The Ludlow neighborhood straddles the Cleveland/Shaker Heights boundary and, through an arrangement with the Cleveland School Board in 1912, became part of Shaker Heights School District. Although Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen's garden suburb of Shaker Heights used restrictive covenants to practice social exclusion, soon after the mid-20th century a number of African Americans began to move into Ludlow by purchasing delinquent Van Sweringen lots. John and Dorothy Pegg were not the first to purchase lots, but their property did become the focus of an attack by white neighbors on January 3, 1956, when a bomb destroyed their garage and blew a hole in their dining room wall. The Peggs banked at the Cleveland Trust, which refused to give them a mortgage at a time when African Americans found it incredibly difficult to secure the means to afford home ownership, but the Peggs were able to secure a mortgage from the black-owned Dunbar Life Insurance Company.

The roots of Dunbar Life Insurance lay in the business success of Herbert S. Chauncey, a prominent African American lawyer who attracted many of his friends to his idea of creating a savings and loan company. With the help of his friends, Chauncey was able to secure a state charter and opened the Empire Savings and Loan Company in 1919. Empire SLC was first located in the offices of 2316 East 55th Street and became the first banking venture in the black community. Before World War I, many black-owned businesses found it difficult to acquire a strong economic base among their own race, but the modest success allowed Chauncey to open another branch.

Empire began operating at a time when the ghetto in Cleveland was forming and a large migration of blacks from the southern states were pouring into the city. The 1910 African American population of 8,448 soared to 34,451 ten years later. By 1930, the population nearly doubled to 72,000. The Depression hit Empire SLC hard, and in January 1935 the firm had to file for bankruptcy. All of the money loaned out by Empire was on black homes. During the Depression, African Americans were hit the hardest, but many black homeowners were able to keep up payments in whole or in part to keep from defaulting.

Chauncey was one of the first who began helping blacks gain homes with mortgages and loans, but ultimately it was Melchisedech Clarence (M.C.) Clarke who further helped blacks in insurance matters. As the state insurance examiner in 1935, Clarke was assigned to investigate the fraternal insurance societies in Cleveland, including two that were founded by Chauncey. While investigating four Cleveland insurance companies, Clarke realized that these companies should be consolidated to reduce expenses and protect policy holders. This merger became known as the Dunbar Mutual Insurance Society, which combined the assets of those fraternal societies and reinsured their policy holders. Clarke became operating head of the organization and resigned from his position as state examiner.

Dunbar Mutual expanded in 1943 after Clarke convinced his associates at the company that providing home loans would give stockholders a larger profit on their investments as opposed to investing in government and municipal bonds. Dunbar Life Insurance Company became licensed as insurance company on April 11, 1945. Clarke had anticipated that the Midwest would continue to see industrial and economic growth after World War II and that this was the “most opportune time” to launch the company.

Clarke expressed a desire to help the housing crisis for blacks by “relieving much of the congestion in our urban cities.” During World War II, another migration brought Cleveland’s black population to 147,847 by 1950, and many of the original migrants who occupied the area west of East 55th Street began to move eastward from the original settlement, primarily into an area bounded on the east by East 105th Street, on the north by Euclid Avenue and Woodward Avenue on the south. A growing number also gravitated toward Glenville, which had been a largely Jewish neighborhood for a generation. In 1940 the African American population in Glenville was just 899, but by the end of the decade, the population increased to 22,060, or 24 percent of the total population. In the same years, the Jewish population decreased from 27,000 to 15,000 as many Jews moved to Cleveland Heights and other eastern suburbs. Black population influx was located almost entirely in western Glenville on the streets off East 105th Street just south of St. Clair Avenue, and by 1960 this area of Glenville was 90 percent black.

In 1948 Dunbar Life had invested more than $300,000 in first mortgage loans to more than 100 black families. By the end of 1950, Dunbar Life had over $7 million in total insurance force and a capital surplus of $198,760. This success had allowed Dunbar Life to open a new branch office in the Glenville area on January 3, 1952, where hundreds of the company’s policyholders resided. Dunbar Life passed the $1 million mark in total assets in 1952 and held over half their assets invested in first mortgage loans on black property valued at $578,195.24.

The year 1952 also saw Clarke and his Dunbar investors purchase the outstanding stock of Quincy Savings and Loan Company. Quincy became approved for FHA mortgage loans under provisions of the National Housing Act in 1954. Before this approval, Dunbar Life was the only black-operated financial institution making FHA insured loans to the African American community. With the approval of Quincy, this increased the capital available to blacks in Cleveland to purchase homes.

