Abstract
Kathy Oberst Ledger was born in New York and moved as a child to the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. Ledger recalls when Detroit Shoreway. After getting married she moved to the Clark-Fulton neighborhood, which she recalls had a large Appalachian population mostly from West Virginia. She recalls that many Spanish-speaking residents moved to Clark-Fulton from Tremont. She discusses taking over Judy's White Oaks, a bar her parents ran, and turning it into a nightclub called Diamond Dill's Tropical Lounge in the late 1980s. She contrasts its cosmopolitan clientele from its predecessor's mostly Appalachian white patronage and believes that neighbors' hostility toward this diversity led to the city forcing the club's closure and demolition just two years later after she refused to install a steel beam that an inspector claimed was needed. Ledger has been actively trying to revitalize her community through her own initiatives, working closely with Metro West Community Development Organization, and applying for grants from Neighborhood Connections. Most of her efforts have been geared toward community gardening and positioning the neighborhood as an "International Village."
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Interviewee
Oberst Ledger, Kathy (interviewee)
Interviewer
Nemeth, Sarah (interviewer)
Project
Metro West
Date
7-10-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
54 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Kathy Oberst Ledger interview, 10 July 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 956003_955034.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1101
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
