Abstract
Steven A. Minter was President and Executive Director of The Cleveland Foundation for almost 20 years. In this interview, he discusses his life growing up in the Moreland community, his involvement in the Shaker school system, and education.
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Interviewee
Minter, Steve (interviewee)
Interviewer
Lewis, Kamla (interviewer)
Project
Moreland History Project
Date
12-12-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
51 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Steve Minter interview interview, 12 December 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 904008.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1164
Transcript
Kamla Lewis [00:00:01] So, good afternoon. Today is December 12, 2017, and my name is Kamla Lewis, and I’m interviewing Mr. Steve Minter at the Shaker Heights Public Library for the Moreland history project. Mr. Minter, could you please state your full name for the record and spell it?
Steve Minter [00:00:21] Sure. It’s Steven A. Minter. That’s S-T-E-V-E-N. Middle initial A. Last name Minter. M-I-N-T-E-R.
Kamla Lewis [00:00:35] Thank you very much. And thank you for agreeing to be a part of this Moreland History Project, the oral interviews. Why don’t we start with just a little background on who you are and how you came to Shaker?
Steve Minter [00:00:50] Okay, that’s a good question. How much background do you really want?
Kamla Lewis [00:00:56] Oh, anything you’re willing to pass along.
Steve Minter [00:00:58] So, how did we get the Shaker? I met my wife, Dolly, at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where we were both undergraduates. I met her in my sophomore year, and she was a freshman, and we worked together in the dining hall and went through Baldwin Wallace. I graduated in 1960, and Dolly graduated in 1961, and we were married in April of 1961 as an interracial couple. So that being something pretty early on in terms of our life and career. And we therefore were friends and partners for 60 years. And I was married for 56 years before she died just a few months ago. Out of the background of the interracial marriage, I started work at the then referred to as the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department in September of 1960, and first lived in Cleveland on East 75th Street, the corner of Chester and East 75th. And when we got married in April, we moved the following June of 1961 to East 149th between Milverton and Kinsman. So we became very familiar with Shaker and Moreland area and Mount Pleasant. In 1963, when we started in ’62, actually, when we started thinking about and talking about having a family because of our commitment to education and so forth, we immediately began saying, okay, we’re going to have a child, we’re going to have a family. Dolly got pregnant. And when I finished graduate school at the School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve, we started looking for a house and found one in Moreland.
Kamla Lewis [00:03:38] Do you remember what street?
Steve Minter [00:03:40] Yeah, Menlo Road. 3526 Menlo Road. And why Moreland and why Shaker? It’s because both of us felt so strongly about every education, and felt so strongly about being in an interracial and an inclusive environment. And then the question was, what could we afford to buy as a young couple? And we felt strongly about the Shaker schools, even though Michelle hadn’t even been born yet, that we wanted to be someplace where it would be an inclusive community and where there would be a great school system. And so we bought our house in June of 1963 in Moreland. And as we later would laugh and say, we were either on the first street in Shaker Heights or the last street in Shaker Heights. Literally, the next street is 154th Street. And we moved there in June of 1963. And our first and oldest daughter, Michelle, was born in October of 1963.
Kamla Lewis [00:05:00] You mentioned that you and Dolly met at Baldwin Wallace. Are you both from Northeast Ohio or did you come here for school?
Steve Minter [00:05:09] Good question. I was born in Akron, and my family moved around a great deal during my early years in Summit, Portage, and Trumbull County. So a native of Northeast Ohio, I went to high school in Kinsman, Ohio. So if you go out Kinsman Road far enough, you’ll get five miles from the Pennsylvania border. That’s Kinsman, Ohio. We were the only Black family in the township. Then matriculated to Baldwin Wallace, and my wife, Dolly, was born and reared in Lakewood. And as I said, we met at Baldwin Wallace.
Kamla Lewis [00:05:55] And what were you each studying?
Steve Minter [00:05:57] We were actually both education majors. She had elementary education. I majored in health and physical education with a minor in history.
Kamla Lewis [00:06:06] What did you want to grow up to be?
