“Frederick Harris Goff, Rockefeller Philanthropy and the Early History of U.S. Community Foundations” by Eleanor Sacks, Visiting Scholar, Indiana University
Belle Sherwin Short Biography
Samuel Jones Video from WGTE/Toledo
Brief video of Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones, mayor of Toledo from 1897-1904
The Man, the Strategy and the Seismic Shift by Brent Larkin
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the 40th Anniversary of Carl Stokes election as mayor of Cleveland.
The man, the strategy and the seismic shift
11/04/07
Brent Larkin
Plain Dealer Reporter
By midnight, all seemed lost. And the mood inside Carl B. Stokes’ downtown headquarters had turned decidedly gloomy.
Destiny was about to deny Stokes what he wanted most to be the first black elected mayor of a major American city.
With 70 percent of the vote counted, Republican Seth Taft had built what seemed an insurmountable lead. As Election Day turned to Wednesday, Taft had pulled in front by 20,000 votes.
It seemed that Stokes, a 40-year-old state representative who had handily defeated incumbent Mayor Ralph Locher in the Democratic primary, would lose the general election to a Republican in a city with a minuscule Republican population.
Cleveland Press reporter Dick Feagler would write that women wept during this tense, trying period when defeat seemed certain.
A Dixieland band played ‘S’Wonderful,’ but it wasn’t, described Feagler, adding that for four hours it appeared Seth Taft had won.
There was really a sense of despair, recalled Anne Bloomberg, at the time a 26-year-old civil rights activist and campaign volunteer. Our hopes were so high going in, and it looked like it would all be for naught.
But then it all began to change. Votes from predominantly black, East Side neighborhoods were the last to be counted. Slowly, but inexorably, Taft’s lead began to shrink.
We had ward-watchers in the neighborhoods and we knew Carl would come back, recalled Ann Felber Kiggen, Stokes’ campaign scheduler. When it began to happen, I remember this incredible feeling that swept through the headquarters. People were dancing and holding hands. It was uncontained joy.
It was 3 a.m. when, with nearly 900 of the city’s 903 precincts reporting, Stokes took the lead for the first time. Out of 250,000 votes cast, he won by 2,500.
Then, as the mayor-elect appeared before about 400 jubilant supports, the room grew quiet when he declared, I can say to all of you that never before have I known the full meaning of the words, ‘God Bless America.’
In his autobiography, Promises of Power, Stokes would later marvel at the magnitude of what happened that night.
In a race for high office, the grandson of a slave had defeated the grandson of a president.
That had never happened before. And it hasn’t happened since.
The Cleveland that elected Carl B. Stokes mayor was a far cry from the one that chose Michael R. White as the city’s second black mayor 22 years later and light years removed from the one that elected Frank Jackson in 2005.
In 1967, Cleveland was still a top-10 city, with a population north of 750,000 nearly 300,000 more than today. Because race was as much a factor in city politics then as it is now, Stokes’ election was all the more remarkable; the city’s black population was only about 35 percent then. Today, that figure surpasses 53 percent.
To defeat Seth Taft, a decent man with a magic name who would later serve with distinction as a Cuyahoga County commissioner, Stokes needed white votes lots of them.
We knew we had to broaden our base on the west and south sides, recalled Charlie Butts, Stokes’ brainy, 25-year-old campaign manager fresh out of Oberlin College. But we had to be careful not to give the appearance of running different campaigns in different parts of town.
To give his campaign legitimacy, Stokes desperately needed support from whites in corporate boardrooms and city neighborhoods. He got it from this newspaper, which endorsed him on the front page.
He got it from people like Bob Bry, a vice president of Otis Elevator who organized a group of business leaders to take out newspaper ads on Stokes’ behalf.
I was a registered Republican, but my sympathies were with what Carl was trying to do, said Bry, now 84 and living in Florida. Some business leaders were bothered by it. But no one ever said anything to my face.
