Cleveland History Self Study: A 5 Week Syllabus of Recommended Essays

Cleveland Stories: An Informal Look at the City’s Past

A 5 Week essay-based syllabus suggested by Dr. Marian Morton, professor emerita at John Carroll University with expertise in Cleveland area history.

Overview: A discussion of some of Cleveland’s most interesting and important people, places, and events
Objective: To link the city’s past with its present policies, politics, and practices

Week 1. Introduction. Read Teaching Cleveland Stories (TCS): John J. Grabowski, “Cleveland: Economics, Images, and Expectations”

Week 2. TCS: Mike Roberts and Margaret Gulley, “The Man Who Saved Cleveland.” Elizabeth Sullivan, “Immigration”  John Vacha, “The Heart of Amasa Stone”; Joe Frolik, “Mark Hanna: The Clevelander Who Made a President”

Supplemental: TeachingCleveland.org: Timeline of Cleveland/NE Ohio; The Western Reserve, 1796-1820, and Pre-Industrial (Erie and Ohio Canals), 1820-1865 and The Industrial Revolution/ John D. Rockefeller/ Mark Hanna, 1865-1900

Week 3. TCS: John J. Grabowski, “Cleveland 1912 – Civitas Triumphant”; Joe Frolik, “Regional Government versus Home Rule”  John Vacha, “When Cleveland Saw Red”  Margaret Bernstein, ‘’Inventor Garrett Morgan, Cleveland’s Fierce Bootstrapper”  Marian Morton, “How Cleveland Women Got the Vote and What They Did With It”

Supplemental: TeachingCleveland.org: Progressive Era/Tom L. Johnson/ Newton D. Baker, 1900-1915 and Fred Kohler/City Managers/Political Bosses, 1920s and The Van Sweringens/ Depression … 1930s

Week 4. TCS: Thomas Suddes, “The Adult Education Tradition in Greater Cleveland”  Bill Lubinger, “Bill Veeck: The Man Who Conquered Cleveland and Changed Baseball Forever”  Jay Miller, “Cyrus Eaton: Khruschev’s Favorite Capitalist” Roldo Bartimole, “One Man Can Make a Difference”  Mike Roberts, “Cleveland in the 1960s” and “Cleveland in the 1970s”

Supplemental: TeachingCleveland.org: World War 2- Post War, 1940s; Carl Stokes- Civil Rights, 1960s and Ralph Perk-Dennis Kucinich, 1970s

Week 5. TCS: Mike Roberts, “Cleveland in the 1980s” and “Cleveland in the 1990s” Supplemental: TeachingCleveland.org: “10 Greatest Clevelanders”; “12 Most Significant Events”; Cleveland Politician Interview Series (George Forbes, Jim Rokakis, Louis Stokes, George Voinovich, Michael R. White); Mike Roberts, “Cleveland in the 2000s“

General questions: what is the main point of each article? Did you agree or disagree? What did you find most interesting? What would you add? Or subtract? 

 

Anthony Pilla, Bishop of Cleveland Catholic Diocese for 26 Years, Dies at 88 by Sam Allard, CLE Scene 9/22/2021


Diocese of Cleveland

Anthony Pilla, Bishop of Cleveland Catholic Diocese for 26 Years, Dies at 88
by Sam Allard, Cleveland Scene 9/22/2021
The link is here

 

Cleveland.com article (firewall)
Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, Cleveland native who guided Northeast Ohio Catholics for quarter-century, dies at 88
by David Briggs
The link is here

 

 

After a half-century of political surprises, Dennis Kucinich’s political career comes to an end -Brent Larkin Sept 15, 2021

by Brent Larkin

CLEVELAND — Dennis Kucinich’s career in elected life ended the way it began 54 years earlier – with a loss.

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2021/09/after-a-half-century-of-political-surprises-dennis-kucinichs-political-career-comes-to-an-end-brent-larkin.html

Classmates – Posted on May 28, 2021 by John Grabowski – WRHS


Leonard Hanna Jr.
 Cole Porter
Classmates
by John Grabowski – 

by John Grabowski, PhD | WRHS Krieger Mueller Historian
from Cleveland History Center
In March 1924, a group of Yale alumni arrived in Cleveland to put on a musical show at the University Club.  They had been invited by two local alums, Elton Hoyt and Leonard Hanna, Jr. who had attended their performance in New York City and convinced the ensemble to reprise it in Cleveland.
The composer of the music was Cole Porter, a member of the Yale Class of 1913 and a close friend of Leonard Hanna, Jr. also a member of that class.

Read more here

Video from “The Mike White Years by the Journalists Who Covered Him” Wednesday, October 21, 2020 7pm

The Mike White Years by the Journalists Who Covered Him
Wednesday, October 21, 7pm via Zoom
with panelists:
Brent Larkin, The Plain Dealer
Tom Beres WKYC-TV (retired)
Leon Bibb, WKYC-TV, WEWS-TV
Moderated by Mark Naymik, WKYC Channel 3 – Cleveland

The recording is here:

The 1990s in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio were molded by 3-term Mayor Michael R. White (1990-2002). Changes to the Cleveland Public Schools, Gateway stadium (and stadiums in general), the Browns, the airport, and many other decisions were made that are impacting the region to this day. Hear from the journalists who covered Mayor White as they look back 20 years later.

Sponsored by Cleveland History Center, Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University, League of Women Voters-Greater Cleveland

Photo: Plain Dealer

The Consequences of Cleaveland by Dr. John Grabowski

(Map of English Colonies Bordering on Ohio River 175

The Consequences of Cleaveland

by Dr. John Grabowski, PhD | WRHS Krieger Mueller Historian

On July 4th 1796, on the bank of what is now Conneaut Creek, a group of surveyors led by Moses Cleaveland celebrated Independence Day.  Naming the site Port Independence, they fired off a salute, ate a meal of pork and beans, and drank to six patriotic toasts.   Eighteen days later they arrived at the mouth of Cuyahoga River, climbing up a hill on the east bank (near what is now St. Clair Avenue) to the heights over the river valley.

The river marked the boundary of that part of the Western Reserve to which Native Americans had ceded their claims in the Greenville Treaty of 1795, and it seemed a likely area to begin the exploration and mapping out of the lands now “available” to settlement.  Yet it took several weeks for Moses Cleaveland to decide if the site would serve as the center for the survey party’s work, and what some might call the capital of the Western Reserve.  He made that decision in August.  It was the best possible choice and considered naming the settlement Cuyahoga, but his colleagues convinced him that it should take his name.

This is a quick and far too easy summary of the founding of Cleveland for it misses the broader impact of the event.   When Cleaveland’s surveying crew began to lay out the lines that would define the townships of the Western Reserve, they were imposing a change on the landscape that exceeded anything that had come before.

Click here to read more

Black voting power in pre-Civil War Ohio helped elect a governor – and president by Van Gosse June 4, 2021 Plain Dealer

 

 

This photograph of a painting shows the second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as he takes the oath of office as the 16th president of the United States in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington March 4, 1865. The oath is administered by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, a former Ohio governor who had been elected governor in 1855 and re-elected in 1857 with the help of Black votes, thanks to Ohio Supreme Court rulings dating to the 1820s that anyone of mixed race with a preponderance of white blood could vote. It was a standard routinely applied generously in Ohio, simply with a statement that someone was mostly white. (AP Photo)ASSOCIATED PRESS

Black voting power in pre-Civil War Ohio helped elect a governor – and president
by Van Gosse, The Plain Dealer June 4, 2021

The link is here 

 

Teaching Cleveland Digital