War of 1812: Culmination of 20 Years of Conflict Opened Up the Future for Ohio: Elizabeth Sullivan

Courtesy of the Plain Dealer June 10, 2012

The link is here

War of 1812: Culmination of 20 years of conflict opened up the future for Ohio: Elizabeth Sullivan

by Elizabeth Sullivan, The Plain Dealer 
fallentimbers.jpgAP Photo/Greg HorvathThe 1794 Fallen Timbers battlefield monument near Toledo honors both the victorious forces of U.S. Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne and fallen native Americans led by Miami Chief Little Turtle. This photograph was taken in 1994.

When federal census-takers ventured into the wild Ohio country in 1800, they found (pdf) 45,365 settlers already living in “the Northwest Territory.”

So many had flooded into this frontier land — from the East Coast, looking for cheap, fertile land; from slave-owning states, wanting to live in a slave-free area; from eastern cities, looking to profit on land speculations — that Ohio had almost reached the magic 60,000 number needed to become a state. It achieved that milestone in 1803.

These newcomers had headed for Ohio despite a series of shockingly violent wars and raids in the 1790s pitting early settlers against indigenous Indian tribes determined to hold on to land specifically guaranteed them in a 1768 British treaty.

An equal thirst for territory propelled the migrants, however — the same inexorable expansionism that set the stage for Ohio’s part in the War of 1812, which started 200 years ago this month.

The war, as it was fought in Ohio, was in many ways the logical extension of more than a decade of Indian warfare for title to this verdant tract of land. Even before war was formally declared on June 18, 1812, the enterprise was viewed with far more enthusiasm on the Ohio frontier than in Philadelphia, New York or Washington.

While East Coasters fretted about the serious economic repercussions, Ohioans correctly understood the stakes as nothing less than control of America’s frontier, the key to the American experiment.

For more than a decade, folks in Ohio and neighboring Kentucky had been on the front lines of a series of Indian wars fought with the help of British weapons and other provisions.

Long after the Revolutionary War had ended, it seemed to many local settlers that Britain was determined to kill the United States through its back door, using indigenous tribes as proxies.

While that impression was exaggerated — the British were much more interested in preserving their stake in the lucrative fur trade than in starting another expensive war — British officials delayed enlightening Indian allies about their narrow aims, or about the 1783 treaty ending the Revolutionary War, when Britain had ceded to the fledgling United States the entire “Old Northwest” that the tribes considered theirs.

The ceded land included all or parts of what was to become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — although Britain kept armed forts in the area, ostensibly to secure its fur-trading interests.

In this way, more than a quarter-million square miles of prairie, deciduous forests, rivers, swamplands and fertile land became the logical pathway for U.S. expansion — America’s “manifest destiny” long before the phrase was coined.

That’s also why the 1790s Indian wars naturally morphed into the War of 1812 — which did settle, once and for all, America’s expansionist destiny westward, although not northward into Canada, after several invasion attempts failed.

No mere skirmishes, the 1790s wars involved pitched battles by a federation of Indian warriors who knew the stakes, acting in concert under skilled military leadership — and exacting, in 1791, what’s still the worst single-battle U.S. Army loss against Native Americans.

On Nov. 4, 1791, on the Wabash River near present-day Fort Recovery in western Ohio, more than 600 U.S. Army officers, men and militia members under the command of Arthur St. Clair, an aging Revolutionary War veteran afflicted with gout, were slain, along with hundreds of their camp followers, during a surprise attack by 1,000 warriors led by Miami Chief Little Turtle and Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket.

That was more than twice the casualties of the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The sweeping 1795 Treaty of Greenville was supposed to put the Indian claims in Ohio to rest.

That treaty followed the trouncing that troops led by U.S. Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne dealt to a united force that included Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware and Miami tribesmen at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, in present-day Maumee.

But the 1790s wars did not resolve all of the competing claims.

When Ohio Gov. Return J. Meigs Jr. called in April 1812 for troops to assemble in Dayton — months before war was formally declared — so many showed up to fight that the Army didn’t have supplies for all of them.

Qualified commanders also were in short supply. Local militias near Dayton had to take up armslater that summer to defend the area’s settlements, after the ignominious capitulation in August 1812 of William Hull, another ailing Revolutionary War veteran, who had shockingly surrendered his Ohio and U.S. troops at Detroit to a smaller British-American Indian force, virtually without firing a shot.

Fortunately, other U.S. forces had more success. And the magnificent victory, in September 1813, of Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry in the naval Battle of Lake Erie was a strategic triumph that cut key British supply lines, although it would take another year to end the war.

By 1820, more than half a million people were in Ohio, many hoping to make their fortunes, others heading elsewhere. I was amazed to see, when I looked closely at the census earlier this year, that no fewer than 10 of my direct forebears were in Ohio by 1820.

They came because of hatred of slavery (James Sullivan from North Carolina between 1808 and 1811), thirst for cheaper land (Thomas Crook from Maryland in 1814), the adventure of the frontier (Jacob Kessler and Henry Horn, in-laws and Revolutionary War veterans, from Pennsylvania via Virginia between 1806 and 1814) and to make money in the state’s nascent manufacturing that needed abundant water for power (George Seager, who in about 1811 had emigrated illegally from Britain, where his skills as a wool carder and machine maker were considered an industrial secret “not for export”)

Thomas Crook, my great-great-great-grandfather, briefly served in the 1812 war at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, according to his sworn affidavit, then moved to Wayne Township northeast of Dayton — named for the general who’d defeated Native American forces in 1794. Many of Wayne Township’s early residents were veterans of the Revolutionary, Indian or 1812 wars.

One of Crook’s younger sons was George Crook, a West Point graduate and later famed Indian fighter who became an early champion of Native American civil rights.

Gen. Crook’s attempt in the late 1800s to seek redress for the broken promises to Apache leaders and others whom he’d first fought and then befriended was a lonely battle that alienated him from some of his oldest military friends.

But it suggests how combat veterans often see war — as a failure to act decisively to redirect the elements that are spinning out of control and propelling conflict and violence.

Gen. Crook, who was born on the Ohio frontier a dozen years after the War of 1812 ended, would have grown up surrounded by men who understood that.

Sullivan is The Plain Dealer’s editorial page editor.

 

Remembering Cleveland’s Muhammad Ali Summit, 45 Years Later-Plain Dealer 5/3/12

Remembering Cleveland’s Muhammad Ali Summit, 45 Years Later-Plain Dealer 5/3/12

Courtesy of the Plain Dealer

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Remembering Cleveland’s Muhammad Ali Summit, 45 years later

Published: Sunday, June 03, 2012
Branson Wright, The Plain Dealer  Branson Wright, The Plain Dealer 

 

AP Images


On June 4, 1967 at 105-15 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, a collection of some of the top black athletes in the country met with — and eventually held a news conference in support of — world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (front row, second from left), about Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967. • Mouse over the picture to put names with the famous faces and read details.

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On a sunny Sunday afternoon in early June 1967, several hundred Clevelanders crowded outside the offices of the Negro Industrial Economic union in lower University Circle. None of those gathered, including a collection of the top black athletes of that time, realized the significance of what would happen in that building on this day.

Muhammad Ali, the most polarizing figure in the country, was inside being grilled by the likes of Bill Russell, Jim Brown and Lew Alcindor, who would later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They weren’t interested in whether Ali was going to take his talents to South Beach or any other sports labor issues.

They wanted to know just how strong Ali stood behind his convictions as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. The questions flew fast and furious. Ali’s answers would determine whether Brown and the other athletes would throw their support behind the heavyweight champion, who would have his title stripped from him later in the month for his refusal to enter the military.

“When I look at the situation in Florida (Trayvon Martin case) and when I look through all my adult life, there’s always been a period where something happens that causes this country to struggle, be it racial or whatever,” said former Green Bay standout Willie Davis. “I look back and see that Ali Summit as one of those events. I’m very proud that I participated.”On June 4, 1967 at 105-15 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, a watershed moment occurred in the annals of both the Civil Rights Movement and the protest against the Vietnam War. Every cultural force convulsing the nation came together – race, religion, politics, young vs. old, peace vs. war. This is the story about how such an extraordinary meeting developed. How it transpired in Cleveland. And of what that meeting means now, looking back though the lens of 45 years.

The core of the summit was the NIEU, later named the Black Economic Union (BEU).

The organization was co-developed by Brown in 1966, a year after he retired from the NFL to become a full-time actor. The BEU served various communities across the country, mostly in economic development. The BEU also supported education and other social issues within the black community.

The BEU and this meeting with Ali stemmed from Brown’s social consciousness. For the meeting with Ali, Brown brought together other socially conscious black athletes of the time. Besides Russell, Alcindor and Davis, there was Bobby Mitchell (Washington Redskins), Sid Williams (Browns), Jim Shorter (Redskins), Walter Beach (Browns), John Wooten (Browns), Curtis McClinton (Kansas City Chiefs) and attorney Carl Stokes.

“The principal for this meeting of course was Ali,” McClinton said. “The principal of leadership for us was Jim Brown. Jim’s championship leadership filtered to all of us.”

The Sixties

Remembering the Summit

  • Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University: “This recalls a time when Ali, not silenced by disease, was so vocal in his expression of outrage against injustice, not only against people of color in this society, but against people of color the world over. Even though these are all black men, supporting another black man, what they’re really supporting in the ultimate sense, is the solidarity of people of color around the globe.”

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The United States in the 1960s was ripe for political, social and cultural change. It was a time of upheaval, and re-awakening.

“The time dictated the passion in all of us,” Brown said.