He got it from people like Ann and Joe McManamon and hundreds of others like them who paid a price for welcoming Stokes into their living rooms and churches.
There were recriminations, remembered Ann McManamon. We got some very hateful phone calls. It got quite nasty. But our friends stuck with us and were supportive.
Nearly one in five whites voted for Stokes which meant he needed nearly nine out of every 10 black votes.
To win those votes, Stokes built a political organization that, to this day, serves as a model for black candidates across the country. It was a base that relied heavily on churches, ward leaders and a grass-roots field operation that extensively schooled street captains on how to maximize turnout.
That same base later enabled Stokes’ brother, Lou, to become an institution in Congress. It helped make former City Council President George Forbes powerful and wealthy. And it twice brought Arnold Pinkney to the brink of becoming Cleveland’s second black mayor.
It was a base built to last and last it did.
All around the country in places like Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago black candidates copied what Carl was able to achieve in Cleveland, said his brother. What made it special was that it was done so well and had never been done before.
There was no blueprint for electing a black mayor of a major American city. So Stokes drew his own.
He had a plan on how to win, and he never strayed from it, said Forbes. In his prime, there was none better none.
From City Hall to New York, and, finally, back home
Stokes won re-election in 1969, but did not seek a third term in 1971, leaving soon after for New York, where he was a television anchor and later a reporter for NBC. Over the years, Stokes gave various reasons for his decision not to seek a third term, but he was clearly tired of the constant struggles involved in leading a big city with mounting problems.
Stokes’ record as mayor was decidedly mixed. He brought a sense of fairness to the city’s hiring practices, helped raise the level of social services and aggressively fought to improve housing conditions. But Stokes fought repeatedly with City Council, and revelations that some funds from a poverty-fighting program he founded went to nationalists involved in the killing of police in the Glenville riots significantly eroded his popularity.
Upon his return to Cleveland in 1980, Stokes found that the new political stars were his brother and Forbes. In 1983, he became a Municipal Court judge an important position that lacked the high profile of a powerful congressman and council president. There were also some troubling and embarrassing moments. Stokes engaged in some high-profile political fights with onetime allies and was twice accused of shoplifting he paid restitution on one charge and was acquited of another.
But none of what happened later detracts from the significance of what Stokes achieved in 1967.
Many black leaders in the ’60s aspired to be Cleveland’s mayor, but only one ever stood a chance.
Only one person could have built that base, said Pinkney. Only one person had the charisma, the experience and the drive to win. Back then, it took a special talent for a black to be elected mayor. And only Carl had that talent.
Stokes was not a civil rights leader. He was a politician. And four decades later, Pinkney and others still speak with a sense of awe of Stokes’ political gifts. Butts thinks Stokes was born with an intellect, understanding and chemistry that allowed him to connect to voters in ways almost unprecedented. Forbes volunteers that Stokes had the whole package looks, the charm and one of the sharpest political minds I’ve ever seen. Kiggen says he was the most charismatic man anyone could hope to ever meet.
In his book, Stokes wrote that he considered the 1965 campaign for mayor, in which he narrowly lost to Locher in the Democratic primary, the high point of my career.
He was mistaken. The 1965 campaign energized Stokes’ base. And it set the table for what would follow. But it paled, compared to what would happen two years later.
Always looking ahead, even at the end
For all his winning ways, Stokes was also the most complex politician I ever dealt with. He could be warm and witty one day, your enemy the next.
On Jan. 30, 1996, we visited over lunch at an East Side restaurant. He knew by then that his fight with cancer of the esophagus was one he couldn’t win.
As Stokes picked at food he could barely swallow, he spoke with no rancor as he reminisced about those days of glory that landed him on the cover of Time magazine. He wasn’t finished looking ahead, either: He eagerly agreed to meet with a group of young journalists at this newspaper to talk about how the political process affects minorities, and we chose a date in February.
But when the day came, he was too ill. By early April, he was gone.
