Category: Carl Stokes – Civil Rights 1960’s

Living History: Hough, Before & Beyond ’66 (Video) July, 2016 Ideastream

Living History: Hough, Before & Beyond ’66 (Video) July, 2016 Ideastream

The link is here

Published on Jul 12, 2016

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Hough riots, also known as the Hough rebellion, or the Hough uprising. The unrest began on the night of July 18, 1966 on the corner Hough Avenue and East 79th Street, and lasted about a week.

While the unrest of ’66 may first come to mind when thinking of Hough, few Northeast Ohioans know the rich history of the Hough neighborhood. Millionaires inhabited Hough before WWI, middle, workingclass immigrant residents populated Hough in the 1930s and 1940s and by 1960, the populace was predominantly African American. Additionally, not many people know the stories behind the local and national policies that led to the unrest of 1966, the fires that burned through the 70s, or the neighborhood Hough became from the 80s through today.

On Thursday, July 7th, 2016 ideastream® held an illuminating and wide ranging panel discussion on the history on Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood at The Happy Dog at The Euclid Tavern, moderated by ideastream reporter/producer Nick Castele The nearly hour long Q&A session that followed was equally illuminating.

Glenville Riots Documentary

This introduction film explorers the events of the Glenville Shootout (in Cleveland) that led to riots from July 23-28, 1968. This event follows the election of Carl Stokes as Mayor of Cleveland, the first African-American mayor of a major US city.

The link is here

Cuyahoga River Fire

From The Ohio Historical Society

On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to environmental problems in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States.

This Cuyahoga River fire lasted just thirty minutes, but it did approximately fifty thousand dollars in damage — principally to some railroad bridges spanning the river. It is unclear what caused the fire, but most people believe sparks from a passing train ignited an oil slick in the Cuyahoga River. This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.

On August 1, 1969, Time magazine reported on the fire and on the condition of the Cuyahoga River. The magazine stated,

Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. “Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,” Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. “He decays”. . . The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.” It is also — literally — a fire hazard.

Because of this fire, Cleveland businesses became infamous for their pollution, a legacy of the city’s booming manufacturing days during the late 1800s and the early 1900s, when limited government controls existed to protect the environment. Even following World War II, Cleveland businesses, especially steel mills, routinely polluted the river. Cleveland and its residents also became the butt of jokes across the United States, despite the fact that city officials had authorized 100 million dollars to improve the Cuyahoga River’s water before the fire occurred. The fire also brought attention to other environmental problems across the country, helped spur the Environmental Movement, and helped lead to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

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