Steve Minter [00:06:10] Well, things don’t always turn out to be the way that they were planned. That’s a long and intricate story. But I ended up working for the Cuyahoga County Welfare department as a social worker. And my first day of work at the department, they were having a grand celebration going on. The first group of social workers being paid for by the state of Ohio to go and pursue their master’s degrees and come back and assume professional, more highly professional positions was a day of celebration the day I arrived. So they said those were going to be the leaders of the future. And the following year I was in that class. So I went in ’61, and then I went off and graduated in ’63, and we started our family.
Kamla Lewis [00:07:11] Going back a bit, what caused your family to move around so much in Northeast Ohio?
Steve Minter [00:07:18] Well, it’s a- In those early years, my- I’m the oldest of eight children, put it that way. And my dad, my parents had three of us very quickly, sort of by 1941, my sister was already born, Roslyn, and Michael was coming along, and my dad, because of having the number of dependents, they wouldn’t take him in the armed forces. So he had a lot of jobs. He’s a highly skilled person. Had not finished high school. But he was very smart, very capable. But he didn’t like having a boss. He had the work ethic, he worked hard, he did things. And in fact he was the first coal delivery, black coal delivery driver, deliverer in Akron, Ohio. And he worked for the City Ice and Coal Company. He worked for Firestone and so forth. But he never met a boss in those early years that he liked. So you know, someone would say, do this, do that, and he’d say, well, what’s wrong with the way it’s being done? Well, it’s nothing wrong with what’s being done, but I’d prefer you to do it this way. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Well, I want you to do it that way anyway. And I think he sort of said, well, take your job and shove it, you know. So we moved around a lot. So in Akron, Copley, Kent, Ravenna, Wyndham, Ohio, Zwickley, Pennsylvania, Braceville, Ohio. So all little small towns here in northeast Ohio, and Warren Township. He always got jobs, didn’t throw money away, didn’t, you know. But it took him a while to finally settle in. And he was an over the road steel hauler. So we ended up by, it’s a very complicated story, in Kinsman, Ohio. And it was in Kinsman where my superintendent of schools was my Sunday school teacher in the Methodist Church and the teacher who influenced me the most was a pillar in the Methodist church that my family belonged to. And they said, where are you going to college? I hadn’t thought about it. They said, you will go to college. We, one Sunday it was this conversation, where have you applied? I told him I had sent postcards to several places, including Baldwin Wallace, which my father had mentioned because he saw an article about Harrison Dillard who lived in Shaker Heights and who had gone to Baldwin Wallace. And my dad said, oh, you know, maybe a place worth looking at. It’s up there around the Cleveland airport. I mentioned that that’s, well, that Sunday after church, Mr. Titus said to me, hey, you haven’t reported to me in two weeks. Where’s this college search going? And I happened to mention Baldwin Wallace. And later that afternoon our young pastor came out to our house and said, Mr. Titus and Mrs. Garlock told me I’m to pick you up tomorrow morning at 8:30 and we’re going up to visit Baldwin Wallace, you and your mother and I. And that’s How I got to Baldwin Wallace.
Kamla Lewis [00:11:28] And at what point did you ever first hear about Shaker Heights?
Steve Minter [00:11:39] I think probably I, you know, Shaker came in, came into the picture when I started working at the welfare department. And we moved. My sister Rosalind, who I’ll talk about, because it’s the family that fits into this. My sister Rosalind first lived on 149th Street and moved to 149th Street. And so when we were then starting to look for a place, she told us about the apartment buildings on 149th Street. And we were very near her. So it was a natural. And therefore, the minute we moved to 149th Street, I learned about Kinsman Road. It was obviously very close to Shaker because the next street over was Milverton. We walked to Shaker Square. We shopped at Heinen’s.
Kamla Lewis [00:12:39] Okay, was Heinen’s in its current location?
Steve Minter [00:12:42] No, it was, it was down further where really kind of the hardware is now. So we shopped. So therefore, very familiar with Shaker. And many of the persons who I associated with at the department and then in graduate school lived in Shaker. And it didn’t take very long to become impressed that this quality of housing, the quality of schools, the reputation meant that, and, and I would add, by that time I’d met a number of persons who were involved with the Ludlow Association, et cetera. So therefore, us being an interracial couple and being familiar with it, it was a very logical place for us to consider.
