. Ihem before. I've been lieatin by them [l\t,\min Hchr-mfM tof^ncB wc lf\>niinuni from |3!) before. 1 was kicked in Ihe face atirl in |>r(»|K'rly had no long-term viiluu, W) Ihe head. Later a tixith jihsccsscd." investments luid to be mmk back m"flerak--income suburbs anrl orderly sj-steni for receiving and re- quickly. Ui'nts were jackcri. Landlords K low-incf>m*j public viowinK coniplnints. and tenants Ml Ihe k.gicjil illogic of lh(.- city must still h
47 Nol all ol till' children arc waLcbinj; CLEVELAND GHETTO- We liaii two 1 onr bad ;i htokcii s(.lirH/l downtown, and that will be in- ankle and one was in (lie bosiiital," lbe moviL-. Some of Ibem, fimtizinKly. are uiwtairs studyinK. "U'R :'" volun- ti'Kr;ilcd. of coiirw. And we'll have nn dcntV Ttif ;ilIitmU' ol llu- jiiims (n- Smitb lold n ball guard to bring back the first six kids he saw. The children teer," says Dr. Lccjnard Cohen, a i. ungraded high KYVXA UJT \v;ml KIH'HO Ni'unK'S was nol llic young, wbite research tbemist wbo drofxiuts. Thcrr'n bt tme "Never" of llif dt'i']) south, but it came in. wondering whal Smith hail leacbcr for every five kifla, if that's found out this lime, and what my ibougbt up ()p<-ralion P.II.I.). (Prog- Si'L'ineci lo Iw Uie"L:iloi" nf llu' deep ress toward Iligli schmil Diploma). whjit it takes. You come back and siibiirl)s:"liu|wtiencc;imonKlIieNe),MO wbile face meant. "OK. Jonesy." hxtk at us In three more years." Smilb said to a lx)y wbo. lilu' tlir oilier "The kids volunteer to show up, and [XHiple for the iniprnvemenl of their tlic teacbers volunteer to tcacb them." citizenship is iiiuk'rsliuulable, but lbe lxiys. wore a coat and tie. " Wluit gang Almost no one in really against good was il you used to bang with?" The teacbers are mostly wbite sfh'xds. Integrated housing is another opinion bas Ixm expressed lb;il Uicy "Negroes who could leach usually have may Iw alteiiiptinK to exact tiHi nuicb [jiatler; a visitor gels the imprtssion "(!ang?" said Jones. two jobs," Cohen says. Some of tbem that almost noonc in Cltvtland ia really l(xi fast for lbe coniniuiiity lo bear "^•eah, gang, back last year when are prep-scliool Iwiys or girls, and some within an arbitrarily (ixed time limit." for it. "The rif»Ls have justifierj segre- you were writing your name all over are profussional men. James Rice-, u gation to a lot of wbites," says Stuart Tbe Plain DaiUi olTeied dciwnd- the front of tbe building." Smith young NASA matbematician wbo is Wallace, who is head of a private firm able breakfast reading dnring May. smiled like a crocodile. one of tbe tutors, intrtxluces Bruce called Fair Mousing Inc.. which tries to Often tbere was a choice Lwber story, Jones smiled a liule ttMi. "Oh. yeah, Sands, a 16-year-old Negro wbo is a integrate CIc'Veland and its suburbs. (One o[ tbem lold of Cleveland's appli- well, I guess that was Ibe Dulamores." sophomore at C.Ienville Higb. Tbis In tbree years Fair Housing bas made cation for federal "model-city" funds. Was Jones still a member? No. he said, year Sands is a tutor. Last year at 73 sales—49 to Negro families in previ- Wilb tbe nation's larRe cities connoting il bad kind of died out. and anyway, he Patrick Henry he was a tutorial stu- ously wbite neighIxirbtyxls, and the for $900 milhon -and some certain to didn't have tbe time. Wbat took up his dent bimself. Rice beljjed him plan tbe rest to whites in neigbb<->rbrxxls in lose out—Cleveland liled its model-city time now? Well, be was at scbool most building of a gas cbromatograpb wbicb danger of "tipping." plan on the last |X">ssible day. witbout afternoons and evenings. (William won tbe top prize for a Cleveland stu- details, and without tbe required ap- Smitb told us tliat for tbe last year the dent tbat year in the Northeastern "Not a sparkling success," Wallace pnnal of tbe city council. The mayor school bad been kejit ojien until 9:30 Ohio Science Fair. Sands says he wants admits. "And our listings are lower attached a note to the document. It at nigbt. and on Saturdays, under a to be a doctor, and there seems to be than they've ever been." When Fair said be would try to lill in the rest of federally financed Extended Scbool no reason wby be won't make it. Housing gets listings—"Some of our the form by tbe end of tbe montb.) Services program. Children and adults best are given to us for spite"—the One morning tbe story to spill colTee could take classes, hold meetings, see a The man wbo gave William Smitb strategy is to block off wbite escape over said tbat tbe House of Represen- movie. Tbere were 1.100 adults on tbe tbe job of cbanging Patrick Henry routes by integrating a number of dis- tatives bad ended tbe federal rent- rolls and about -1.000 children from tbe from a zoo to a scbool is Dr. Paul tricts. If neighbfjrhood "B" is known supplement program. Project HOPE'S area. "A \'er\' strange tbing bas hap- Briggs. a wry. forceful man in bis 5O's. to