Forty-five years ago, the United States was in the midst of a Civil Rights movement. There was also an increase in protests against the Vietnam War. Malcolm X was killed in New York in 1965. Later that year, black football players refused to play in the AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans because of racism and discrimination in that city. The game was moved to Houston. In July 1966, riots erupted in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland. Two major race riots erupted in Newark and Detroit during the summer of 1967. Opposition to the Vietnam War grew with protests on college campuses and in several major cities. And 10 months after the Ali Summit, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.

In many ways, Cleveland was also the epicenter of black political and social progress. In November of ’67, Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city when he was elected in Cleveland. The city became a destination for thousands of blacks who migrated from the south because of job opportunities. When it came to sports, the Browns were popular in the black community, mostly because of their history with black players, such as Marion Motley, Bill Willis and Brown.

“Black people were coming to Cleveland from all over the country to see what we were doing here politically and economically, because no other city was doing it like we were,” said former BEU treasurer Arnold Pinkney, a long-time entrepreneur and political activist.

“Cleveland was a hotbed for black power, energy and Black Nationalism at this time,” said Leonard N. Moore, University of Texas professor and author of the book, “Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power.”

“In so many ways, it was fitting that the meeting happened on the East Side of Cleveland,” he said.

A little over a month before the Cleveland gathering, Ali refused to step forward for induction into the U.S. Army in Houston. That set off a firestorm of criticism of the champ. Ali was also a member of the Nation of Islam, broadly seen as an anti-white cult, even in some circles within the black community.

Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley, said there was so much consternation concerning the war and Ali that the fighter became symbolic of almost every rift in society.

“He was already regarded as a loud-mouth Negro while he was Cassius Clay,” said Edwards, referring to Ali’s birth name before his conversion to Islam. “When he joined the Nation of Islam, that exacerbated it even more.”

Sociologist Harry Edwards on the summit.

Ali’s stance helped ignite the rising level of anti-war sentiment.

“The anti-war movement really hit the headlines when Ali refused induction and made his statement about not having any quarrel with the Viet Cong,” Edwards said. “And then to refuse to comply with the draft, that lined up all of those people who were on one side or the other of the Vietnam War.”

Enter Jim Brown

Former Browns players John Wooten and Walter Beach on the Ali SummitJohn Wooten and Walter Beach discuss how they became involved with the Ali Summit.

Remembering the Summit

  • Sid Williams, former Cleveland Browns linebacker: “Ali was a great institution that changed the time and this country. He believed in something so much that he was not going to be swayed by anyone or by any group of people. He was what he was, and he was willing to die for that.”

In 1967, Brown was in his second year of retirement after leaving the sport as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher. His post-NFL career was spent as an actor, but Brown never lost his zeal as a social activist. When Brown helped form the BEU, the organization established offices in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Philadelphia, New York, Washington and Cleveland. His former teammate, John Wooten, became the executive director of the Cleveland office. Everyone in the meeting with Ali, with the exception of Russell, was a BEU member.

Ohio State graduate student Robert Bennett III, who will complete his dissertation thesis on the BEU later this year, said supporting Ali was not out of the ordinary for the BEU.

“Oftentimes when you look at the history of black athletes, it often looks at their achievements on the field,” Bennett said. “And it’s rare for someone to look at their social or political activism off the field. The athletes involved with the BEU were about defending and supporting issues that supported the black community.”

Shortly after Ali’s refusal to join the military on grounds of being a conscientious objector, Brown received a telephone call from Ali’s manager, Herbert Muhammad. Several boxing governing bodies had already suspended or threatened to suspend Ali’s boxing license. Brown said Herbert wanted him to help convince Ali to reconsider because of the potential loss of income, and because of the anticipated backlash.

Herbert Muhammad was torn because of his religious faith, but he was also in the business of helping Ali make money.

“Herbert wanting Ali to go into the service was a shocker,” Brown said. “I thought the Nation of Islam would never look at it that way. But Herbert figured the Army would give Ali special consideration so he would be able to continue his career. But he couldn’t talk to Ali about that, so he reached out to me and I had the dilemma of finding a way to give Ali the opportunity to express his views without any influence. I never told Ali about my conversation with Herbert. I never told anyone, really.”

There was another backdrop to the meeting. Bob Arum and Brown were partners in Main Bout, Arum’s company that promoted Ali’s fights. Convincing Ali to go into the military would provide economic opportunities for the athletes in the summit.

“The idea was that these guys would become the chief closed-circuit exhibitors for Ali’s fights all over the United States,” Arum said. “Each of them would get a particular region and they would make a nice chunk of change every time Ali fought.”

Subsequently, Brown reached out to Wooten and asked him to contact some of the top black athletes in the country to attend a meeting in Cleveland with Ali.

“Herbert wanted me to talk with Ali, but I felt with Ali taking the position he was taking, and with him losing the crown, and with the government coming at him with everything they had, that we as a body of prominent athletes could get the truth and stand behind Ali and give him the necessary support,” Brown said.

Where and when

Walter Beach and John Wooten talk about the Ali SummitFormer Browns Walter Beach and John Wooten talk about the historical significance of the Ali Summit.

Remembering the Summit

  • Leonard Moore, Cleveland native and history professor at University of Texas: “The Summit had the potential to be a defining moment in black history. Those athletes were prophetic and visionary. They knew where sports were headed. They were trying to establish for the athletes behind them that this is how you handle yourself. This whole thing about giving back is a trip, because they didn’t have to give back because they never left. So giving back implies that you have separated yourself from the people.”

The athletes’ response did not surprise Wooten.

“After I called all of the guys and explained what we were meeting about, they didn’t ask who’s going to pay for this or that, they just asked where and what time,” Wooten said.

Alcindor, who had just finished his sophomore year at UCLA, didn’t hesitate to make the trip.

“Muhammad Ali was one of my heroes,” said Abdul-Jabbar, who was active in the BEU office in Los Angeles. “He was in trouble and he was someone I wanted to help because he made me feel good about being an African-American. I had the opportunity to see him do his thing [as an athlete and someone with a social conscience], and when he needed help, it just felt right to lend some support.”

More importantly, the meeting wasn’t just for Ali.

“Our assembling there was about Ali defining himself, because that definition was a part of us,” McClinton said.

The athletes at the summit were not going to give Ali blind support. Many needed answers to exactly why Ali claimed to be a conscientious objector. There was some confusion regarding Ali’s motives. Three years earlier, Ali failed the Armed Forces qualifying test due to sub-par writing and spelling skills. In early 1966, the tests were revised and Ali was reclassified as 1A, making him eligible for the draft. Initially, Ali said he didn’t understand the change and there was no reference to religion or being a conscientious objector. Many wondered if he was only upset because of the interruption to his boxing career.

At the summit, Ali also had to convince a group that had several members with a military background. Brown, as a member of the Army ROTC, graduated from Syracuse as a second lieutenant. Wooten completed his military obligation in 1960. Shorter served in a reserve unit, and Mitchell served with a military hospital unit in 1962. Beach spent four years in the Air Force. Stokes served in World War II, and McClinton served in the Army Signal Corps.

Making his case

Remembering the Summit

  • Bob Arum, boxing promoter: “I was partner with a law firm in New York that had among its senior partners a gentleman by the name of Arthur Krim, who was the chairman of the board with United Artists. Arthur was also the treasurer of the Democratic Party and he was very close to Lyndon Johnson, the President of the United States. He met with President Johnson and they came up with a plan where Ali would go into the service and he wouldn’t have to wear a uniform. He’d give some exhibitions at military bases from time to time, and be able to continue his professional boxing career while all of this was happening.”

Brown didn’t set up a gauntlet for Ali. He also did not set up a meeting for Ali to waltz through.

“I wanted the meeting to be as intense and honest as it should’ve been, and it was because the people in that room had thoughts and opinions, and they came to Cleveland with that purpose in mind,” Brown said.

“We weren’t easy on him,” Mitchell said. “We weren’t slapping hands. In that room, especially early on, it got a little heated.”

How heated?

“F. Lee Bailey [a famous trial lawyer] would’ve been proud in the way we questioned the champ,” Wooten said. “Those guys shot questions at the champ, and he took them, and fought back. It was intense because we were all getting ready to face the United States public relations machine — the media, and put our lives and careers on the line. What if this fails? What if he goes to jail?”

Although it wasn’t discussed as a group before the meeting, many of the men planned to convince Ali to accept his call to the military.

“But after about 15 minutes of being there, I’m saying to myself, ‘No way is this guy going to change his mind,'” Davis said.

Ali made it clear that he would not participate in the Vietnam War. He spoke on Islam, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and black pride, but it all came down to his religious beliefs, and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.

“Jim told me that Ali talked for two straight hours,” Arum said. “And you have to understand that at that time, Ali was functionally illiterate. And here he was in a room with these great athletes who were all college educated, but he was able to convince all of them that the path he was taking was the correct one. And people at that point and time didn’t realize how smart Ali was.”

In fact, Ali was so convincing that many in the room nodded their heads in agreement whenever Ali made several points.

“The champ stood strong,” Wooten said.

“During those hours, he said he was sincere and his religion was important to him,” Mitchell said. “He convinced all of us, even someone like me, who was suspicious. We weren’t easy on him. We wanted Ali to understand what he was getting himself into. He convinced us that he was.”

McClinton also noted how the summit was not entirely about supporting Ali as a conscientious objector.

“Our presence there was more to the freedom for Ali to go left or right,” McClinton said.

“We didn’t have a right to tell Ali what to do,” Williams said. “All we could do is show our support for him in whatever he was going to do. That decision was up to him and he made it.”

Following the meeting, Brown led the group to a press conference. Russell, Ali, Brown and Alcindor (Abdul-Jabbar) sat in the front row at a long table. Stokes, Beach, Williams, McClinton, Davis, Shorter, and Wooten stood behind them.

Brown said the group supported Ali and his rights as a conscientious objector. And they felt his sincerity.