Kamla Lewis [00:13:37] And so, as you mentioned, you were an interracial couple. This is the early 1960s, it’s 1963. You move into Shaker, you’re starting a family. What’s going on in the community at that time?
Steve Minter [00:13:52] Well, let’s, you know, let’s talk about Moreland, because first of all, it was very clear that it was an area where we thought we could afford to live and buy a house, buy a home. And when we started looking, it didn’t take very long for a very nice house to become available. And as I remember now, it’s about $14,200 or something like that. So we could. We could manage the down payment, et cetera. And we lived four houses from the corner of Menlo Road, I mean, from Chagrin and Menlo. Today that area is the Shaker Service Center. It was a terrific place. We liked it a great deal. It was those streets, Menlo, Pennington, Hildana, so forth, were going through a significant transition. There were still number of white families who lived on the street, but it also was obvious that the area was becoming more black families were moving in. As a matter of fact, the family next to us, who were wonderful family, was white, and on the other side was white. But there was blockbusting going on.
Kamla Lewis [00:15:44] And what do you mean by that?
Steve Minter [00:15:45] Meaning that there were agents out on the street knocking on doors of what they perceived as being the white families saying, maybe you want to move. Maybe it’s time for you to get out. I can get you a good price. And my documentation I kind of brought for you today. This is the book my daughter Robin did about Dolly. And Dolly, in 1991 or two, actually talked about, wrote about her experience around race. She gave a commencement address in 1992 at Hiram College. She had been asked by the president then, and she gave a commencement address called: All I Really Need to Know I Did Not Learn In Kindergarten. Okay. And she then goes on to say that there were seven lessons that she had learned in life.
Kamla Lewis [00:17:04] But not in kindergarten.
Steve Minter [00:17:06] But not in kindergarten. However, I mean, included in that is. One of those was words don’t mean the same thing to each person. Secondly, practice what you preach, which is a little bit about race. But the third was about everybody has the capacity to grow. And then her fourth lesson was be prepared to combat racism. And she wrote: When we purchased our first home in Shaker Heights, I learned lesson number four. Be prepared to combat racism. I was at home with our new baby daughter when the doorbell rang. The man, a white man, introduced himself as a real estate agent. He was on our street to warn us. He said Negroes were moving in, our neighborhood would be undesirable. You better sell now. He would help us. No, thank you, I said. We aren’t interested in selling. After he left, I was ashamed of myself. Here was a real estate agent playing on racist fears. He was blockbusting, promoting white flight, making money for himself. I had been surprised and very polite. Letting him continue spreading fear. And so I started to learn lesson number four. I learned to be prepared to combat racism. I thought about how to say what I believed about justice and opportunity and the value of an inclusive society. Some days later, a plumber came to. Our home to put in a new trap under the bathroom sink. While he was working, he commented that I should be careful, that this was a changing neighborhood. I told him that I had both black and white neighbors and that they were such fine people, and I liked it here. He was surprised and so apologetic. I’m sorry, lady. I’m sure you have nice neighbors. He had assumed that because I was white, I was prejudiced. If I had said nothing, he would have continued to assume that. So, I mean, this was what was going on.
Kamla Lewis [00:19:24] Now, was that unusual for the time?
Steve Minter [00:19:29] No. I mean, it was occurring not only in Moreland. I mean, they’d had the same experiences in Ludlow. I mean, the reason why Ludlow had come into being is because to stop the fear of white flight and people coming together and saying, you know, we can figure out how to have an integrated, inclusive neighborhoods.
Kamla Lewis [00:19:53] So, nowadays we are very familiar with the term blockbusting. Was it called that at the time?
Steve Minter [00:20:00] Yeah, I think it was.
Kamla Lewis [00:20:02] It was happening in other parts of the country.
Steve Minter [00:20:04] Right. It hadn’t, you know, so it was a fascinating time to live in Moreland. And both Dolly and I got very involved immediately in terms of what was going on in community activities, trying to stabilize the neighborhood, trying to keep, you know, panic selling from occurring.