He had long before kept the date that mattered most, though. That was the one back in 1967 that made him, in the sense of history, immortal.
Retired Celeste reflects at 75 on his public career
From the Columbus Dispatch, 1/1/13
Retired Celeste reflects at 75 on his public
career
Ex-governor says he relished job, despite its wounds
By Joe Hallett
The Columbus Dispatch Tuesday January 1, 2013 7:16 AM
And now, finally, Celeste is retired. Well …A classic goatee, close- cropped hair and svelte healthiness; a pin- striped shirt, bluejeans and navy-blue sport jacket — it all says something about a man. Mostly this: He’s hip.
But when the man is 75, as is Richard F. Celeste, the look says mostly this: He’s comfortable in his own skin.
That much was evident during a recent hour- plus conversation with one of the most- accomplished and – consequential Ohioans of the past half-century: a Rhodes scholar, state legislator, lieutenant governor, director of the Peace Corps, governor, ambassador to India and college president.
FILE PHOTO
Then-Gov. Richard F. Celeste displays a copy of The Dispatch reporting his re-election victory over former Gov. James A. Rhodes in November 1986. Republicans say the Democratic governor was willing to work with them, and they praise his intellect.
“ Retired is the wrong word,” he said. “ Redirected is the right word. I call myself a senior adviser.”
More than a year out from his retirement after nearly nine years as president of Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Celeste is doing what senior statesmen do: serve on corporate and nonprofit boards, make a few bucks consulting, and find time to enjoy family and think deep thoughts, something the big-brained Celeste did even when he was crazy-busy.
On Nov. 11, Celeste’s birthday, his blended family and the cadre of “Celestials” he stirred to the cause of public service gathered at son Christopher’s house in Columbus to celebrate and commemorate the 30th anniversary of his election as Ohio’s 64th governor.
At age 21, Jan Allen was inspired to put law school on hold in 1978 and
At age 21, Jan Allen was inspired to put law school on hold in 1978 and
join Celeste’s first and failed quest for governor. Allen said the birthday party rekindled the esprit de corps of a once-youthful troop enticed by Celeste, a leader “who had the energy, the charisma, the communications skills and the incredible intelligence” on par with a famous peer, former President Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas throughout Celeste’s tenure as Ohio governor, 1983-91.
“There is something about the Dick Celestes and Bill Clintons of the world,” said Allen, a senior staff member in Celeste’s first term. “They just create a ton of energy around them.”
Thirty years ago at this time, Celeste was assembling the most diverse and youthful cabinet the state had ever seen. It included a half-dozen women and four African-Americans, and the average age was 35.
Optimism abounded despite enormous challenges, including pushing a 40 percent income-tax increase through the legislature to close a $540 million state-budget deficit, and dragging Ohio into a technologically evolving world economy.
In the back of every Celestial’s mind, including the governor-elect’s, was the idea that a strong first term would lead to not only a second, but also a shot at the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.
A John Lennon lyric — Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans — caught up with Celeste. Over the 30 years since 1982, life has come at him with its unpredictable fullness, a fury of ups and downs, of exhilarating highs and painful lows, dashing his hopes for the presidency but presenting vistas of opportunity and achievement that cause one to move forward without regret.
“I really don’t look back very much,” Celeste said. “I’m a what’s-ahead guy.”
What was ahead for Celeste after he left the governor’s office was a 1997 appointment by then-President Clinton to be ambassador to India, where, 34 years earlier, he had been posted as an assistant to Ambassador Chester Bowles, a cherished mentor.
In 2002, when Celeste was a finalist for the presidency of Case Western Reserve University in his hometown, Cleveland — a job he knew he wouldn’t get because the trustees thought he would serve only a few years and then run for governor or U.S. Senate in 2006 — a headhunter told him about Colorado College.
“I loved being a college president because I love being around young people, and throughout my career, part of what I tried to do — because it was what Chester Bowles did for me in the ’60s — was always look for young people to join me and to give them substantial responsibility.”