‘Absolute and sincere faith’

Russell declined to comment when approached for this story during the NBA All-Star Weekend in February, but shortly after the summit, Russell said this to Sports Illustrated in the June 19, 1967 issue:

“I envy Muhammad Ali. … He has something I have never been able to attain and something very few people possess. He has absolute and sincere faith. I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali. He is better equipped than anyone I know to withstand the trials in store for him. What I’m worried about is the rest of us.”

Supporting Ali certainly wasn’t a popular move, but Brown and the others were willing to take the risk. None of the participants could cite any direct fallout when it came to supporting Ali, but being there for a friend was worth any risk.

“We didn’t care about any perceived threats,” Wooten said. “We weren’t concerned because we weren’t going to waver. We were unified. We all had a real relationship with each other and we knew we were doing something for the betterment of all.”

In an even broader sense, the Ali Summit — not known by that name at the time — helped to validate Ali’s religious beliefs. But those beliefs and the summit could not prevent the actions of the U.S. Government two weeks later when Ali was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. He stayed out of prison as his case was appealed. The Supreme Court would overturn the decision in 1971.

But the summit had other immeasurable benefits.

“We knew who we were,” said McClinton of the athletes who stood united 45 years ago. “We knew what we had woven into our country, and we stood at the highest level of citizenship as men. You name the value, we took the brush and painted it. You raised the bar, we reached it. You defined excellence, we supersede it. As a matter of fact, we defined it.”

© 2012 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.

The Man Who Saved Cleveland by Michael Roberts and Margaret Gulley

The pdf is here

The Man Who Saved Cleveland

By Michael Roberts and Margaret Gulley

Cleveland in the summer of 1797 was hot, thick with malaria and filled with perilous swamps. Creeks, rivers, ponds and the lake invited drowning. Poisonous snakes slithered across the narrow Indian trails and lurking in dense forests were the natives themselves, strange and fearful creatures to the aspiring pioneers.

            The winter here offered even more treachery. Snow as high as a horse’s head and packs of snarling wolves threatened travelers. The ice and wind could freeze a careless man to death before he could contemplate his demise.

That fall, as the surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company prepared to return east before the harsh weather set in, only four families remained to endure winter’s wrath. The work had not gone well and the investors were upset because the land company was far behind schedule. While the city would be named after the surveying leader, Moses Cleaveland, he would never return, likely because of the trouble with the land company and the hardship of that summer.

Remaining behind would be the guardian of those families and ultimately the settlement itself, Lorenzo Carter. Considered a legend even in his day, Carter was a frontiersman who, when thrust into danger and travail, always seemed to emerge and prevail.

Yet today, he is barely celebrated. Time has cast a shadow on his rugged and outspoken spirit, while illuminating the more urban Moses Cleaveland. The truth is that for those first few critical years, Carter was the only thing holding the settlement together.

To this day some maintain that the city should bear Carter’s name rather than that of Cleaveland.

The founding of the city was no easy adventure and what happened in the summer of 1797 illustrated the challenges that were confronted and the role played by Lorenzo Carter in the fledgling community.

Aside from the difficulties that the swamps and forests posed, the land company workers fell victim to a fever that caused dysentery and fits, rendering them exhausted and unfit for work. The illness brought death as well as more and more of the settlers and workers succumbed to the disease.

There began an exodus back to the east and the settlement appeared in jeopardy as most of the original settlers moved away from the lake and river to higher ground toward the south. At one point the Carter family was the only white inhabitants of Cleveland proper.

A tough, dark-complicated man direct in his speech with riveting blue eyes and black shoulder length hair, Carter possessed extraordinary skills in hunting and woodcraft. He could communicate with the Native Americans and his appearance and demeanor appealed to them.

At six feet, muscular, yet as nimble as a forest creature, Carter presented an intimidating figure. His ability with ax, rifle, knife and fists were widely known. His contemporaries referred to him as the Major, or the Pioneer. Indians thought him possessed of magic and able to kill an animal with his rifle without piercing the skin.

With no medicines available to aid the suffering surveyors, Carter turned to the Indians for help. They showed him that a blend of dogwood and cherry bark would achieve similar results as quinine in easing the fever of malaria.

Carter became ill, but never succumbed to the disease. He and his wife, Rebecca, treated many in the plague filled community. He hunted game for those who lay sick with fever, enabling many to survive.

This demonstration of courage and knowledge most likely kept a flickering flame of community alive, for it would have taken years for Cleveland to develop as a location of any prominence had the fever been more ravaging.

How Carter came to the shores of Lake Erie was a story that many in the newly constituted United States shared. The lure that drew them was a future that would be governed by the freedom which had become the foundation of the new nation.

Carter grew up in Connecticut, the son of a Revolutionary War veteran who died of smallpox when Lorenzo was 11. As a child he was fascinated by the library in Warren, Connecticut, an interest that would be rekindled years later in Cleveland. After his mother remarried, the family moved to Vermont where he learned to ride and hunt and shoot and track wild animals.

In 1789, Carter married Rebecca Fuller and appeared destined to become a Vermont farmer. But Ohio fever— enticing stories of the opportunity that lay to the west in the land of “New Connecticut”— seized his imagination. Sometime in either late 1795 or early 1796 he set out with a companion to see this beckoning territory.

Carter’s reconnoitering of the Cuyahoga River gave him a vision of potential prosperity, for he returned to Vermont determined to relocate his family in the Western Reserve. They left Vermont with his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Hawley (sometimes called Holley) and his family, and wintered in Canada, arriving here on May 2, 1797.

He was 30 when he returned to the Cuyahoga River, well seasoned in the ways of the wild. Carter was more than a woodsman, though, having an aptitude for enterprise, construction, farming and the technology of the day.

Over time, it would take all of Carter’s considerable skills to save the settlement from starvation, fear of Indians, and disease. Later, as the colony grew, the community turned to him as a leader to such an extent that, before laws were codified and courts established, he was the law.

He built a log cabin that summer of 1797, on the river just north of what is now St. Clair Avenue. The land for it cost $47.50. The cabin was described as being pretentious and topped with a garret. This expansive log structure served the community in multiple ways. It was a town hall, the school house, a tavern and a place for travelers to seek shelter. It was a place to learn news, albeit old news, for the passage back to the east coast could be as long as three months.

The cabin was a malodorous place, smelling of smoke, sweat, the aroma of food cooking in the hearth and sometimes blended with the odor of New England rum. Virtually anyone who passed by was welcome and the nearby Indians would peer in with curiosity.

Rebecca Carter did not like Indians loitering around the cabin. She was terrified of them and often would cry out in fear if they surprised her. She ran and hid behind a wood pile if she saw them approach.

More than once, Lorenzo would catch a mischievous Indian harassing his wife and threaten him with physical harm, which he could deliver swifter than any man in the settlement.

The cabin hosted the first wedding in the colony on July 4, 1797 when Mrs. Carter’s household worker was married. In 1801, the cabin held the first formal dance that would take place in the colony in celebration of July 4. There were more than 30 in attendance and a mixture of maple sugar, water and whisky was served to the revelers who danced to the squeal of a fiddle.

Contemporary accounts of Carter describe him as a man of principle, but not without prejudice. He made no secret of his dislike of black people, although he could not abide slavery. One account of the time illustrates the complexity of the man.

A black man named Ben had survived a shipwreck nearby on Lake Erie and in 1806. The man, nearly frozen to death, was taken to Carter’s tavern where he was fed and treated for frost bitten toes. Carter and his wife nursed the man back to health.

That fall, two armed men from Kentucky arrived, claiming that the man was an escaped slave. Carter told the two that he would only consent to the black man’s departure if the slave made the decision to return on his own volition.

What took place at this point is not clear, but accounts say the slave departed with the two Kentuckians only to be stopped a gun point a few miles away by two of Carter’s men who held the two at bay while the black man made his escape. He later found freedom in Canada.

Carter’s achievements in the early years of the community were remarkable. Seeking to create regular commerce toward the east, he built a 30-ton vessel called the Zephyr that travelled the lake coast trading furs and transporting grindstones. Historians credit him with officially opening the port of Cleveland and beginning a ship building trade that in 50 years would be the largest in the nation.

The vessel enabled the struggling frontier town to receive much needed staples like salt, iron, tools, leather, groceries and clothing. Again, Carter’s intrepid ingenuity served the community as a whole.

A craftsman seemingly of infinite ability, he built the first two- story frame house on Superior only to see it burn down when children began to play with fire amidst the wood chips. Carter would also suffered the tragedy of having his son, Henry,10, drown in the Cuyahoga River. In all, he sired nine children.

In 1802, after obtaining a license for four dollars to run a tavern, Carter built yet another structure. He had purchased 23-½ acres of land, 12 of which fronted on what is now West 9th Street. Here he built a block house that would gain fame as the Carter Tavern and it served as the first hotel in Cleveland.

Carter complained of the land company prices which seemed continually to decline, dropping from $50 an acre to $25 at one point.

Carter was elected as a captain in the militia in May of 1804, but the election was contested by those who claimed that he was ineligible for the office because he gave liquor to the voters and threatened to turn the savages on the community if not elected. Apparently, nothing became of the charges, but the challenge served to show the disaffection between the pioneers and the newcomers. In August, Carter was elected major, a title he carried for the rest of his life.

            The clashes between Carter and the increasing number of easterners who had invested in the Connecticut Land Company were frequent. The newcomers resented Carter’s influence, position and prestige.

            Carter had such a reputation as a fighter that strangers hearing of his prowess, would travel here, perhaps to best him in a brawl. Those who knew him said that he was never known to lose a street fight.

The first indictment recorded in the Western Reserve was in 1803 and was noted as being against “Mr. Carter, the pioneer, for an assault upon James Hamilton.” Friends attested that Carter was not a quarrelsome person and would only fight if he was insulted. One can only guess what the dispute was regarding Hamilton.