Kamla Lewis [00:20:33] So how, how did this happen? How do people get involved when there’s such a big issue going on?
Steve Minter [00:20:38] Well, that there are, there, of course, we had, if you will, the example already set in Shaker Heights. Right? In Cleveland, Ludlow had set an example. It was a fair housing organization that Stuart Wallace was engaged in. There were a number of persons who really cared deeply about integrating the community and integration and quality of schools. Who were the early persons? I don’t remember exactly when the Moreland Community association started, but from the time we arrived, we were immediately pulled in. And there were a lot of people who cared deeply about the issues. Members of the school board, even Charlie Vanek, who was the congressman for this area. And Dolly and I were the kinds of persons who got engaged. And we met lots of other persons who lived in Moreland and became active in the Moreland Community Association. I probably was more busy working on my career, but Dolly and Ann Adamson, I can remember being co editors of the Moreland Community newspaper and are just being engaged in a lot of activities. And two doors down from us was this terrific African American family, the Corbin family. Fiola Corbin was the mother’s name. And some of the Corbins still live here in Shaker Heights. And so we just got engaged in a lot of things.
Kamla Lewis [00:22:42] So what, how often did the association meet? I mean, were they meeting at people’s houses? Give us a flavor for how this played out. What was it like?
Steve Minter [00:22:52] You know, I wish I could tell you. I don’t, I don’t really remember a lot. I mean, I can name people who were involved and were active. And I remember street events. Regretfully, I mean, it’s my wife who would have been the one who could. Because, you know, I was busy running to a career.
Kamla Lewis [00:23:19] Fully understood, you were a team.
Steve Minter [00:23:21] And we were a team. And the other part is we weren’t there very long. I mean, I can talk far more extensively about Shaker because out of the 50 years, 45 of those years, more than that, have been lived in Shaker Heights. So, you know, I can. You know, I can recall the events at Moreland School. And actually Michelle attended kindergarten at Moreland Elementary School. And we were very involved in the political activities with the Shaker Heights and the Shaker School Board. And had many of the many Moreland community activities and meetings were actually at our house. And then the city came along and said, as we’re trying to map out plans for the future of Shaker, they wanted to locate the service center and bought up the first five or six houses on Moreland, going on Menlo and Pennington, I guess, going south, and made us an offer which we were happy to accept. And we moved then to Keswick in Shaker, close to, in Ludlow. And actually Michelle goes to first grade at Ludlow Elementary School.
Kamla Lewis [00:25:09] She did kindergarten at the Moreland?
Steve Minter [00:25:11] She did kindergarten at Moreland and first grade at Ludlow. And then I accepted a position in Massachusetts to be in the governor’s cabinet and moved to Massachusetts from 1970 until… Middle August of 1970 until February of 1975. And once we decided we were going to return to Cleveland, we were pretty, well, Dolly was pretty specific about exactly where we were going to live. It had to be in the Boulevard School area. And that’s where we ended up back here. But I also, by that time, my sister Roslyn lived on Chadbourne, worked for the Shaker Housing office. I have a brother, Larry, who lives on Ingleside, still does in Shaker. I have a sister, Rosemary, who lived at Sutton Place. And now we’re all back together again. So, Moreland was a good place to start.
Kamla Lewis [00:26:33] So you mentioned that the service center was going to be constructed in the Moreland neighborhood and they had to acquire houses to demolish them to be able to build it. My understanding is that was part of a larger plan, not of all, which came to fruition in Moreland. That included building a civic center in the neighborhood and some plans for other types of housing. Do you recall how that plan was received in the neighborhood and the discussions around that?
Steve Minter [00:27:08] Not really.
Kamla Lewis [00:27:10] And as you said, you were very involved, Dolly, with the Moreland School when Michelle started there for kindergarten. What was the racial breakdown about that time and what was the school like?