Celeste has 13 grandchildren, including two who are students at Colorado College. He and his wife, Jacqueline, who is about 27 years younger than he, still live in Colorado Springs with their 15-year-old son, Sam.
Calling Sam “a terrific young man,” Celeste said: “With him, I make up for some of the time I didn’t spend with my older kids when I was on my arc of ambition, trying to become governor of Ohio and all of that stuff.”
Celeste married Jacqueline Lundquist, a former Washington, D.C., public-
Celeste married Jacqueline Lundquist, a former Washington, D.C., public-
relations consultant, in 1995 after his 33-year marriage to Dagmar ended in divorce. Any wounds appear to have been healed by time. Celeste calls Dagmar “a good friend” and each year, he, Jacqueline and Sam go to a family reunion at Dagmar’s Lake Erie home on Kelleys Island with the six children from Dick and Dagmar’s marriage, who range in age from 49 to 35. Dagmar and all the kids were at the Nov. 11 party.
“We all talk regularly and don’t spend enough time together, and, as much as we try, it’s never enough,” Celeste said.
Reflecting on his career, Celeste said being governor is “probably the best job in public life,” and he relished his eight years.
“I loved every day of it, even when Mary Anne Sharkey was kicking my ass. My family didn’t always like it, but I loved every day of it. I felt enormously privileged to serve. I believe we made a big difference.”
Sharkey, now a Cleveland-area political consultant, was Statehouse bureau chief for The Plain Dealer and the co-author of a story in June 1987 alleging that Celeste had engaged in several extramarital affairs. Although Celeste acknowledged that the story “was certainly a consideration” in his decision not to run for president the following year, he said he had decided before then, after forays to Iowa and New Hampshire, that he had no appetite for the fundraising and time demands of a presidential bid.
“And my family had enough issues with me in public life, and me personally, that I didn’t want to put them through it,” he said.
Conceding that “it was hard not to like Dick Celeste,” Sharkey said his governorship failed to fulfill the “enormous potential” of the man. Although Celeste had promised to end cronyism in state government, stories abounded in the Ohio press about scandals and favoritism that marred his tenure, including criminal convictions of at least two high-level appointees.
“The Celeste administration brought Cleveland-style politics to the Statehouse, and they ended up making Cleveland politics a pejorative term,” Sharkey said.
To this day, some Celestials will not speak to Sharkey, but Celeste is not one of them. “He hugged me the last time he saw me,” she said. “People always thought it was personal, and it was not.”
Amid the bad was plenty of good, and in many areas, Celeste excelled as governor. He put the state on a sound financial footing and funded education and higher education at record levels, creating innovative programs such as Eminent Scholars to attract top research professors and the “ Edison program” to seed research that spurred the state’s growth in high-tech jobs.
Celeste was nationally praised for moving mental-health services to community-based care, boosting money for early-childhood education and creating the PASSPORT program to help elderly citizens receive in- home services. He fearlessly raised the state gasoline tax several times to fund vast improvements in the state’s highway system. Ohio’s unemployment rate was 14.4 percent when Celeste took office and under 5 percent when he left.
“He really was good to work with,” said Ohio House Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, who was in the House minority when Celeste was governor. “He had a first-rate mind. I think a lot of people just didn’t realize how bright he was.”
Celeste’s willingness to work across the aisle helped him handle Ohio’s 1985 savings-and-loan crisis, at the time the nation’s worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.
Stanley Aronoff of Cincinnati, a Republican who was the Senate president from 1989 to 1996, said Celeste’s creativeness and bipartisan approach ensured a solution that kept depositors from losing money in 69 privately insured savings and loans that the governor ordered closed until buyers for them were found.
“He thought beyond Ohio in some respects,” Aronoff said. “He found it very important to do some things that aren’t normally on a governor’s radar screen, and he had an ally in me. He didn’t mind calling me late at night. His mind was always buzzing in a positive way.”
