Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Myra White talks about moving into the Ludlow neighborhood of Shaker Heights specifically because it was integrated. She became involved in housing integration in Shaker Heights, worked for the city, and eventually became a realtor. White talks about housing in Shaker from the sixties to present day. She talks about the difference between neighborhoods, the challenges within each, and various successes.
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Interviewee
White, Myra (915007)
Interviewer
Smith, Kelsey (Interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-27-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
26 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Myra White Interview, 27 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/512
Transcript
Kelsey Smith [00:00:00] Hello. I’m going to have you say your name.
Myra White [00:00:02] Myra white.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:05] Today is June 27, 2012. Alright, so where were you born?
Myra White [00:00:14] Well, I was born in Toronto. I went to University of Toronto for undergrad and graduate school in library science. I moved to Cleveland in 1963 because my husband, my former husband, wanted to do a postdoc at Case Western Reserve in pharmacology. He is a physician. So that brought us to Cleveland in 1963.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:41] Did you hold a job?
Myra White [00:00:43] I did. I worked at the Coventry Library of the Cleveland Heights University Heights Library System. And then I got pregnant with my first child. And I know it’s hard for you to believe, but in 1964, you weren’t allowed to work with children if you looked pregnant. So he was- I know. Isn’t that weird? He was born in August, and I had to step down from my library position in May of 1964. And I did work on and off in library work and special library work thereafter. But in 1964, we saw a little classified ad in the. I think it was in the Plain Dealer, and it said, if you are interested in living in an integrated neighborhood, a multicultural, multiracial neighborhood, please call this number. So we did. And it was a pro-integrative real estate housing program staffed totally by volunteers at that time that encouraged Caucasian families to move into the integrating sections of Shaker Heights. Because, frankly, the real estate agents weren’t doing that in 1964. Once they knew that a neighborhood was beginning to integrate, they essentially stopped bringing Caucasian families to look at houses in that neighborhood. So the Ludlow Community Association had volunteers that showed houses and marketed houses. And if you found one you wanted to buy, they hooked you up with an attorney and you purchased the home. And that’s exactly what we did. We purchased our first home in Ludlow in 1964. 3166 Ashwood Road is city of Cleveland, Shaker schools. And we bought a home that had been built by one of the very first African American families to come into into that section of Shaker or any section of Shaker, Dr. Ted and Beverly Mason. And what we found out after the fact in our naivete, was that for a white family to buy a home from a black family was considered really radical and controversial, which came as a complete shock to us because we simply bought the house we liked in the neighborhood where we wanted to live. That offered us a lifestyle we were looking for, for our family.
Kelsey Smith [00:03:04] So how long did you live there?
Myra White [00:03:08] We lived in that house for four years. And then our family grew. We had three children between 1964 and 1967. And that was quite literally a starter starter house for a very small family. So we moved to a larger home in what was then the Sussex neighborhood of Shaker Heights. We lived there from 1968 to 1975. And then we bought another home, a larger home yet in Shaker Heights on Parkland Drive. And we lived there from 1975 to 19, I think 83, which was when I became single and finished raising my family in yet a fourth house in Shaker Heights. And then I’ve been a real estate agent now since 1976. And we tour new listings on Tuesdays. And I walked into a house on a Tuesday morning and said, oh, I like this, I think we’ll buy it. And so I moved to yet another house in Shaker Heights. So I’m now living in my fifth house in Shaker on Colby Road near Fairmont Circle. And I have actually lived there longer than I’ve ever lived in a home. Yeah, from 1994 ’til today.
Kelsey Smith [00:04:21] So how did you get into real estate?
Myra White [00:04:24] I started actually working as a volunteer for the city of Shaker Heights in a neighborhood racial stabilization program whose goal was the same as the Ludlow association, which was to encourage Caucasian families to move to integrating areas of Shaker where the real estate community would not normally have brought them, and to encourage Black families, African American families, to move to more white parts of Shaker where realtors would not have traditionally taken them. And I went to work very, very part time in a summer program in 1968. We were on Chagrin Boulevard on the second floor, a little walk up, second floor. And the housing office grew. It was financed 50% by the city, 50% by the school board, became a very influential and effective department of the city. And I went to work for them in 1970, and I did that five years. It grew from a 10 hour a week job to about a 30 hour a week job. And at that point I realized I was either going to go to law school or I was going to get a real estate license. So I took my children out for dinner and I laid the choices out for them. And they voted 2 to 1 for a real estate license. So that’s what I did. And I’ve had a license since 1976. And I have always been based in one of the integrated communities. I have sold out of the Shaker Heights office, first of Smythe Kramer, which now is Howard Hanna. And then I went to manage the Cleveland Heights office of Smythe Kramer. I did that for 10 years. Then I came back to Shaker Heights, and I’ve been managing the Shaker Heights office of Howard Hanna for yet another 10 years. So I was in sales for 16 years and in management for 20 years. And I never, ever found that my pro integrative philosophy interfered with my ability to practice real estate and support my career.