bave Negro residents, whites in Belvedere would continue, but new Iiened." Smith bad said. '' Now tbe He took over the Cleveland scbools neighborbood "A" won't move there projects would be crippled. "Ob. we'll scbool belongs to tbem. You know three years ago after disgusted citizens merel)- to escape Negroes. keep going," Grevatt said later. "Cut what else? Tbe i)eople around here are voted in a new school board. (They were "People are worried about their down on tbe plumbing, paint over dirt getting some self-respect. The word the same voters wbo still tolerate neigbbors; in the middle class we live instead of plastering. Give tbe ix>or 'black' sound? all right now."] letbargy in City Hall. But bad schools for tbe approval of others. Vou know wbat tbey deserve. I guess tbat's wbat Smitb turned to an eightb-grade girl, were hurting tbeir own cbiidren. and who caves in quickest? The well-to-do it amounts to." clapped his hand to bis bead and said. tbey couid see the damage. I Now when wbite Protestants; tbey've had a warm And tbe morning after Abmed's May "Ooooob. my. don't we look elegant Clevelanders brag about tbeir city— smile all tbeir lives everywbere they've 9 riot scare, a one-paragrapb story said today." and then asked what sbe and some still do. stubbornly —tbey gone, and tbe\' can't face disapproval tbougbt about the fire bombing, mention the art museum, the orcbestra, We almost got a listing in Hunting that tbe Patrick Henry Junior Higb and Paul Briggs. School in Glenville had been fire "What you mean wbat 1 tbink?" sbe Valley"—a wealthy, segregated ex- bombed during tbe nigbt. At tbe scbool, said, frowning. Well. Smitb said, how The Cleveland scbools bad come to urb—"but our WASP family caved in a Gotbic Elsinore witb kids' names would she like it if someone had a dead stop wben Briggs was brougbt on us." Wallace went on to talk about written all over it in spray-can paint, burned down Patrick Henry? in from Parma, Ohio, as superintendent tbe stony refusal of Cleveland realtors we were captured by William Smitb. a " If they burn it, wbere'm I going to (he was tbe first outsider to come into to sell integrated housing, the reluc- stocky Negro in bis mid-30's, witb school?" sbe asked Smith scornfully, tbe city's top-level scbool administra- tance of banks and sav ings-and-loan the expression of a man wbo is going to sbaking ber bead at bis question. tion in 50 years). School buildings were outfits to negotiate mortgages, and the ask you to take a card, any card. He ancient and crowded. Since 1950 tbe "color tax"—bigber interest rates on bas been principal of Patrick Henry for city's population bad dropped by more mortgages tbat are made, and jacked- n the basement of Patrick Henry, up prices on tbe bouses themselves. two years, since a new scbool board and wbere boys used to steal tbings out of tban 100.000 as whites escaped, but superintendent began to bring Cleve- lockers, another federal program of- scbool enrollment had swollen from "We can beat all tbat, though. You land's scbools back to life. I 98.000 to 152.000. Tbe new pupils fers as mucb bope as tbe extended know tbe problem we're not touching? " You see wbat tbe school looks like." scbool services. Five makesbift class- were |X)verty children, and tbe scbools It's class, not race. We liberal, college- Smith went on. looking sly. "They're rooms give intensive help to children were not likely to belp tbem. Not one educated wbites don't mind liberal, going to paint it up tbis summer, but it who bave bad trouble adjusting to tbe ol the city's elementary scbools bad a college-educated Negroes, but we don't still won't be pretty. I'm going to impersonality of a junior-bigh-scbool's library. Only two of 15 bigb schools bad want poor people moving next dcwrno shock you. It's tbe best junior high constantly sbifting classes. vocational training—in a cit\' wbere matter wbat color they are. That's the school in the city." He sat back, "For the most part ifs just paying few cbildren were headed for college. ne.Kt problem, and it's gomg to be clasfjed bis bands across bis middle, attention." said Mrs. Jacqueline Law- "We got libraries going witb dona- harder tban wbite against black." It is tben sat forward. "Four years ago we son, a teacher's aide wbose 14-year-old tions and volunteers." Briggs recalls. a cbilhng point. Some of Cleveland's bad almost two thousand, five bundred daugbter is president of tbe Patrick "Every bigb scbool bas vocational suburbs are beginning to be color- students figbting for space in tbe balls, Henry Student Council. "Witb most of training now, and the equipment and integrated, but they are all segregated seven hundred more tban tbe school tbese children it's tbe first time anyone tbe courses are up to date. We got tbe against the city's poor. could bandle. We had fire incidents all Acs paid attention," Patrick Henry's city's businessmen to