Celeste said he was fortunate to govern in “a more-genteel time,” before government became paralyzed by hyperpartisanship. “Unyielding division is not healthy for the body politic,” he said.
“It’s a question of, how do you create a place where it’s safe to have real conversations and to think about compromise and ask the question, ‘Is there an Ohio interest that comes before a Republican interest and a Democratic interest in the process?’ ”
The Complete Kucinich – from Cleveland Magazine
A series of articles about Dennis Kucinich from Cleveland Magazine
The start page is here
No one knows Dennis Kucinich like the people of Cleveland. And Cleveland Magazine has been covering his career ever since our inaugural edition in April 1972, when Kucinich tipped his psychedelic Uncle Sam hat on the cover.
Now that the man with many a moniker — Denny The Kid, The Boy Mayor, Dennis The Menace — has set his sights on the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Cleveland Magazine editors offer this seven-article, four-decade retrospective of Dennis Kucinich and his impact on the city, the region and national politics.
Denny the Kid
From Cleveland Magazine, April 1972
It’s a long way from the West Side to the White House, but then again, it’s a long way from St. John Cantius to Council. For the “little people” living under the shadow of the myth that the boy next door can grow up to be president, 26-year-old Councilman Dennis Kucinich is a real-life apparition that walks, talks, and plays the game of politics with the knack of knowing how to use a few basic tools: the middle classes, the media, and a frightening will to win.
Read it
The Prince and The Power
From Cleveland Magazine, April 1978
Few have escaped the wrath of the new mayor and his army of loyal, arrogant courtiers as they wage holy war from City Hall. But are palace skullduggery and management by media helping anyone but Dennis?
Read it
Kucinich on the Couch
From Cleveland Magazine, June 1978
A psychological portrait featuring, among other things, high school sports, comic book superheroes and an adopted family at City Hall.
Read it
Kucinich’s Final Days
From Cleveland Magazine, January 1980
Read it
Dennis Kucinich: The Story
From Cleveland Magazine, May 1996
As Dennis Kucinich rides the wave of his political comeback to challenge Martin Hoke for Congress, he looks back at his childhood and forward to his future, crediting his fall from politics for his new peace of mind. Looks like the boy mayor has finally grown up.
Read it
from The 30 People Who Defined Cleveland
From Cleveland Magazine, December 2002
Friends and rivals recount their memories of Kucinich’s epic battles as mayor, his years in exile and his triumphant comeback.
Read it
The Missionary
From Cleveland Magazine, December 2007
Dennis Kucinich is running for president — again. Seriously. But the talk-show punch lines and complaints he can’t win only feed his enormous self-confidence. He says he is Cleveland’s message to America. But is Dennis the message we want to send?
Read it
History of Warrensville
“History of Warrensville” from From: A History of Cuyahoga County
and the City of Cleveland
By: William R. Coates
Publishers: The American Historical Society
Chicago and New York, 1924
“Libbie Braverman” Chapter written by Alan Bennett, The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965 edited by Carol K. Ingall
“Libbie Braverman” Chapter written by Alan Bennett, The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965 edited by Carol K. Ingall
Libby Braverman was a Cleveland Jewish educator who greatly influenced Jewish education in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.
Her Encyclopedia of Cleveland History bio is here
History of Child Care in Northeast Ohio (thru 1998) from Encyclopedia of Cleveland History written by Dr. Marion Morton
CHILD CARE – The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
CHILD CARE. Since the mid-19th century, Cleveland has cared for children needing residential or day care or medical services. Although child care has been both a private and a public responsibility, the public sector has played an increasingly significant role since the 1930s. The first public institution to care for children was the City Infirmary, built in 1837 to house all dependents, including the ill, elderly, disabled, and insane. In 1858 the House of Correction, also called the House of Refuge, opened for vagrant or delinquent children under the age of 17, operating in conjunction with the city workhouse from 1871 until closing in 1891. From 1891-1901, delinquent children were kept in the Cuyahoga County Jail. Some public funding supported temporary shelter and training for dependent children in the City Industrial School (1856-71), founded by METHODISTS in 1853 as the “Ragged School.”
