ORCID ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8090-7056
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2021
Publication Title
Journal of Urban History
Abstract
This article examines the largely neglected history of African American struggles to obtain housing in Cleveland Heights, a first-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, between 1900 and 1960, prior to the fair housing and managed integration campaigns that emerged thereafter. The article explores the experiences of black live-in servants, resident apartment building janitors, independent renters, and homeowners. It offers a rare look at the ways that domestic and custodial arrangements opened opportunities in housing and education, as well as the methods, calculations, risks, and rewards of working through white intermediaries to secure homeownership. It argues that the continued black presence laid a foundation for later advances beginning in the 1960s that made Cleveland Heights, like better-known Shaker Heights, a national model for suburban racial integration.
Repository Citation
Souther, J. Mark, "Through the Ivory Curtain: African Americans in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, before the Fair Housing Movement" (2021). History Faculty Publications. 121.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clhist_facpub/121
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/00961442211045083
Version
Postprint
Publisher's Statement
This article published in the SAGE Journal of Urban History
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social History Commons, Social Policy Commons, United States History Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