He also had a reputation in contemporary histories of being a man who helped the unfortunate and obliged neighbors and strangers. A drink could always be had at his tavern.

Liquor was a commodity that played an important role on the frontier. It was not only to drink, it could be bartered as currency. Sadly, one of its more important uses was to quell the natives who had a taste for spirits, but could not manage its excesses. Carter was a practiced producer of alcohol and equally adept at manipulating the Indians with it.

In 1798, when a Seneca medicine man was accused of malpractice in the death of the wife of an Indian from another tribe, the husband stabbed him to death, causing the potential for tribal warfare.

Already the Chippewas had donned black war paint and were off in the forest issuing blood curdling oaths and behaving in the most fearsome manner.

Carter recognizing that any fighting could get out of control and the violence spill over into the white community, ameliorated the dispute by having a neighbor brew two gallons of whiskey. Since the capacity of the still was only two quarts daily, it took some time to yield the liquor.   The danger was so dire that Carter did not sleep for two nights, according to his son Alonzo.

The Chippewas and Ottawas traditionally celebrated in the spring and one year they traded furs with Carter for whisky. When they drank the first lot, they traded for more, and so on until the band of natives became drunk. A calculating Carter decided to cut the whisky with water while continuing to barter with the braves.

Upon coming to their senses, the Indians realized that the spirits had been diluted and became enraged. Nine of them attacked the Major’s cabin. He fought them off with a fire poker, driving them to the river and their canoes. Later, a party of Indian women came to make peace with Carter. Thankfully, the women had disarmed the braves before the drinking bout had begun.

By 1810, following the purchase of land on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River from the Indians, Carter and his son bought a piece of land near the river’s mouth. There they built the Red House Tavern and established a farm.

Carter had his vision of justice and administered it in the colony in a manner that brought him acclaim by his fellow citizens. In 1812, When an Indian brave, an acquaintance of Carter’s, was found guilty of murder, it was Lorenzo who escorted him to the gallows on what is now Public Square. He gave the condemned man whisky to numb his fear and saw to it that he was properly dispatched. Such was justice on the frontier.

That year, Carter discovered he was suffering from a form of cancer on his face. The indomitable Major travelled to Virginia where physicians told him his disease was untreatable. He returned and unable to accept his fate, secluded himself in his room at the tavern, crying out in pain and refusing the ministrations of his wife who remained outside his door throughout the ordeal. It was a humbling end for a man so robust and heroic.

After his death Carter’s half brother, John A. Ackley, would write:

“Many stories are told of Major Carter, some are true, and many that are not true. He was the man for a pioneer, with strength of body and mind, but not cultivated. His maxim was not to give an insult, nor receive one, without resenting it, and the insulter generally paid dear for his temerity. With all his faults, his heart was in the right place and was as ready to avenge a wrong done to the weak as one done to himself.”

Carter died on February 14, 1814 at the age of 47, and is buried in Erieview Cemetery just left of the gate on East 9th Street. Everyday, hundreds of cars pass a few yards from his grave, oblivious of this remarkable man and what he did in that dark and dangerous beginning. But for him, there may never have been a great city on the spot it is.

To read more about Lorenzo Carter, click here

The Story of Steel and Iron in Cleveland by Dr. John Grabowski

The Story of Steel and Iron in Cleveland

(from SAA meeting site: https://saa2015cle.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/the-story-of-steel-and-iron-in-cleveland/)

Contributed by John J. Grabowski, Ph.D.

If you are familiar with professional football (and one assumes many SAA members are) you know (should know!) that one of the most famous rivalries in the sport is that between the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s a bit like Ohio State and the other university up north (family connections prevent me from using its name!).  But the comparison ends there, because unlike college football with its origins in the Ivy League, that of pro football is connected to the steel mills and factories of the industrial Midwest.  The Cleveland-Pittsburgh rivalry has at its roots, a blue collar aura and a link to a longer economic rivalry between two great American steel cities. And, that brings us to the story of steel and iron in Cleveland.

Even in this second decade of the twenty-first century, Clevelanders cannot divorce themselves from steel despite the city’s move into a post-industrial economy. Look closely at the city while you are here.  The iron ore carrier, William G. Mather is anchored in the lake just beyond the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Take a tour of the Flats, and you’ll see ore freighters winding their way up the Cuyahoga to the ArcelorMittal mill.  Now largely automated, it is one of the most efficient steel mills in the nation. If you take the time to go to the observation deck of the Terminal Tower, you’ll see its buildings and smokestacks to the south.

 

Untitled (Industrial Scene, Otis Steel Co., Cleveland), 1928, by Margaret Bourke White (courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Art, 1972.246)
Untitled (Industrial Scene, Otis Steel Co., Cleveland), 1928, by Margaret Bourke White (courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Art, 1972.246)

 

This modernized plant is the descendant of an industry that formed the economic backbone of the city from the period just after the Civil War to the 1960s.  While early Cleveland blacksmiths worked iron, it was not until 1857 that the industry really got rolling, so to speak. Two Welsh brothers, David and John Jones, started the Cleveland Rolling Mills southeast of the city in the area now known as Slavic Village. By the 1880s, the making of iron and steel (the rolling mills had the first Bessemer converter west of the Appalachians) had displaced oil and refining as the chief industrial activity in Cleveland.  As the mills grew, the process also became de-skilled and thus opened up jobs to thousands of immigrant and migrant workers.  It’s not serendipity that placed some of the city’s ethnic neighborhoods near the mills; it was the need of workers to walk to their jobs.  And chain migration brought sons, families, and relatives from what are now Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, and other central and eastern European nations to mill neighborhoods like Tremont, Warszawa (now part of Slavic Village), and Praha. By the early twentieth century, the Europeans were joined at the mills by African Americans who saw Cleveland and jobs at the mills as a passage out of Jim Crow and into some degree of prosperity.  That expectation was, unfortunately, not truly fulfilled, despite the fact that some migrants already had their roots in the industry in Alabama.

The making of steel then provided the basis for factories that turned it into a number of products — nuts, bolts, automobiles, sewing machines, roller skates, and even jail cells!  The transport of iron ore itself provided the city with a host of sub-industries.  Shipbuilding was one, with American Ship Building as a prime example. (It’s hard for some Clevelanders to admit this given that George Steinbrenner’s fortune came from the company and helped him bankroll the hated New York Yankees.)  Originally ships were unloaded by hand.  Up a plank with a wheelbarrow, down into the hold, shovel it full, take it out, dump it, and do it again.  That ended with the invention of the Brown Hoist system (invented and built in Cleveland) and then the Hulett, invented by a Clevelander. Both systems eventually found use all around the Great Lakes and their manufacture brought wealth and fame to the city, along with labor strife.  A strike at the Brown Hoist factory was, along with strikes at the Rolling Mills, a signifier that laboring conditions and pay in the city during its Gilded Age heyday (and afterwards) were matters of serious concern and contention.  All this reminds me of a Depression-era “poem” my father taught me:

“Yesterday I met a man I never met before. He asked me if I wanted a job shoveling iron ore. I asked him what the wages were, ‘A dollar and a half a ton.’  I told him he could shoot himself, I’d rather be a bum.”

 

Tremont Neighborhood includes the house from the movie “A Christmas Story” (photo courtesy of Tremont West Development Corporation website)
Tremont Neighborhood includes the house from the movie “A Christmas Story” (photo courtesy of Tremont West Development Corporation website)

 

I suspect that this little snippet is a reminder that I, like many Clevelanders, have some steel in my family history.  And, indeed, as noted earlier, it’s hard to let that history be forgotten.  While the mills may not be what they used to be (thank goodness perhaps, because the pollution they created was extensive), it is still possible to see the history of steel in the city.  The Brown Hoist Factory still stands on Hamilton Avenue; the site of the Cleveland Rolling Mills (which later became part of United States Steels American Steel and Wire Plant) still bears traces of the factory; and some of the factories that built automobiles such as the Winton still stand.  And, if you want to see the real thing at work, get someone to drive you down Independence Road in the Flats — you’ll be going through a major section of the ArcelorMittal mill.  Or you can visit the neighborhoods built alongside the mills. Try Tremont – look at the architecture, count the churches, enjoy a meal at some of the best restaurants in Cleveland (and remember when you pay your bill, you’ve probably spent the equivalent of several weeks wages for someone who lived in that “hood” one hundred years ago).  Of course, if you come back to the city after the convention you can buy a seat at a Browns-Steelers game.  Try to remember that the roots of this contest are blue collar when you look at the tab!

But, if you are less adventurous, simply consult the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Start with the article on iron and steel, and use the internal links to really get the full story of all the connections the industry has to the history of Cleveland.