Kelsey Smith [00:06:29] Can you talk about some of the challenges you faced in the ’60s and ’70s, integrating neighborhoods? Was there opposition?
Myra White [00:06:35] You know, that wasn’t something that I personally experienced. We moved to Cleveland. 1963 was a very tumultuous time for fair housing and for civil rights in this country. We were still teetering on the verge of literacy tests for voting. You know, all of the kids coming down from the North, the bus trips down from the North, voter registration drives, you know, people were killed, people were beaten up on marches. I think we were very. We were just drawn in. It was like a magnet to want to do something to fix what was broken. And I really believe that an integrated living and integrated schools, making what was uncommon, common, making what was extraordinary, ordinary, is the solution to a lot of what’s going on in this country. But it was much more tumultuous back in the ’60s. You know, we were living on Ashwood Road, which is really just a continuation of East 140th during the Hough riots and the Glenville riots. And I remember, you know, putting wet blankets in our bathtub in case something was. It was a very difficult time and you really had to care about what you were doing. And there was a lot of resistance to it. I remember trying to refer an African American buyer to a woman who was in real estate when I was still in the housing office. And she said, well, I would show them on Scottsdale, but I wouldn’t show them in any of the interior streets. And that was the kind of, you know. Oh, I don’t know, what do you want to call it? Benign segregation. It’s not that she wouldn’t work with them, but she would only work with them in a limited capacity. And, you know, that was the kind of sort of passive resistance that we kept running into. But I do think that God knows things aren’t perfect, but we’ve evolved to a great degree. And the resistance to integrated housing, to bringing African American families into traditionally all white neighborhoods and for white families to by integrated neighborhoods, is no longer controversial. With a great number of people, especially the generation Yers and Xers, I don’t think they understand what the discussion is at all. You know, I’ve watched my children who are in their 40s and their children who are teenagers at Shaker. And they don’t think a whole lot about issues that were very controversial at one time. They don’t think a whole lot about the fact that their school is integrated. And that’s unusual. And I don’t think to think a whole lot about either interracial dating or same sex dating. I think this stuff has become banal, almost banal. At least in our wonderful community, which was once very controversial.
Kelsey Smith [00:09:49] What kind of community support did you have for, as you were trying to integrate neighborhoods?
Myra White [00:09:51] Well, you know, Shaker really threw itself behind this in an extremely positive way. The leadership of Shaker Heights in the late ’60s and early ’70s was unbelievably progressive. I mean, they invested tax dollars in these pro-integrative housing programs. I think that this was modeled after a program in Chicago in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area. And we had people here with ties to the pro-integrative neighborhood people in Chicago. And this was the city of Chicago, around the University of Chicago. These were not suburbs of Chicago. And the city took a program like they had in Hyde Park-Kenwood, and they funded it. It was a joint effort between the school board and city council. They hired a director to run the program. She was able to hire a full staff and support staff. And I have to give the city of Shaker Heights an enormous amount of credit for how far sighted and progressive it was.
Kelsey Smith [00:11:06] How was the school board? Do you know why they decided to have the school board involved?
Myra White [00:11:12] Because I think that people saw there was a lot of talk at that time about desegregation. I don’t remember of the schools. I don’t remember when Judge Batista’s decision came down to start busing within the city of Cleveland, because it was Brown versus the board of Education, silly me, that started the move towards non voluntary busing. Because there was the belief that there was an educational value in children not being in segregated schools. And I think that the Shaker school board was determined to have its to support the fact that voluntary integration of white families living in integrated neighborhoods and non white families living in what had been all white neighborhoods would automatically create integrated schools. And that would have a positive educational benefit for all of the children. And that’s why the school board cooperated with the city in just really a remarkable way. When we had written materials in the housing office to give to families that we worked with, there was stuff on the schools as well as stuff on the city. It was just a remarkably cooperative effort.