tell us wbat train- One war at a time, bowever. I had tbe time, five locker tbefts a day, transit ion-class cbildren. wbo would ing tbey wanted graduates to bave. A brougbt my family to Cleveland Heights maybe tbree or four good big figbts a normally be dropouts before tbey got department-store manager is running to visit relatives. WTiile we were there week, and I'm not talking about one to high school, bave tbe best atten- our retailing courses now. We hired a someone— presumably wbite—dyna- boy against one boy. We bad forty dance record in the scbool. IXTsonnel man from tbe jxiwer com- mited tbe home of Dr. J. Newton Hill, separate gangs, and the kids wore tbeir As we leave Patrick Henry I bump pany, and he's placing our kids. There tbe Negro director of an intemational jackets to scbool. Any teacber wbo into a boy in tbe doorway. "After you. are only four boys from tbe January culture center. Hill's house was only a could leave, left, company." he says cheerfully. Outside graduates who don't bave jobs." few blocks awa\- from us. Tbis made me "We've bad one fire incident tbis a police car moves slowly across a field Briggs bas bired a deputy superin- angrier than all of the rats and nckety year, tbat little bomb last night tbat toward a group of boys. Tbey disap- tendent wbo is a Negro, but be admits cbildren 1 had seen in Hough. What broke a couple of windows. No locker pear, and otber boys pop into view be- that bis scbools are less integrated ntaniac was blowing off d\'namite near tbefts. Maybe one fight a montb. and bind tbe car. Tbey are dro[X)uts. and racially tban when be took over. Four »(v kids? Tbe nigbt after the bombing you don't see tbe gang jackets. We've they are tbere every day. Almost cer- out of live Cleveland children attend a big Episcopal churcb nearby was cut dropouts way down. Listen." tainly one of tbem tbrew the lire schools wbose racial imbalance is at crowded witb outraged citizens. They Smith went on. "yesterday was a ten- bomb. "If we could bave got tbis least ninety-five percent. "Tberc's not pledged $8.00(1 in reward money to any- sion day. A lot of parents kept tbeir started two years earlier, tbey wouldn't mucb you can do wben a neigbborbood one wbo informed against the bomber, kids out. May nintb, you know, sup- be there." Smitb bad said. runs out of white students. Our geog- Pei.>ple got up and said tbat segregation posed to be blood on tbe lloor. We bad Tbe following nigbt we visit the raphy defeats bussing; we bave seventy- was bad; Three weeks later the local some pretty specific information about scbool again. Men are playing brute- five blocks of factories between the east city council booted dovai a suggestion what was going to happen bere; kids force basketball in tbe g>'m. and kids side Negro slums and tbe west side, tbat It counteract pubhcity given tothe make sure we know. now. I told my wbere tbe wbites live. But we bus our are hooting at a Western movie in tbe dynamiting by making a public state- faculty tbe nigbt before. It's about auditorium. In three classrof.)ms big. kids to enrichment classes downtown, one third wbjte. You know bow many solemn adult Negroes sit at small and they're integrated. It's token inte- ment in favor of open housing. teacber absentees we had on May ninth ? desks learning bow to read and write. gration, sure. We're going to build a Out in Parma, a segregated. most]\ blue-collar suburb settled largely ti\ 48 lan !;itei by lh<' fact [hat Negro women and help with appearance and speech. the non-cofimo whites. His candidacy r.. I "Afutuii I mow if a could gel jolw more easily, and now by Each trainee will have a coach to help t next door, bul I wnuIdTi'l announcement was tactful: "I am welfare rules. "A Negro man will come him over rough sjwts. and to help him proud of my Negro heritage, but I am soli to a NcRio, oul of coiisuii'iatinn loi 1>' ynti and say he's planning to leave pick tilt job training he can absorb. my neijjhlxirs." An older meiiil-M-i nl liet not running as the candidate of the his family, and risk jail for desertion, so "And." said Findley. "everyone who Negro community or of any other churcli s;\\-s. "Of cotirso if llie\'vi' Urn lh;il Ins kids can gel A.D.C. money." finishes tiaitiing will bave a job waiting trvattxi unfairly, then lliafs bad, E\- sjiecial group." That sort of statement Walter Grevatl explained. "Ho can'l for bim. Not just made work, but a job took another Negro, Massachusetts' co'one siiys Ihey neotl educatinn. get a job. and everyone's hungry. Wbal a man can move up in. We have com- though, and kxik al those colored kids Edward Brooke, to the Senate last fall. do yi>u tell him?") milniL-nts for one thousand jolw from But Stokes wears bis anger close to the rioting al Texas Snntliem. To me the The IloiiKb Opiwrt-unily Center Kuts industry and another one thousand only lliinR they understand is force." surface and, unlike Br