News Aggregator Archive 2 (3/8/12 – 4/24/12)

 

Teaching Cleveland News Network Archive

News From Around Ohio and the United States of Interest to NE Ohio


Ohio Steel Mills Expand to Meet Demand in Energy and Auto Industries (New York Times)


Cleveland Envisions a Floating Office Park to Lure the Creative Class (Plain Dealer)


Consortium Will Address Harm Caused by Suburban Sprawl (Plain Dealer)


Ohio’s Education Leaders Want to Overhaul 12th Grade so Students are Ready for College, Training (Plain Dealer)


Presidency Could Come Down to Ohio’s Unemployment Rate – Tom Suddes (Columbus Dispatch)


Earth Day at 42: An Evolution from Confrontation to Collaboration (Plain Dealer)


Ohio’s Divided Working Class (Politico)


Cleveland Foreclosure Crisis Gives Refugees a Fresh Start (Huffington Post)


First Solar to Ax Global Force by 30% – Toledo Work Force Mostly Spared (Toledo Blade)


Teach For America Gives New College Grads Avenue to Classrooms (Akron Beacon Journal)


Cleveland School Board Votes to Trim Teaching Staff for Next Year (Plain Dealer)


Growing Power Founder Will Allen to Lead City Club Panel on Urban Farming in Cleveland (Plain Dealer)


The Cost of Saving, Restoring and Maintaining a Historic Landmark (kentwired.com)


Study: Ohio Needs More College Grads (Middletown Journal)


Cleveland Museum of Art Has a Big Economic Impact, Says a New Study by Kleinhenz & Associates (Plain Dealer)


Cleveland Waterfront Project Looks to 2nd Phase (Plain Dealer)


Groups Take Issue With Proposed Lake Erie Withdrawls (Toledo Blade)


300-Foot Buffer Proposed for Ohio Park Drilling (Canton Repository)


Drop in Public Preschoolers in Ohio is Biggest in Nation (Columbus Dispatch)


GE’s Prolific Inventor Louis Nerone Lights Up the Night (Plain Dealer)


Cleveland City Council May Consider Hiring Consultant to Sort Out Trash Plan Proposals (Plain Dealer)


Ohio’s Fracking Debate (Cleveland City Club)


Group That Helps City’s Students Finish College is Moving Ahead (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Leads Country in Online Job Ads (Columbus Dispatch)


Michigan, Ohio Officials to Tackle Lake Erie Algae Threat to Fish, Tourism (Detroit Fr. Press)


Cleveland Was Booming in 1912 From New Court House to West Side Market and More (Plain Dealer)


Fracking Where You Least Expect It (WKSU)


Will Stand Your Ground Law Come to Ohio? (OSU Lantern)


Ohio River Tops Nation in Pollution Discharges (Indianapolis Star)


Cuyahoga Climbs Slightly in Statewide Ratings for Overall Health (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Wells Starting to Produce at Higher Rates Than Expected (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)


New Ohio Bill on Lake Erie Water Use Considered (Wall Street Journal)


Rock Hall, Cleveland Prepare For Boon (WKSU)


Original 1940 Census Records Released Online Today, Opening Window Into History (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Expands Online Tutoring for College, University Students (Plain Dealer)


Awful Literacy Stats Make the Case for Jackson’s School Reform Plan – Brent Larkin (Plain Dealer)


With So Much Space, So Few Options — Detroit’s Vast Vacant Lots Are a Burden (Detroit Fr. Press)


Food Deserts Threaten Area’s Health (Akron Beacon Journal)


Budgets for Ohio, Other States, Less Dire (Bucyrus Telegraph Forum)


Taxpayers Now Own Nationwide Arena (Columbus Dispatch)


Cleveland Development Experiencing Renewed Momentum as More People Move Downtown (WEWS)


Cleveland Clinic Job Fair Aims to Recruit 600 Nurses (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Lawmakers Strike Deal on Historical Documents (Columbus Dispatch)


Student Tests Prove Poverty – Andrew Glaser (Plain Dealer)


Tuition Numbers Grim from Past Decade (Cincinnati Enquirer)


Ohio’s “Race to the Top” is on Track (Columbus Dispatch)


Ohio’s Energy Economic Infusion Not Without Risks (San Francisco Chronicle)


Tax Plan Could Put Kasich Over a Barrel — of Oil (Toledo Blade)


Cleveland Clinic’s Cosgrove on Affordable Care Act-video (Washington Post)


Cleveland Wants Us Eating Local by 2019. But is it Doing Enough to Make It Happen? (Cleveland Scene)


Toxic Chemicals in the Cuyahoga is Focus of Environment Group on World Water Day (Plain Dealer)


Rep. Marcy Kaptur Says Lake Erie has More Native Fish Than All Other Great Lakes Combined – True or False? (Politifact/Plain Dealer)


U.S. Intelligence Says Water Shortages Threaten Stability (Bloomberg)


Northeast Ohio Home Sales Up 27% Over February of Last Year (Plain Dealer)


Shopping for a Cause Catches on with Latest “Cash Mobs” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)


Farmers Weary of Temps, Waiting for “Typical” March (Dayton Daily News)


Cleveland City Council OK’s Lakefront Plan (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Education Reforms to Emphasize College Prep (Canton Repository)


Economy Polishing Rust Off Ohio’s Belt (Columbus Dispatch)


State Makes Recommendations to Reduce Toxic Algae in Lake Erie (Columbus Dispatch)


Shell to Build Billion-Dollar “Cracker” in Beaver County (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)


Pittsburgh-Area Site Chosen for Major Refinery (Akron Beacon Journal)


Gov. Kasich Rewrite of Ohio Energy Policy Starts With Natural Gas and Oil (Plain Dealer)


Ice Cover on Lake Erie, Other Great Lakes Down 71% Over Nearly 40 Years (Plain Dealer)


Chesapeake, Partners to Build Ohio Pipeline (Wall Street Journal)


Cleveland Connects Audience Hears How City is Following Philadelphia in Revival of Downtown (Plain Dealer)


Kasich Hails Cleveland School Plan (Columbus Dispatch)


“The Glue That Builds the City” –How to Maximize Cleveland’s Newfound Momentum: Joe Frolik (Plain Dealer)


Cuyahoga County Provides Extensive Review of State of Cancer in the County (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Agency Says Fracking-Related Activity Caused Earthquakes (Baltimore Sun)


State Switching to New System of Grading Academic Performance (Columbus Dispatch)


Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson Gives State of the City Speech, Seeks Support for Schools Plan (Plain Dealer)


Teach for America Recruits to Work for Cleveland Charter Schools This Fall (Plain Dealer)


Lack of Cooking Skills Part of Poverty Cycle (Akron Beacon Journal)


Click Here For More News Aggregator Archives


News Aggregator Archive 1 (9/11/11 – 3/8/12)

Teaching Cleveland News Network Archive

News From Around Ohio and the United States of Interest to NE Ohio

 

Moderate, Urban Voters Gave Romney Ohio Win (Toledo Blade)

 

Kucinich’s Loss in Ohio Hands Fresh Setback to Cleveland’s Former Boy Mayor (Bloomberg)

 

Marcy Kaptur Scores Huge Victory Against Dennis Kucinich (Plain Dealer)

 

Romney Snags Ohio (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Cuyahoga County Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Health and Human Services Tax Issue (Plain Dealer)

 

Joe the Plumber Wins in Ohio; He is Now an Official Contender (Los Angeles Times)

 

University Circle Could See Parking Lot Become $100 Million Tech, Office and Apartment Complex (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio Voters Express Economic Anxiety on Eve of Super Tuesday (Los Angeles Times)

 

Get Ready to Play Ballot Issue Bingo – Thomas Suddes (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio’s “Little People” Implore Republicans to Help Working Class (Bloomberg)

 

$13 Billion Clean-Energy Bond Issue Gets Green Light (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Shale Gas and Oil Will Add $5 Billion to Ohio’s Economy by 2014, Say Economists (Plain Dealer)

 

Chardon High School Shooting Coverage (Plain Dealer)

 

Cleveland Kids’ Fate Rests in Legislators’ Shaky Hands – Brent Larkin (Plain Dealer)

 

Cleveland Taking All the Wrong Roads – Roldo Bartimole (Cleveland Leader)

 

Lorain County Issues Take Center Stage in Battle Between Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur (Plain Dealer)

 

Feds to Spend $50M to Protect Great Lakes from Asian Carp (Toledo Blade)

 

Local (Canton) Mail Will Go to Cleveland for Processing (Canton Repository)

 

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Narrow Escape – Sharon Broussard (Plain Dealer)

 

Rock Hall 2012 Induction Events Announced (WKYC)

 

Could Shale Gas Create a Manufacturing Renaissance in Ohio? (Industry Week)

 

Global Cleveland Seeks to Boost a Successful Import and Attract More Boomerangers (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio AG Mike DeWine Switches Backing From Romney to Santorum Before GOP Primary (Washington Post)

 

Ohio Colleges Agree on Construction Wish List (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Santorum Takes the Lead in Ohio (New York Times)

 

Muscular Dystrophy Therapy Wins $250,000 JumpStart Investment (MedCity News)

 

DeWine to Review Amendment Calling for More Renewable Energy Spending (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Where Langston Hughes Fueled His Muse: Cleveland (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

 

Kaptur, Kucinich Shift Efforts Into High Gear (Toledo Blade)

 

Cuyahoga County Council Could Consider Charging for Plastic Bags, in First General Law Proposal (Plain Dealer)

 

Broadband Expanding to Lure Jobs to State (Dayton Daily News)

 

Ohio State of the State Address (C-Span)

 

Ohio Gov. John Kasich Declares Ohio is “Alive Again” in His Second State of the State Speech (Plain Dealer)

 

Cleveland Says “Welcome World” as a Welcome Hub Opens at Public Square (Plain Dealer)

 

From River Silt to Natural Habitat, Dike 14 Officially Opens as Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve (Plain Dealer)

 

GOP Presidential Hopefuls Turning to Ohio Primary (Chillicothe Gazette)

 

Schools in Ohio Changing Yet Again (Bucyrus Telegraph)

 

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald Promises Economic Development in State of County Address (Plain Dealer)

 

Great Lakes Groups Ramp Up Pressure to Separate Mississippi River from Great Lakes (Plain Dealer)

 

Tuition Caps at Ohio Colleges Rein in Fee Hikes (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Cleveland Churches for Sale: In Cleveland, A Battle Over Unwanted Churches (Huffington Post)

 

Greater Cleveland Manufacturers Testing New Strengths to Fight Skills Gap (Plain Dealer)

 

Funding for Second Inner Belt Bridge Coud Take a Back Seat to Statewide Projects (Plain Dealer)

 

Plague of Abandoned Houses Requires a Unified Effort to Cure: Brent Larkin (Plain Dealer)