Kelsey Smith [00:12:39] Was Shaker- I guess was Shaker at that time very different from what was going on around Shaker as far as housing?
Myra White [00:12:49] Well, Shaker is a very unique community. I don’t have to say this in this interview because I’m sure, you know, it’s a planned community. In each neighborhood represented a different, very different socioeconomic group. I mean, there was a little corner of the community that was supported by Moreland Elementary School, which is where we’re sitting now. It’s the main library. That was always the point of entry for immigrant families. And then for black families, it was the lowest price point. I think at one point, many years ago, the Moreland Elementary School area was all Jewish, as people came from Eastern Europe. I think at one point there were a lot of Italian families living in Moreland. This really predates me, but it rather quickly became a largely African American neighborhood. And that was our entry point for immigrants and for African American families. And then there were middle class areas, and then there were very wealthy areas. And it was kind of funny because each area even got its own kind of tree on the tree lawn. So that was kind of unique. I don’t think there were other communities, at least not in Northeast Ohio, that were so deliberately planned to represent different socioeconomic groups. So, you know, each little community posed a different kind of challenge for housing, for who we were going to attract and how we were going to market the community and the neighborhoods to attend to a different demographic. I think that Shaker has always attracted a very highly educated and sophisticated buyer, largely, not completely. So I think that when Shaker Heights started to integrate, it was not greeted with the same horror or fear as it was in many other communities. Yes, there were people who left. Yes, there were people who were not comfortable with it, but there were a significant number of people who welcomed it or didn’t think it was a big deal. And I believe that and other reasons is why Shaker Heights continues all these years later, 50 years later, to be a successfully integrated community. I mean, it’s got areas about it that are not so successful. It still has areas that are primarily African American and areas that are primarily Caucasian or Caucasian and Asian. And, you know, I kind of think that’s too bad, But I think they’ve done a very good job with the schools, cutting down the number of elementary schools. I think that there is a certain amount of racial equity in all the schools so that black kids are always exposed to white kids and white kids are always exposed to nonwhite kids. And I think that’s a really positive thing. As our children move up into adulthood and into life. Shaker kids are comfortable with a plurality, a multiplicity of races, ethnic groups and religious groups that kids coming out of more homogeneous neighborhoods are not comfortable with. And that comes from, I think, the roots of who their parents were and that their parents either embraced or didn’t think that integration was a big deal, or they embraced it and moved in a positive way towards it.
Kelsey Smith [00:16:14] You said that, like, this area was the starting point, and then there were other middle-class and upper-class areas. Could you describe what kind of the areas that those were specifically or-?
Myra White [00:16:26] Well, there were nine elementary school districts in Shaker in those years, and each elementary school district, almost each one, represented a different socioeconomic group. I think that the Ludlow area was probably the first area to integrate, not the Moreland area. And that’s because part of Ludlow, Ludlow sits in the city of Cleveland, and part of it sits in Shaker proper. They all use the Shaker schools. But I’ve never heard anybody say this, but my guess is that Ludlow was the first point of integration into the Shaker schools because part of it sits in the city of Cleveland. And then I think that it grew into other areas. Probably Moreland came after that. And the Lomond area, which was planned to essentially have first time home buyer houses on smaller lots, single family houses, mixed with a lot of two family houses. And I think that just financially it was easier for families that were just beginning to climb the economic ladder of success in the United States. It was easier for them to buy into those areas because the houses were less expensive. You now obviously see African American families owning homes in all parts of Shaker, in the parts of Shaker that sell for 50,000, in the parts of Shaker that sell for 500,000 and $1 million. And nobody looks at it twice. I mean, as I said, the picture of housing integration in Shaker has become banal, ordinary, not remarkable. And there’s nothing nicer than the fact that it’s not remarkable that it’s something we can now take for granted. But yeah, the point of entry points of entry were probably the less expensive neighborhoods because African American families just, you know, where they were behind in climbing the economic ladder.
Kelsey Smith [00:18:29] I remember I’ve heard that at one time, no for sale signs were allowed here.
Myra White [00:18:36] Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, both integrating cities, were so afraid of blockbusting and they were so afraid of the appearance that there were four or six or eight houses for sale on one block. And that people would interpret it as white flight, that they had a for sale sign band and this. Oh, my goodness, I don’t even remember when it was over. Probably in the mid-’90s. Finally they realized that it was probably unconstitutional, yet limited freedom of speech. And it also got to a point where they ended the for sale sign ban. That people didn’t automatically assume that houses were for sale because of white flight. Again, the whole- What’s the word I’m looking for? The whole assumption about why people would move had shifted from, oh, they must be moving because the neighborhood is integrating to, well, they must be moving because they can afford to buy a larger house or they’ve been transferred out of town or they’re ready to segue into a condominium lifestyle. So the assumption as to why for sale signs have gone up has shifted. We’re no longer- I don’t think white flight is a term that people of your generation are familiar with at all. No. Right, right.