However, private charities, often with strong religious ties, sponsored most of the city’s 19th century child care. Protestants, Catholics (see CATHOLICS, ROMAN) and Jews (see JEWS & JUDAISM) established several institutions for children from the mid-19th to the 20th centuries (see ORPHANAGES). These institutions provided long-term residential care while child-placing agencies provided temporary shelter and placed children in foster or adoptive homes. The CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY was organized in 1858 as an outgrowth of the City Industrial School. The Cleveland Humane Society (like others around the country, at first the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) began to serve children in 1876, charged with enforcing a new state law that prohibited cruelty to children. The society investigated cases of neglect, abuse, or abandonment and was empowered to remove children from their parents and place them in orphanages or foster homes if necessary. In most cases, however, the Humane Society simply admonished parents or forced them to supply adequate financial support. It also administered Lida Baldwin’s Infants Rest for foundlings (1884-1915). In 1887 the Lutheran Children’s Aid Society was established for children of LUTHERANS.
Religious institutions also provided preventive or protective services for children judged to be neglected, delinquent, or predelinquent. In 1869 the SISTERS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD opened their convent for young women, and in 1892 the WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, NON-PARTISAN, OF CLEVELAND, opened its Training Home for Friendless Girls. These institutions purported to reform and reclaim young women through religious training in a familial and domestic setting. Private organizations sponsored daycare facilities, beginning with the CLEVELAND DAY NURSERY AND FREE KINDERGARTEN ASSN., INC. (1882).
Four medical facilities especially for, children were established around the turn of the century: Rainbow Cottage (1887) for convalescent children, which became Rainbow Hospital for Crippled & Convalescent Children (1913); the Children’s Fresh Air Camp (1889), later HEALTH HILL HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN; Babies’ Dispensary & Hospital, a free milk dispensary (1904) which later added a clinic (1907); and the Holy Cross House for crippled and invalid children (1903), administered by the EPISCOPALIANS (Diocese of Ohio). In 1925 the Babies’ Dispensary became part of UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS CASE MEDICAL CENTER (UH), joined by Rainbow Hospital in 1971 to form Rainbow Babies & Childrens Hospital of UH.
In 1909 a White House Conference on Dependent Children signaled the interest of the Progressive Era in child welfare and helped establish 2 trends that would dominate child care through the century: the shift from institutional to noninstitutional care and the increase in public funding and management. The conference took the official position that “home life” (as opposed to institutional life) was best for children; in 1910 the Western Reserve Conference on the Care of Neglected & Dependent Children reiterated that preference. The establishment of CUYAHOGA COUNTY JUVENILE COURT in 1902 marked a new recognition of public responsibility. Created in reaction to deplorable conditions of the children’s facilities in the city jail, the court provided for dependent and neglected children. Delinquent children were placed on probation, in a public reformatory institution such as the Hudson Boys’ Farm (1903) or BLOSSOM HILL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS (1914), or in a private protective facility. The court also collected child support from negligent parents. In 1913 the State of Ohio passed a mothers’ pension law, providing funds for widowed or deserted mothers to continue to care for their children.
The growing preference for noninstitutional care gave child-placing agencies new importance. Because there were no county children’s homes, in 1909 Cuyahoga County provided funds to the Humane Society to place children in boarding homes. In 1913 the society also received city monies to establish systematic child-placement. In 1921 the Children’s Bureau was established to standardize the placement of Protestant and Catholic children in foster and adoptive homes. The Welfare Assn. of Jewish Children, (later the JEWISH CHILDREN’S BUREAU) handled the placement of Jewish children. Several nonresidential services also developed, such as the WOMEN’S PROTECTIVE ASSN. (1916), which became the Girls’ Bureau (1930), working closely with juvenile and municipal court probation officers, and the Jewish and Catholic Big Brother/Big Sister programs (est. 1919-24, see BIG BROTHER/BIG SISTER MOVEMENT).