 

It’s Official: The NHL All-Star Game is Coming to Columbus (Columbus Dispatch)

 

First Energy Closing 6 Coal-Fired Power Plants (Akron Beacon Journal)

 

Cleveland’s League Park to Get $5 Million Renovation (Plain Dealer)

 

Change of Attitude in Canada Revives Hopes for Cross-Lake Ferry Service (Plain Dealer)

 

91-Turbine Wind Farm Approved for Ohio (Akron Beacon Journal)

 

Ohio College Students Unite to Push Their Issues (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Hydrofracking Discussion Draws Crowd to Brunswick (Sun News)

 

Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Endorses Dennis Kucinich in His Re-election Bid (Plain Dealer)

 

Cleveland Schedules Meeting on Lakefront Plan (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio Loses Ground in Tobacco Fight (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Tobacco Costing State $9.2 Billion; Health Care Costs Rise (Dayton Daily News)

 

Ohio Voters Evenly Split On “Heartbeat Bill” (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Railroad Receive $3.2 Million in Grants (Akron Beacon Journal)

 

Kasich Seeks Taxes on Oil, Gas Drilling (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Opens Library and Archives to the Public (Washington Post)

 

In Cleveland, New Martin Luther King, Jr. Recording Uncovered (The Daily Caller)

 

Martin Luther King’s Speech Here in 1967 Remembered by Those Who Were There (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio Has 840,000 Students Getting School Lunch Aid (Dayton Daily News)

 

Term Limits, Gutting of Home Rule Have Blocked Accountability: Tom Suddes (Columbus Dispatch)

 

Most Ohio Jobs to Require Education Beyond High School (Dayton Daily News)

 

ArcelorMittal to Reopen Portion of Flats Steel Mill, Hire 150 New Workers (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio Proposal Would Raise Interstate Speed Limit to 70 mph (USA Today)

 

Acura Will Build Its Luxury “Supercar” in Ohio (Columbus Dispatch)

 

LaunchHouse Duo Aims to Foster a New Generation of Job Creators (Plain Dealer)

 

Tough Fight Awaits Kaptur, Kucinich (Toledo Blade)

 

Men Posting Stronger Job Gains Than Women (Dayton Daily News)

 

Cleveland-Akron Ranks as Nation’s 18th Largest Urban Area: Statistical Snapshot (Plain Dealer)

 

Ohio Halts Wells After Quake, Won’t Stop Natural-Gas Drilling (Bloomberg)

 

Ohio Teachers to be Watched and Graded on Classroom Performance (Plain Dealer)

 

Drilling Wastewater Examined in Ohio Earthquakes (Wall Street Journal)

 

Theater District in Line for Apartments (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Set to Hike Minimum Wage (Toledo Blade)


Ohio Sand Turns to Gold as Drilling Boom Comes to Buckeye State (Akron Beacon Journal)


Military More Easily Attracting Recruits Compared to Past Years (Dayton Daily News)


Teach For America Could Bring Up to 100 Teachers to Ohio by Fall (WKSU)


EPA Toughens Clean-Air Rules (Columbus Dispatch)


Two Private Colleges in Ohio Among Nation’s Most Selective (Columbus Business First)


Ohio’s Economy Set to See Oil Boom Thanks to Fracking (CNN)


Report: State Should Raise Oil and Gas Tax (Columbus Dispatch)


Ohio Unemployment Rate Lowest Since 2008 (Columbus Dispatch)


Toxic Algae in Lake Erie Threatens Fishing, Tourism (Toledo Blade)


See Ohio’s New Congressional Map (Cincinnati.com)


Ohio Holds Third Highest Execution Rates (Dayton Daily News)


Ohio Primary Moves Back Up to March (Politico)


Bill Calls for Ohio Schools to Teach More History Lessons (Columbus Dispatch)


Federal Government Provides Incentives for Paperless Medical Records (Akron Beacon Journal)


Gas Drilling Surge in Ohio Spurs Fear, Brings Jobs (Detroit Free Press)


Shortened NBA Season Cost Cuyahoga County $800,000 (Cleveland Scene)


Editorial: Ohio Needs to Repeal Term Limits (Cincinnati.com)


Referendum on Election Reforms Set for 2012 Ballot (Youngstown Vindicator) 


Gingrich Far Ahead of Romney Among Ohio Republicans (Toledo Blade)


College Pushing 3-Year Degress (Cincinnati.com)


Unusual Labor Brawl Hits Cooper Tire (Wall Street Journal)


Ohio Falls to 36th in Nation for Resident Health; Smoking Rate Jumps (Dayton Daily News)


AmTrust Financial Services, A New York Insurer, Could Bring 1,000 Jobs to Downtown Cleveland (Plain Dealer)


Maps Compare Ohio County-by-County Issue 2 results to 2010 Gubernatorial Race (WCPN/Ideastream)


Real Battle for Lake Erie Just Beginning (Columbus Dispatch)


Ron Sims, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Dev. Discusses Urban Sprawl and Poverty as Obstacles to Cleveland’s Future (City Club)


In Detroit, a Bid to Prevent a State Takeover (New York Times)


Income Inequality on the Rise in Northeast Ohio (Plain Dealer)


Critics: Ohio Dragging its Feet on Health-Insurance Exchanges (Columbus Dispatch)


Cleveland Ignites Job Growth With Rebuilding Project (New York Times)


Recipe for Middle-Class Jobs (Wall Street Journal)


With Apartments Full, Developers Look For New Rental Opportunities in Downtown Cleveland (Plain Dealer)


Ohio’s Political Christmas List (Plain Dealer)


District Fight Causes Campaign Confusion (Lancaster Eagle Gazette)


Low-Key Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson Emerging as Man with Big Ideas (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Schools Unsure Who Will Pay For Computers (Dayton Daily News)


Ohio Gov. Kasich to Propose New Rules For Lake Erie Water Usage (Plain Dealer)


Republic Steel to Add 450 Jobs to Lorain as Oil and Gas Booms (Plain Dealer)


Remapping Fight Costs Ohio Clout in Primary (Wall Street Journal)


Ohio Voters May Decide Who Rules U.S. Senate (Columbus Dispatch)


Issue 2 Fallout: What’s Next For Kasich and Ohio GOP? (Canton Repository)


Northeast Ohio is Manufacturing its Way Out of the Great Recession (Plain Dealer)


Cleveland’s Mayor Frank Jackson Unveils Plan For Redeveloping the City’s Lakefront (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Voters’ Voices Won’t Sooth Kasich or Obama (Toledo Blade)


Decline in Manual Skills Raises Concerns for Future Work Force (Dayton Daily News)


Report: Ohio Ranks 2nd Nationally for Mercury Pollution (Cincinnati.com)


Cuyahoga County Wants Young Adults to Apply for Next Generation Council (Plain Dealer)


Author Says State’s Niche is Water Expertise (Detroit Free Press)


Ohio Ranks Second in Nation in Overall Jobs Increase (Dayton Daily News)


Ohio Scores Still a Tick Above Nation’s (Columbus Dispatch)


Cleveland Think Tank Report: Region’s Economic Viability Depends on Residents’ Health (Plain Dealer)


Natural Gas Reserves Are Big, Ohio is Estimating (Akron Beacon Journal)


Lack of Diversity Hinders Greater Cincinnati (Cincinnati.com)


Ohio Jobless Rate 9.1%; Mich. at 11.1% (Toledo Blade) 

New England Issues Sales Pitch For Young Graduates-Aging Population Spurs State Initiative to Keep College Graduate From Fleeing (Wall Street Journal)

Online Sales Cost Ohio 11,000 Jobs (Cincinnati.com) 


Music Rocks the Cleveland Economy: Steve Litt (Plain Dealer)


Playing Chicken With Ohio’s Congressional Districts (Cleveland Scene)


Mercury Still a Big Problem for Michigan’s Fish, Report Says (Detroit Free Press)


The Cost of Heritage – We Treasure our Architectural Legacy, But it’s Increasingly Difficult to Pay For (Cincinnati.com)

 

The City Club’s Century of Free Speech is a Milestone Well Worth a Full Year of Celebration (Plain Dealer)

 

More Issues Coming to Ohioans’ Ballots: Thomas Suddes (Plain Dealer)

 

Prohibition, the new documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (WVIZ/Ideastream/PBS)


City Ok’s Immigrant-Friendly Plan Unanimously (Dayton Daily News)


Cleveland School District Could Save Millions by Moving Out of its Old Offices (Plain Dealer)


Ohio Union Law Pits Business Groups Against Public Workers (Business Week)


Tech Job Losses Hamper Ohio (Dayton Daily News)


Cleveland Officials Try New Flash Mobs Crackdown (Canton Repository)


Cultivating An Immigrant Crop: Frolik (Plain Dealer)


Millions of Barrels of Drilling Wastes Injected Below Akron-Canton Area (Akron Beacon Journal)


Utica-Shale Wells Going Gangbusters (Columbus Dispatch)


Ending Exodus of Young Professionals Vital to Growth (Dayton Daily News)


GOP Sees Ohio as Key to Capturing Senate (Boston Globe)


Education a Key Force in the Region’s Growth (Dayton Daily News)


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King’s Speech – Cleveland Magazine

From Cleveland Magazine April 2012 and written by Erick Trickey

In April 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. launched a drive in Cleveland to prevent another riot in Hough and help elect the city’s first black mayor. His aides and local leaders recall the struggles and tensions 45 years ago.

The link is here

On Aug. 23, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived at Lafayette School in Cleveland, and kids from the Mount Pleasant neighborhood rushed over to see him. It was still summer vacation, but the schoolhouse doors were open that day, and Dr. King was standing just outside them.

Adults were coming in and out of the building, registering to vote in Cleveland’s 1967 race for mayor. It was the one day of the year that Clevelanders could sign up to vote without going downtown to the board of elections.

