Black Ghetto of Cleveland, Ohio
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This research paper summarizes and evaluates Kenneth Kusmer's explanation of the factors which led to the development of a black ghetto in Cleveland, Ohio between 1870 and 1930. Kusmer offers a coherent explanation of why and how such a ghetto developed, basically because of economic and social factors. He also explores the dynamics of the black community in Cleveland and its changing patterns of leadership which helps explain why the black ghetto there took a somewhat different and less violent form than its counterparts in other major northern cities. He does a more superficial job in analyzing the attitudes and actions of whites in the area, a combination of liberal paternalism, indifference and in some quarters outright hostility to blacks, which were at least as important in determining the shape and nature of the black ghetto as were developments within the black community itself. Except for the Quakers in southern Ohio, whites in the state, including those in Cleveland, had discriminated against the tiny black community there prior to the 1850s through the enactment of Black (segregation) Laws. However, by the eve of the Civil War, Kusmer says that "much of northern Ohio became, in fact, a hotbed of abolitionism" (6). Because of "the growing sympathy of white Clevelanders (many of whom came from abolitionist New England) . . . for the plight of black Americans," Cleveland presented an environment which was "much less oppressive for blacks than
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such as the AFL, to black members and the use by capitalists of blacks as strikebreakers. Opportunities for blacks in various professions remained, says Kusmer, "unusually good," resulting in a growing gap between the relatively prosperous black elite and the rest of the black community (81). White liberals helped finance college and cultural opportunities for the black elite.
While some black leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, stressed self-help and black solidarity, and others, such as W. E. B. Dubois, emphasized the struggle for civil rights, black leaders in Cleveland took "a basically conservative view of social change" (153). Even though discrimination against blacks rose, interracial violence was then relatively rare in Cleveland which "marked it as exceptional among northern cities" (64).
White liberals, especially during the period of the Progressive reforms of the early 1900s, largely concentrated on paternalistic efforts to clean up crime and corruption in the city and to uplift morally blacks, whom they regarded as inferior to whites.
1915-1930 The Ghetto Arrives
During the decade 1910-1920, the Great Migration of blacks, who came mostly from the Deep South, to the North lead to an increase in the black pop
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Some common words found in the essay are:
South North, According Kusmer, Beginnings Ghettoization, Cleveland Ohio, Booker Washington, Conclusion Kusmer, Republican Party, Civil War, Background Quakers, War Kusmer, black community, black ghetto, white immigrants, black population, black elite, northern cities, upper class blacks, power structure, public facilities, 160 migration, black leaders, black community cleveland, white power structure,
Approximate Word count = 1219
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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