Despite the noninstitutional preference, new facilities for adolescents were, established, partly in response to concerns about delinquency and CRIME. The Catholic Diocese opened St. Anthony’s Home for Boys (1906) and the CATHERINE HORSTMANN HOME for high school girls (1907). The work of the Convent of the Good Shepherd was divided between the Sacred Heart Training School, which admitted girls referred by juvenile court, and the Angel Guardian School, which sheltered dependent girls. The Humane Society opened Leonard Hall, formerly Holy Cross House, for high school boys.
The community responded to the needs of young children as well. The Cleveland Day Nursery & Free Kindergarten Assn. was founded in 1983. Since kindergartens had become a public responsibility in 1897 (see EDUCATION), nursery schools and daycare centers gradually replaced the association’s kindergartens. In 1922 the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary opened Rosemary Home for crippled children (later ROSE-MARY CENTER). Orphanages merged, moved to the SUBURBS, expanded, and broadened services to include “troubled” children.
The Depression accelerated the trends toward public responsibility and noninstitutional care. As private funds dwindled, the number of children admitted into the city’s child-care institutions dropped significantly: from 2,139 in 1928 to 1,346 in 1930. Public funding, particularly federal, became more important, and public agencies, particularly the county, assumed new responsibilities. In 1930, for example, the Cuyahoga County Child Welfare Board took over the placement of more than 1,000 children from the Humane Society and the Welfare Assn. for Jewish Children. The county also maintained a detention home, offering children temporary shelter. In 1935 the Social Security Act provided federal funds, to be supplemented with local dollars, for Aid to Families of Dependent Children (AFDC). Since the 1930s, both county and federal governments have expanded these roles. AFDC has borne chief responsibility for care of dependent children, usually within the family. From 1979-80, 90,300 Cleveland residents received AFDC funds. The Cuyahoga County Department of Human Services provided child placement in foster and adoptive homes and private facilities as well as daycare and protective services. The county also maintained the Metzenbaum Children’s Center, a temporary shelter and diagnostic facility; a juvenile detention home; and the Youth Development Center in Hudson, formed by the merger of Cleveland Boys School and Blossom Hill. The Ohio Department of Youth Services administered Cuyahoga Hills Boys School for juvenile offenders.
Since the 1940s, private child-care agencies have merged and diversified, most specializing in counseling in residential or nonresidential settings. When AFDC and other public-relief programs diminished the need for institutional care for dependent children, orphanages and, child-placing agencies shifted their focus to children with emotional or behavioral problems. Residential protective facilities included Marycrest School, formerly the Sacred Heart Training School, the CRITTENTON HOME (which served unwed mothers prior to 1971), BOYSTOWNS, and group homes run by the Augustine Society and the West Side Ecumenical Ministry. The Catherine Horstmann Home began to serve retarded young women.
Family service agencies provide a wide range of programs. In 1945 the Humane Society and the Children’s Bureau combined to form Children’s Services, which in 1966 absorbed a former orphanage, the Jones Home (see JONES HOME OF CHILDREN”S SERVICES, INC.). Children’s Services has offered foster care, unmarried-parent counseling, daycare, and, in the Jones Home, care for emotionally disturbed children. The Lutheran Children’s Aid Society has provided family counseling and foster-home placement. Catholic Social Services and the Jewish Children’s Bureau offered child placement and daycare while Catholic Social Services and the JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ASSN.have counseled families and individuals.