From somewhere came Dr. King’s resonant, amplified voice. Someone was playing a recording of King’s four-year-old, already-famous I Have A Dream speech. But King asked for it to be turned off. He had something else to say, something less lofty but also less dreamy, something immediate and real.

“Today is just the beginning,” he told the crowd. “Now you must vote, or tell your parents to vote, on Oct. 3.”

All that spring and summer, America’s most prominent civil-rights leader had been flying to Cleveland, every two weeks or so, reaching out to the city’s restless, frustrated black minority. Responding to an invitation from several local black ministers, who feared a repeat of the devastating July 1966 riots in Hough, King’s civil-rights group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had come north.

After a difficult effort against housing discrimination in Chicago in 1966, King chose Cleveland as the second and last campaign he ever directed outside the South.

In speeches in schools, rallies in the streets and sermons in churches, some of them carried live on the radio, King exhorted Clevelanders to choose peace over violence, activism over riots. He organized boycotts to try to win more jobs for black workers. And, most of all, he asked them to register and vote, while dropping obvious hints about whom he thought they should vote for: state Rep. Carl Stokes, who hoped to become the first black mayor of a major American city.

King knew Cleveland well. He’d visited in 1965 to raise funds for the voting-rights march in Selma, Ala., speaking to thousands at a downtown banquet and in churches in Glenville and Shaker Heights. He had friends and in-laws in the city, ex-Alabamians who’d moved north for a better life.

But Cleveland posed complex new challenges for his movement. The racial divide here was as deep as the Cuyahoga River valley. Black Clevelanders rarely traveled to the West Side. Many white Clevelanders were fearful of blacks, resentful, hostile. King’s peaceful confrontations with white society, his growing activism against the Vietnam War and the frequent insinuations that he had Communist ties made him a deeply controversial figure. His Cleveland campaign put the single person it was most designed to help, Carl Stokes, in an awkward political spot, a tension the two men never fully resolved.

King’s Cleveland drive began 45 years ago this month. This year, a rediscovered recording of his April 1967 speech at Glenville High School has sparked new interest in King’s intimate relationship with Cleveland during the last year of his life. Cleveland Magazine spoke to several people who witnessed King’s campaign here, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, to reconstruct the story.

Spring 1967

The United Pastors Association, a group of black ministers formed after the 1966 Hough riots, invited King to Cleveland in April 1967 to join them in a campaign to improve conditions in Cleveland’s black neighborhoods. Teenagers on an arson spree had just burned down Giddings Elementary School in Hough. Many Clevelanders feared more summer rioting.

REV. E. T. CAVINESS was a member of the United Pastors Association. Then, as now, he was pastor of Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Glenville. The Hough riots were horrendous. They were devastating. They possibly did more damage to the fabric of the African-American community than anything else. It burned the stores. Instead of being able to shop in your neighborhood, you had to go out. All of our efforts were to obliterate that kind of activity from transpiring again. Martin almost was the symbol for us, a motivating factor, to let us know we could do it if we all stood together in unity.

King spoke at three Cleveland schools, asking students to embrace nonviolence. In Glenville High’s gymnasium, 3,500 teens from several schools sat on folding chairs to hear him. King stood at a wooden podium, facing a forest of microphones and wires. Speaking slowly, drawing out his words, pointing to the students to emphasize a point, King spoke to them in the same soaring oratory as his historic speeches and church sermons. When he switched from the word “Negro” to declare, “Black is as beautiful as any color,” the students erupted in a high-pitched cheer.

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, at Glenville High, April 26, 1967: Our power does not lie in Molotov cocktails. Our power does not lie in bricks and stones. Our power does not lie in bottles. Our power lies in our ability to unite around concrete programs. Our power lies in our ability to say nonviolently that we aren’t going to take it any longer. You see, the chief problem with a riot is that it can always be halted by superior force. But I know another weapon that the National Guard can’t stop. They tried to stop it in Mississippi, they tried to stop it in Alabama, but we had a power that Bull Connor’s fire hoses couldn’t put out. It was a fire within.

REV. JESSE JACKSON was a 25-year-old aide to Dr. King who often came to Cleveland with him in 1967. Jackson went on to found the civil-rights group Operation PUSH in 1971 and run for president of the United States in 1984 and 1988. The question was, would nonviolence work in the North? [With] urban frustration and job tensions, could you have the same kind of discipline you had in the South? We were picking and choosing which urban markets we could apply nonviolence in, so we could use the new Voting Rights Act to make an impact. Cleveland had the right combination of alliances and coalition potential. [It] was one of the northern areas where we had lots of relationships.

Discontent with Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locher was rising, from the black community and the business community, over his underwhelming reaction to the Hough riots and the state of Cleveland’s black neighborhoods. Support was building for state Rep. Carl Stokes, who had barely lost to Locher in the 1965 mayor’s race, to run again. The morning King came to town, Locher called King an “extremist” and declared he wouldn’t meet with him. That set off a war of words.

KING, at Glenville High: One of the things that we need in every city is political power. • Cleveland, Ohio, is a city that can be the first city of major size in the United States to have a black mayor and you should participate in making that a possibility.

King and the United Pastors wanted to help elect Stokes. But Stokes feared King would set off a white backlash. King’s 1966 fair-housing marches in the Chicago area had attracted violent attacks from angry whites.

CARL STOKES, from his autobiography, Promises of Power: In 1967, Dr. King’s great career was at a low point. He had just come out of Cicero, Illinois, with great disappointments, discovering just how profound are the white man’s hatred and prejudice. He desperately needed a victory.

Stokes met with King at the offices of the Call and Post, Cleveland’s black newspaper.

CARL STOKES: I explained to Dr. King that I had carefully put this whole campaign together. I had worked to get actual white votes. I couldn’t afford to do anything to aggravate the white voter. …

“You’re going to create problems that we do not have now and may not be able to handle. I would rather that you not stay.” •

“I will have to stay,” [King] said, “but I promise there will be nothing inflammatory.”

JACKSON: I remember that meeting. Carl was [concerned about] whites’ reaction to Dr. King. Carl felt he had to have a coalition to win. That meant relieving white fears. Between relieving white fears and black legitimate aspirations, there’s a tension. Dr. King was the anti-war guy. He was the challenging-the-white-power-structure guy. He was, for many, an object of fear rather than a source of hope. So I think Carl was walking that thin line.

Summer

King called a May 16 press conference at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Quincy Avenue. With four black ministers and local black nationalist Fred “Ahmed” Evans standing with him, King announced that on June 1, the SCLC would kick off efforts to register voters and boycott companies doing business in black neighborhoods until they hired more black workers. Afterward, he visited striking workers at St. Luke’s Hospital on Shaker Boulevard, stopping on the way to ask people on street corners about life in Cleveland.

KING, at the press conference: Like many of our nation’s cities, we find Cleveland a teeming cauldron of hostility. The citizens of the Negro community reflect the alienation of the total community, which has constantly ignored their cries for justice and opportunity and responded to their joblessness, poor housing and economic exploitation with crude methods of police repression rather than compassion and creative programming.

CAVINESS: Black people were not being hired. The only thing you could do around here was run the elevator. Basically, that was the norm.

JACKSON: It required a confrontation before negotiation. They’d been so locked in to one-way trade: We bought, they sold. We wanted to be reciprocal trading partners.

JOAN BROWN CAMPBELL was a local community activist. She later became a minister and executive director of the World Council of Churches’ U.S. office. There was a lot of pressure from more radical groups. I remember him being somewhat discouraged. His commitment to nonviolence was being challenged.

In a couple of conversations I was in with black ministers, he would take people to task. [He’d say,] “We can’t afford to be giving up on nonviolence. We can’t afford to move in a direction of violence. We’re making progress, fighting with the right tools.”

JACKSON: The Hough district was very violent, very threatening. I spent a lot of time down in Hough, developing relationships as a street organizer. [I remember] how desperate and poor people were in Hough. That stands in my mind.

ANDREW YOUNG was executive director of the SCLC and an aide to King. He later became a congressman, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. I remember we were going down Euclid Avenue, and a group of possible prostitutes were on the corner. They saw [King] in the car, and they said, “Ol’ Uncle Tom, we don’t need you up here! Go on back down to Georgia.”

The driver pulled off, and Dr. King said, “Stop this car.” He got out and went to speak to them.

He said, “Ladies, I’m sorry. I understand how you feel about me, but I’d like an opportunity to explain to you why we’re here. I’d be glad to have a cup of coffee with you back at my hotel, if you could come back there at about 3 o’clock.”

We got back a little later, about 3:30, and there must have been 15 to 20 prostitutes in the lobby saying they were there to see Martin Luther King. We got the boardroom and invited them all in. We ordered coffee, donuts, cookies and sandwiches, things like that.

He said, “Look, it’s obvious that all of you are very intelligent young women, and you probably have children, and you probably would rather do something other than what you’re doing.” He said, “You’d probably be good schoolteachers. You could probably do anything in this society if you had had the educational opportunity and a helping hand to do that. Those are decisions that are politically controlled.

“One of the reasons why we think we ought to be represented in the government, in the board of education, is so that young women like you would not have to do this as the only means of survival.”

They were grateful for being treated like people, with respect. When they finished their coffee and cookies, they started trying to clean off the table and he said, “No, no, no, you don’t have to do that.” They promised that they would register to vote and that they would spread the word around the neighborhood.

King and his aides befriended “Ahmed” Evans, the black nationalist and astrologer who had predicted more riots in Cleveland.

CAVINESS: Violence was on the table with Ahmed Evans. It was “by any means necessary,” [like] Malcolm X. There were people who looked upon him as being courageous, no-nonsense. “We’re prepared to die, do it or die.” Angry young people would look at that and say, maybe this is the way to do it.