Kelsey Smith [00:20:06] But growing up, I wouldn’t have really understood.
Myra White [00:20:09] Right.
Kelsey Smith [00:20:17] You know, I don’t really have any more questions. You answered a lot of my questions.
Myra White [00:20:20] That I had before you could ask them. Yeah, I think this is a wonderful place to live. When my kids went to college, they were so familiar with an interracial lifestyle that they had a degree of comfort at big universities that kids coming out of smaller, all white schools did not have. My oldest Sunstar University of Vermont in 19, the fall of ’82. And I believe either that year or the following year, he had a Nigerian roommate and he never even thought about it. But I think that it was considered to be sort of radical by a lot of the other freshmen or sophomores at University of Vermont because they were accustomed to a segregated lifestyle. And my kids, we’re just comfortable in a mixed race environment. My youngest son, who went to work as a fair housing attorney for HUD in Boston three years ago, moved to be an attorney with the EPA in D.C. and he’s much happier in Washington because it’s a much more multicultural, multiracial environment than Boston, which is probably still one of the most segregated cities in the country. So I’m pretty proud of the effect that living here has had on my kids and certainly my grandchildren who are in Shaker. I’m just inordinately proud of this city and what it has done. I feel, you know, so good about that, that I have spent the last. How many years from 1970 to 2012, oh my gosh, 42 years marketing, not houses, but a city and a lifestyle in which I so sincerely believe.
Kelsey Smith [00:22:22] So is your house right now. Do you live in an old house?
Myra White [00:22:26] House was built in the, in the ’50s. And when we talk about old houses and new houses in Shaker, we talk about prewar and postwar. Do you have any idea what war that would be?
Kelsey Smith [00:22:38] Well, I’m not sure which one.
Myra White [00:22:41] It’s the Second World War. We think of older homes as homes that were built before 1939 or 1940 and newer homes as homes that were built after 1945. So you know, when a buyer comes to a real estate agent and says, well, we’d like to live in Shaker Heights and we want a newer home, you know, we have to say to them, gosh, our idea of newer is that it has forced-air heat and was built after the Second World War. Is that your idea of newer? And it’s kind of, it’s kind of a surprise to people, but many of them choose it anyway.
Kelsey Smith [00:23:18] Are there, there aren’t many new new homes.
Myra White [00:23:22] We have a couple of scattered site housing newer houses. There are two or three right now in the Moreland area, I think on Pennington, a couple on Strathaven in the Lomond area. One or two other, three or four other scattered site newer builds, some that were custom built for people. There’s more than three or four, maybe a dozen, some that were custom built for homeowners and some that were put up in a partnership with the city to attract new families to Shaker and improve the tax base. We also have condominium developments that are newer. We’ve got one at Chagrin Avalon, which is apartment style condominium living. We’ve got one in the Lomond area right close to Warrensville in Chagrin called Sussex Court. We’ve got an even more luxurious one further west near Shaker Square called South Park Row. And the condominiums in there sell for between 2 and $500,000. And they are newer builds, but for families looking for a backyard and a front yard and their own single family fee simple home, there’s very, very little really new housing to choose from. Yeah, well, good.
Kelsey Smith [00:24:44] Did you ever own a prewar house?
Myra White [00:24:48] No, I lived, I grew up in pre warehouses in Toronto. But to me the older homes are. It’s like going to a museum. I admire them enormously, but I don’t think about myself as living in one of them any more than I would want to take a suit of armor home from a museum. But I just, I have amazing admiration for them and to see what people do to maintain their architectural integrity and yet make them livable for 2012 never fails to amaze me and impress me because it is a labor of love. It’s a real commitment.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:25] It is. My family has an old house in Chesterland.
Myra White [00:25:28] So it is a labor of love.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:33] Other than that, I don’t really have any other questions.
Myra White [00:25:36] Good.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:36] If there’s anything you wanted to add.
Myra White [00:25:39] No, I think we’ve really covered all of it.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:43] Yeah.
Myra White [00:25:44] Yeah.
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