The increase in daycare facilities reflects the growing numbers of mothers in the paid workforce since World War II. In 1949 only the Day Nursery Assn., the JEWISH DAY NURSERY, and the WEST SIDE COMMUNITY HOUSE sponsored daycare. In 1962 9 agencies provided daycare to about 1,000 children. By 1982, in addition to Catholic and Jewish organizations, the CENTER FOR FAMILIES AND CHILDREN, the GREATER CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS ASSN., the SALVATION ARMY, KARAMU HOUSE, and federal, state, and local funds supported a wide range of daycare options. The total 1982 capacity of these nonprofit centers was 6,140 children.
Public funds have enabled these private child-care institutions and agencies to expand and diversify: public agencies have often bought specialized professional services from them, like daycare, psychiatric and medical care, and counseling. The availability of public monies, however, depends upon the state of the economy and the spending policies of elected officials.
Marian Morton
John Carroll Univ.
Joe Hallett: Neither party can be trusted to enact redistricting reform (Columbus Dispatch 9/16/12)
Joe Hallett: Neither party can be trusted to enact redistricting reform (Columbus Dispatch 9/16/12)
Neither party can be trusted to enact redistricting reform
So now we have State Issue 2, a Nov. 6 ballot proposal to reform redistricting by amending the state constitution. Husted has made no secret of his opposition to it. If not for his demonstrated commitment to ending partisan gerrymandering, Husted might now be facing legitimate accusations that the ballot language his office drafted for Issue 2 was rigged to make it fail.
That is precisely what his fellow Ohio Republican officeholders at the Statehouse and in Congress want to happen. After winning control of the redistricting process in the 2010 election, they are eager to preserve a map laden with districts contorted in their favor.
The GOP-controlled State Ballot Board’s approval of the inadequate ballot language was just another step in the Republican Party’s campaign against Issue 2 to ensure that it rules Ohio for the rest of this decade, even though the state’s partisan index is roughly 50-50.
But someone forgot to clue-in the Ohio Supreme Court, ruled 6-1 by Republicans. In a decision that restores hope for an independent judiciary, the court found that the ballot language contained “material omissions and factual inaccuracies” that would be “fatal” to its chances for approval. It ordered a rewrite, which the board did on Thursday, rendering a still confusing description of the amendment.
The guts of the Issue 2 amendment were written by two Ohio State University professors for a bunch of nonpartisan good-government groups such as the League of Women Voters, Citizen Action and the Ohio Council of Churches. The amendment set forth a complicated process to ensure that lines for legislative and congressional districts would be drawn by an independent citizens’ commission, not politicians.
The Ohio Democratic Party and labor unions — past obstructionists to redistricting reform — endorsed the amendment because it gives them a chance to get out of political Siberia before the next round of mapmaking in 2021. Democrats and the unions are now driving the campaign in favor of Issue 2.
The GOP, meanwhile, has launched a war against Issue 2, which sources say is being funded in part by Republican lawmakers motivated to save themselves.
One-party rule through gerrymandering is one reason our government doesn’t work as well as it should, because it thwarts competitive elections and empowers narrow-minded and uncompromising ideologues from the party in control. No one on Capitol Square has opposed gerrymandering more credibly than Mike Curtin, retired associate publisher of The Dispatch and arguably Ohio’s foremost political historian.
Last month, Curtin, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio House, went before the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and urged it to endorse Issue 2. He harkened back to leaders such as John Adams, who 230 years ago “recognized gerrymandering for the evil it is.” He cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s lament “that when it comes to apportionment, we are in the business of rigging elections.”
Referring to Issue 2, Curtin said, “It is not perfect. The perfect plan does not exist and will never exist. I would ask you to use your common sense, and to acknowledge the time-honored maxim to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
“This is a good plan. It is 100 times better than what we have, which is in the running for being the worst in the nation.”
Republican leaders have promised that they will work with Democrats to enact redistricting reform if voters defeat Issue 2. Both have been making that same promise for four decades.
“In each subsequent decade, the gerrymandering of Ohio’s congressional and state legislative districts has become more blatant and more corrupt,” Curtin said.
Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.