YOUNG: [Evans] was quite loud and boisterous on the news. But when he sat with Martin Luther King, he was very quiet and gentle, and they had a really peaceful conversation.

CAMPBELL: It was very like Dr. King to reach out to someone like Ahmed Evans. And he would get criticized for it. That was the most magical thing about him. He didn’t play his cards safely.

Evans joined the voter registration drive, a signal to his fellow angry young men to work within the system. Other forces were also in play; Stokes and Call and Post publisher William O. Walker convinced white businessmen Ralph Besse and Lawrence Evert to pay black nationalists a total of $40,000 to keep the peace.

Violence did not break out in Cleveland that summer, but it did in Newark, N.J., and Detroit. On July 28, the last day of the Detroit riots, King toured Cleveland’s East Side, exhorting audiences not to burn down their neighborhoods, but to embrace black pride and vote.

LOUIS STOKES, Carl Stokes’ brother, was a lawyer for the Cleveland NAACP in 1967. He was elected as Ohio’s first black congressman in 1968. Dr. King rode on a flatbed truck. You would see him standing on that flatbed truck at places like 55th and Woodland, 79th and Cedar, 105th and St. Clair, and numerous other places. He had a bullhorn and he would be exhorting people in that community to register to vote.

What I noted most was that voice, which was like no other voice. When he spoke, something moved all through your body and your mind.

KING, in a discount store parking lot at East 105th Street and St. Clair Avenue, July 28, 1967: I want to say to everybody under the sound of my voice this afternoon that you are somebody. Don’t let anybody make you feel that you are nobody. You are somebody. You have dignity. You have worth. Don’t be ashamed of yourself and don’t be ashamed of your heritage. Don’t be ashamed of your color. Don’t be ashamed of your hair. I am black and beautiful and not ashamed to say it.

GEORGE FORBES, a young city councilman from Glenville, joined King on the truck for many of his rallies. Forbes became city council president in 1973. There was an Operation Breadbasket Band, headed by [a saxophonist] named Ben Branch. They would come in on the back of these big trucks. They would go to these places like Pick-N-Pay [a grocery store] and sites where black people would gather. The band would play jazz music. People would come from all over the neighborhood, saying, “Dr. King is here.”

KING, at East 105th and St. Clair: Every politician respects votes, and we have enough potential voting power here to change anything that needs to be changed. And so let us set out to do it and to do it in no uncertain terms. And finally, I want to say to you that if we will organize like this, we have a power that can change this city.

It wasn’t easy to register to vote in Ohio in 1967. There was no mail-in registration, and people were removed from the rolls if they didn’t vote in two straight elections. So the Stokes campaign and the SCLC both organized bus trips and car pools to the board of elections downtown. They spread the word about the one day when people could sign up to vote at neighborhood registration stations: Aug. 23.

King visited several registration sites that day. He took a break to eat a home-cooked lunch — fried chicken, ham, macaroni and cheese, greens — and play some football in the front yard at a home on Van Aken Boulevard in Shaker Heights.

YVONNE WILSON was a homemaker and mother of five. She and her husband, Moddie Wilson Jr., had moved to Shaker Heights in 1964. I had friends who worked with the SCLC. Someone called and said, “Do you mind having Dr. King over for lunch?”

He was with Jesse Jackson and Andy Young. They had a little meeting to plan for the afternoon, for voter registration.

He was just like a regular Joe. He was trying to recognize everyone who was there and be patient with people. Everyone seemed to be thrilled to be in the company of him.

MODDIE WILSON III, an accountant in Los Angeles, was 10 when King came to lunch. He brought [his sons] Dexter and Marty. They rode my bike. Dexter broke one of the mirrors. I said, “You gotta pay for that! I don’t know who you guys are!” So he went in and got $3.60 in nickels, dimes and quarters from his father.

[King] was like a dad figure. We threw the ball around for 15 or 20 minutes. We all went out for passes. He was a pretty good quarterback.

I have some pictures where he’s sitting in my dad’s library, talking to my dad. He said he was going to come back next summer, and bring his wife and daughters and family, and they were going to spend the night. My dad said he was under a lot of stress. He said, “You could tell this guy had a lot of pressure on him, the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

At least 20,000 black Clevelanders registered that summer, including 8,600 on Aug. 23 alone.

THE PLAIN DEALER, AUG. 24, 1967: Ray C. Miller, director of elections, • gave much of the credit for yesterday’s turnout to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Said Miller of Dr. King: “He must be magic.”

FORBES: Carl would have disagreed with this, but he would not have gotten elected if he had not had that strong registration drive. [King] was the motivating force behind the registration drive. Now, you [also] had a good candidate to go register to vote for!

Fall

Just before the primary election, the local Democratic Party published a series of inflammatory attacks on King and Stokes.

NEWSLETTER FROM CUYAHOGA COUNTY DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, late September 1967: Will Dr. Martin Luther King actually be the mayor of Cleveland if Carl Stokes is elected Tuesday? This would give the noted racist control of his first city in the United States.

The scare tactics didn’t work. In the Oct. 3 Democratic primary, Stokes beat Locher 110,769 to 92,033. He combined almost all of the black vote with 15 percent of the white vote.

KING, in a press release: Yesterday Cleveland made a significant step toward making America a color-blind society. … Stokes’ victory was a result of a coalition of Negro and White voters and reminds us that black and white together, we shall overcome.

In November, Stokes faced Republican Seth Taft, grandson of President William Howard Taft and a former mayor of Pepper Pike. Vote-counting went late into the night. Stokes supporters and the press gathered outside Stokes’ headquarters.

JACKSON: The night we won, it was such a great urban victory for Dr. King, one of our urban victories, working in the north. We expected that night for Dr. King to go down on the stage, with Carl, to be presented.

YOUNG: My recollection is that [Stokes] asked us to wait in a hotel and he would send for us.

When we saw him on television, claiming victory with us still up there in the hotel, we realized he didn’t want to be seen with us.

For almost 45 years, there have been two versions of where King was on Stokes’ election night. King aides remember him waiting in a hotel room for a call from Stokes’ campaign that never came. But Clevelanders remember King coming to the Rockefeller Building late that night.

MICHAEL D. ROBERTS, now a Cleveland Magazine columnist, covered the election night for The Plain Dealer. The media was looking for Martin Luther King. [The Stokes rally] took place in the Rockefeller Building. We were looking for him, we heard he was there, but nobody would lead us to him.

FORBES: I saw him on the sixth floor of the Rockefeller Building [Stokes’ campaign offices]. Lou [Stokes] and I stayed up and talked to Dr. King when he came over. And then Carl was downstairs in the headquarters for that night when the vote was being announced.

Stokes beat Taft by only 1,679 votes. Cleveland, a majority-white city, had elected a black mayor.

LOUIS STOKES: My last memory of Dr. King here was the night of my brother Carl’s election. Dr. King was in our headquarters. I guess it was about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning when we finally got word that Carl had defeated Seth Taft.

Carl had not yet gone down to greet all of the people. There was a throng of people outside our headquarters. They all wanted to see Carl.

He went down and took everybody in the headquarters with him, but it was decided Dr. King would not go down. Carl came to me and said, “Lou, would you stay upstairs with Dr. King while we go down?” and I said, “Sure.”

As I recall, Dr. King was very, very happy that night. I guess he could see how his work here had helped bring this night about.

He spoke of what Carl’s victory, politically, meant to black Americans in this country. But he also said that with this achievement politically, we also had to concentrate on economic achievement.

He stressed the fact that no ethnic group seeking power in America had acquired meaningful equity and parity without achieving both political and economic empowerment.

JACKSON: To keep our movement growing, you needed credits. Would the nonviolent movement work in the North? Would the voting-rights movement apply to the North? All that happened. It was a great victory. He would have savored the victory, but he was not allowed to in that instance.

YOUNG: Dr. King was very understanding. He said, “Look, he’s got to run this town. He doesn’t want it to seem that civil rights is his only issue. He’s got to appeal to the broad base of the Cleveland population.” Some of us were kind of upset, and he spent his time explaining to us why Carl had to do it this way. He might have taken offense, but he didn’t admit it.

CAVINESS: I was disappointed. I thought King should have been on that stage. His magnetism and all of his resources were brought to this town to get it done. So we felt a little bit at odds about it. But Carl was the leader. He called the shots. Carl knew that in order for him to govern, now that he was elected, he was going to have to demonstrate that this was an indigenous movement here in Cleveland.

King visited Cleveland three more times. In mid-November, he announced an end to the boycott of the Pick-N-Pay chain after it agreed to hire more black workers. He also made a public appearance in December and a private visit in early 1968.

King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, six days before he was to return to Cleveland to rally support for the Poor People’s Campaign, the SCLC’s protest on the Washington, D.C., Mall that spring. Carl Stokes led Cleveland’s mourning for him. Some 35,000 Clevelanders gathered in Public Square outside a memorial service at Old Stone Church. A photo of Stokes in tears at church ran on The Plain Dealer‘s April 6 front page.

CAVINESS: [Stokes] loved him. It brought tears to his eyes, because he knew how much he’d meant to the struggle, how much the man had given, how much he’d sacrificed. And he also knew he was the beneficiary of so much of his love and concern.

Stokes served as co-chairman of a committee of mayors who supported the Poor People’s Campaign that June.

In July, Ahmed Evans and a few followers, who had stockpiled guns in a home in Glenville, got into a shootout with police. The incident sparked the Glenville riots, which wounded Cleveland again and punctured the atmosphere of hope that had grown around Carl Stokes. He was re-elected in 1969 but chose not to run again in 1971.

One of the first bills Louis Stokes co-sponsored in Congress in 1969 was a proposal to create a holiday honoring King. It became law in 1983.


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