Steve Minter [00:27:29] I’m guessing, okay, I would say probably at the time when Michelle went there, maybe 20, 25% of the students were students of color. It was a wonderful school. We both, we liked the school. She loved the school. She loved her kindergarten teacher, Ms. Nevins, and so. And also her cousin Laurie, who was a year, almost a year older, but they were in the same grade, also attended Moreland School. So I mean, it was the center of a lot of activities. I don’t remember the principal’s name, but he was a very outgoing, widely respected figure. And I think, you know, we all felt very positively about the school. And I had a lot to do in terms of the work which I did subsequently as a Shaker resident to help maintain this and have it turned into a library and the influence of the schools. I helped co chair several levy campaigns and those kind of things.
Kamla Lewis [00:29:01] And what would you say was the mood of the residents at the time? I mean, was it hopeful? Was it angry? Was it… I mean, because despite the efforts of the association and the residents, the area did not integrate the way that had originally been hoped. Racial change happened rather quickly, in fact, transitioning from Jewish to African American. How did people feel about that?
Steve Minter [00:29:34] You know, as I think back and look at it, and it’s interesting, the questions that you’re asking. I don’t think there was a lot of discussion about it in… Until maybe we get into the 70s, as I think new families moving in were moving in because they wanted to be there, because it was good housing. It was Shaker Heights and schools. I don’t think people were busy having dilemmas over all of the other stuff. I think we were aware of the changing nature of the neighborhood, But Moreland was not deep Shaker. I mean, I think the fact that it was turning into predominantly black area. I don’t recall us having many dilemmas about that. I mean, I think it was, boy, this is good housing. Who are the families that are moving in? Are they going to be able to maintain the neighborhood? Okay. And that, that is more of that concern. I don’t recall that there was a lot of concern yet at that stage about, guess what, the housing stock is deteriorating because we’re not keeping it up and so forth and so on.
Kamla Lewis [00:31:28] That’s why these oral interviews are so important, because they give that personal experience of what it really felt like.
Steve Minter [00:31:36] I mean, let me be clear, because we’d have been perfectly satisfied. I imagine, if we hadn’t had to move, we’d have been in the Menlo Road house until such time as we sold to go to Massachusetts. So there was certainly, we thought it was a terrific place. I could do some substitute teaching as her other two girls had come along. The Corbin family, who lived a couple houses from us, were fantastic neighbors and wonderful people. And, you know, I think I can honestly say I, because of some of the influence and other things that I had in the community, already, was instrumental in helping get- Helping the city be magnanimous in terms of working out the kind of arrangements which made it possible for some of those families who moved off of Menlo Road to go elsewhere in Shaker when they might not have been able to have gotten that much money through eminent domain.
Kamla Lewis [00:33:03] Right. And in fact, I wanted to explore that a little bit with you to understand sort of how that process worked. Did they help families find another home in Shaker? How did that process work?
Steve Minter [00:33:16] Well, I can talk about two of the families that I know pretty well worked with the housing office at City Hall around being certain that places would be identified whereby they could continue to live in Shaker if they wanted to. And it had to be at a price. And there was no question in my mind whatsoever that the city was very committed to terms of doing that. And I know in two of the families cases, you know, in fact, I think one family still has the house on Chagrin Boulevard.
Kamla Lewis [00:34:05] I talked to a couple of others who are also relocated through the program as well.
Steve Minter [00:34:10] Right, right.
Kamla Lewis [00:34:11] I mean, as somebody who does that today, works with households, very interested in that. So you also mentioned that the convenience of you could walk to Heinen’s, which was in the neighborhood from even then. What else was in the neighborhood? Where did people go for social activities? Did you go into Cleveland? Downtown? What was the social scene like?
Steve Minter [00:34:37] Well, of course, we had a theater on the corner of Lee and, just down from Lee and Chagrin, a movie theater.
Kamla Lewis [00:34:47] Were there restaurants in there? Was there more retail than there is now?
Steve Minter [00:34:53] I guess what I’d say is, at least in, in our case, we probably gravitated more towards Shaker Square as a pivotal place because it worked in Cleveland, towards Shaker Square. And in terms of the theater, movie theater was there, and then it was Heinen’s and the hardware, and the dry cleaners. I mean, I don’t think we did much shopping, really. Wasn’t maybe stuff that appealed to us. And we did a little bit now and then at Van Aken and Warrensville, but I think kind of our orientation was much more towards the Randall Park Mall with the Heinen’s and the hardware here.
Kamla Lewis [00:36:04] And what was Shaker Square like at that time?
Steve Minter [00:36:12] Not that dissimilar from what it is today, except for, I mean, you had some different shops and so forth. It was, there was actually a Stouffer’s there where the CVS is. But, you know, it was easy and convenient to get to, and I still do. Well, where I even lived when I lived on Woodbury Road until very recently still, it was even closer to Shaker Square. So it’s always been a center.
Kamla Lewis [00:36:42] Was the rapid regularly used by your family and friends in the neighborhood?
Steve Minter [00:37:03] I don’t have much of a sense of that being the case. I mean, I think people living in Moreland, I don’t remember a big, going over to try and figure out how to get on the rapid. I mean, everybody knew it was there. I think it got used when you were going downtown for certain purposes. But I’d say, I think more people in Moreland who didn’t drive rode the bus. I don’t think they went over necessarily to get the rapid. I used the rapid. I used the rapid more when we moved to the other, but not when we lived in Moreland.
Kamla Lewis [00:37:50] There were two synagogues in the neighborhood. Were they operating at the time?
Steve Minter [00:37:56] Yes, but I didn’t really have much of a sense of awareness.
Kamla Lewis [00:38:02] And later in your life, of course, you were an executive with the Cleveland Foundation. My understanding is that the Moreland Community Association was originally supported in part by the Cleveland Foundation.
Steve Minter [00:38:18] That’s correct.
Kamla Lewis [00:38:19] Do you know anything about how that came about and the ties there?
Steve Minter [00:38:27] Well, the foundation, the Cleveland foundation and the George Gund Foundation were highly supportive of fair housing efforts, community organizations to try and promote stability. Supporting Ludlow. And, a very major important figure, I think, for us in Cleveland was Winston Ritchie, who pioneered in terms of the work done in Ludlow and then many, many years on the Shaker Heights City Council. And Winston and Adrian Jones and Morris Jones and a number of persons like that worked generally for integration and inclusivity in Shaker Heights, of which, obviously Moreland was pretty important. So it’s quite understandable that the Moreland Community association would put together proposals and go to the Cleveland foundation and Gund, because that’s what we were about, was trying to promote stability in neighborhoods and neighborhood revitalization. And even before I was at the foundation, but certainly after I joined the foundation in 1975 and ’76, I was the program officer for working with the Moreland Community association and many of the others, and the efforts to have fair housing and Winston Ritchie’s and shifting over to do the work that he did around neighborhoods stabilization, equal housing and fair housing and developing relationships between the suburbs to address these issues.
Kamla Lewis [00:40:34] Were there other suburbs having the same sort of active community associations doing that work?
Steve Minter [00:40:41] Well, yes. I mean, Shaker, I think, was kind of the earliest, but we could go and point to similar organizations in Cleveland Heights. Not that I remember all the names now off the top of my head, but I know Harry Fagan led very important efforts in Cleveland Heights. And there was work starting to be done in Warrensville, which was going through very significant changes. And then obviously coming back, looping back around to the city of Cleveland, which has now some very, very strong communities development corporations. I mean, this was a area which was hit hard by change in racial composition and the economics from starting in the mid-60s through and desegregation of the Cleveland public schools and pressures in terms of the Shaker schools. And, you know, we had to go through similar things in Shaker in terms of not having segregated elementary schools. So thus the Shaker plan in terms of changing what schools would be and busing and to avoid being a segregated system.
Kamla Lewis [00:42:31] So can you tell us some more about the Shaker plan and your involvement with that and how that played out?
Steve Minter [00:42:43] I probably could if I, you know, went back and you gave me some time to do some homework on it. But no, you know, I have a lot of material and so forth, but I-
Kamla Lewis [00:42:57] This is the ’70s. Is that about the time that that was taking place?
Steve Minter [00:43:01] Yeah.
Kamla Lewis [00:43:03] And so for background, this was, the Moreland school had already closed? Or is this, how…
Steve Minter [00:43:13] Well, all of that is part of the story, as I, you know, recall the mix. I mean, why with the changing neighborhoods and the demographics, if it was going to be neighborhood schools, then what was Moreland going to be? It was going to be the black school, right? And so what was Lomond going to be? And in order to address the issues as it related to integrated housing, continuing to have quality housing, not having segregated schools, a lot of thought and a lot of care was given to trying to figure out, how do we not end up in a situation where what had happened in Cleveland and a lot of other places, and that was what the Shaker school’s plan was about in terms of doing it. And later that leads to the kind of work done at the high schools, at the high school level, too, and the establishment of the Concerned Parents Organization, which had a lot of folks engaged from Moreland to begin to look at as the composition, the demographics of the system changed. How do we do something about reducing the gap between the attainment of predominantly white caucasian students and Black students, recognizing that many black families had worked hard, struggled hard, get the money to move to Shaker. Why? Because better schools. Then, now you got to address. How does the system change? Because there are cultural differences, there are expectation differences, there are social, economic differences. And it isn’t just sufficient to move and say, okay, my kids are here now. That’s it, right? It takes a lot more than that. And so I think this is a community which is, I feel pretty proud of, having worked at that, to try and figure out, okay, what do we do that is not going to have two separate but equal programs in the Shaker schools? I mean, you couldn’t mistake it. I mean, I had three daughters. Well, my three daughters took level four, five classes and advanced placement classes. They’re biracial kids. You couldn’t miss that in their classes. There were relatively few kids of color. Right? That, you know, the question then was, do you, levels, do you get rid of levels? Do you, I mean, how do you really work at it? This is work which is going on today, right now.
Kamla Lewis [00:47:00] Absolutley. And will probably continue.
Steve Minter [00:47:03] And, you know, I was involved as co-chair with Bob Rossen and Earl Leikin, the mayor, in working on some of this.
Kamla Lewis [00:47:17] So you were also a pioneer in neighborhood revitalization in your later work at the foundation, as you mentioned. And you shared with us what Dolly learned from some of her early experiences in Moreland. How, if at all, do you feel that your experiences influenced your thinking around neighborhood revitalization?
Steve Minter [00:47:40] Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that commitment to social, economic integration and inclusion, the issues of, of race and housing and neighborhoods. Being in Moreland, being in Ludlow, being on the east side of Cleveland, if you will. One of the things that I, for me is a social justice issue is and was what a difference it can make in your life. Living on East 154th street or living on Menlo Road.
Kamla Lewis [00:48:39] One street difference.
Steve Minter [00:48:40] One street difference.
Kamla Lewis [00:48:42] A fence of a difference.
Steve Minter [00:48:44] In terms of opportunities, perhaps. The potential for life outcomes and career. That was a driving, driving force and sort of motivation for me. And my engagement in education, I mean, in social work and so forth. But in education and ultimately, I mean, in being engaged in the Shaker schools and around integration and knowing the difference between and understanding why we made a decision six years, or five years prior to Michelle going to school, we made a decision about education and where we were going to live and a choice around schools. You know, I went on to be the undersecretary of the United States Department of Education. It’s those early things, lessons that living sort of say, this is really important. Every family and child ought to be able to experience and have a high quality, demanding education. That’s what I’ve tried to work for in neighborhoods, too.
Kamla Lewis [00:50:20] So we’ve covered quite a bit of ground already. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we wind up?
Steve Minter [00:50:30] No, you’re getting me rumbled up here.
Kamla Lewis [00:50:34] That is my goal.
Steve Minter [00:50:39] So, I mean, I think in terms of the variety of programs, I have great deal of respect for. And obviously, I continue to live in Shaker, and my. The Minter family, four of the eight children, adult children and grandchildren live in Shaker Heights, and my daughter and three grandchildren and her husband live in Shaker Heights. And that’s been by design and been very deliberate.
Kamla Lewis [00:51:19] Very deliberate, and we are very fortunate to have all of you. Thank you very much, Mr. Minter, for your time.
Steve Minter [00:51:26] Thank you.
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