In 1956, at the age of 66, M. C. Clarke died at the Cleveland Clinic. Clarke would not live to see Dunbar Life merge with the third largest black insurance company in the country, Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company of Chicago, in 1958. The combined life insurance in force would total more than $140 million and combined assets exceeding $22 million. Quincy Savings and Loan would see incredible financial success as well. The company’s assets grew to more than $11 million by 1979. That year two Cleveland businessmen bought controlling interest of Quincy Savings and Loan and renamed it Cleveland Community Savings Company. By 1982, the company had liabilities that exceeded their assets, and in the following year Cleveland Community Savings was closed by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation.

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Since the establishment of the Cleveland Metroparks in 1917, many a sojourn in the wilderness has been highlighted by the warmth, flickering light, and crackles of a campfire. As recounted by founding co-director of Karamu House, Rowena Woodham Jelliffe, the impromptu exhibition was credited as the inspiration for the institution's acclaimed modern dance program: 



I… remember one night when youngsters who had been toasting marshmallows moved back in the meadow behind the circle where people were sitting, and did this very interesting, exciting dance in the dark – with their glowing sticks outlining what their hands and bodies were doing… After this one night… the thing that was said was "Tomorrow, let's meet on the plateau and do these same things and see what they look like in daylight."

The evenings spent around the fire at the annual Karamu House summer camp in Cleveland Metropolitan Park District's Brecksville Reservation provided camp-goers more than burnt treats and a chance to wield flaming swords.  As an extension of the settlement house, campers could partake in variety of educational classes including nature study, First Aid, sex education, music, crafts, and dramatic arts.  Days were spent building boats, swimming, hiking, learning camp songs, and identifying plants, animals and rocks. The camper's activities were supplemented with ample portions of food, exercise and rest. These excursions into nature embodied the missions of the Cleveland's settlement houses and Park Board. The natural world was believed to offer an environment that could stimulate minds and promote good health in urban dwellers, as well as inspire morality, hope, imagination and calmness. 



Health, calmness and hope were often in short supply for Clevelanders crowded into the confines of the city's ethnically and racially segregated neighborhoods.  The settlement house movement took hold in Cleveland at the turn of the century to address problems that accompanied  the rise of industry and urbanization. Progressive reformers worked within neighborhoods to provide educational and charitable resources to the community, and battled against substandard living and working conditions, poverty, and disease. By 1910, private philanthropic organizations financed ten settlement houses in Cleveland.



Social reformers were especially keen on transplanting city children into rural-esque environments as a means to promote physical and spiritual renewal. Romanticized ideals of nature were pitted as an antithesis to the city and its corruptive influence.  Goodrich Social Settlement, Hiram House, and the Salvation Army were among the many benevolent institutions with camps scattered around the outskirts of Cleveland in the early 1900s. 



The origins of the Karamu House and its summer camp reach back to this Progressive era social settlement movement. The Men's Club of the prosperous Second Presbyterian Church conceived the relief project in 1915. Located at E. 30th Street and Prospect Avenue, the church group wished to provide services to an adjacent neighborhood devoid of recreational and welfare organizations. Drawn to the socially progressive reputation of Oberlin College, the Men's Club presented alumnus Russell and Rowena Woodham Jelliffe the opportunity to develop and lead their relief effort.  The young couple had recently finished graduate school at the University of Chicago, where they performed field work at the Chicago Commons and Hull House social settlements.  Two homes were acquired near Central Avenue on East 38th Street; one served as the residence of the Jelliffes, and the other as a base for settlement operations.

This east-side community was undergoing a dramatic change at the time. German, Austrian and Jewish residents were moving away en-mass, succeeded by working class Slavic, Italian and African American settlers enticed by the temporary availability of war-time factory work. The demographic shift escalated just as the settlement house took root in the community. Following 1917, African Americans emigrants from the South flooded into the neighborhood. As one of the few refuges available to these settlers within an increasingly segregated city, overcrowding and poverty quickly followed. Multiple families commonly shared cramped living spaces, while unemployment, crime, discrimination, racial tension, and inadequate sanitation presented challenges to the area's newest residents.

Fashioned after similar Progressive era welfare agencies, the church-sponsored agency provided a variety of educational classes, social services and recreational actives to the surrounding community.  As the only integrated settlement house in Cleveland, it quickly became a bustling center of the neighborhood. The home hosted popular lawn fetes, a milk station, basketball and football games, and Friday night dances. Reading and game rooms were opened to residents, and instruction was provided in topics such as citizenship, cooking, shopping, and using street car services. As time passed, the Jelliffes veered from traditional settlement-style charitable actives and directed their efforts on providing educational and cultural opportunities to the community. Sponsorial ties to the Second Presbyterian Church were cut, and the Playhouse Settlement of the Neighborhood Association was incorporated in 1919.

This transition from a settlement house to a neighborhood association, and the creation of its summer camp, was facilitated by a change in the way relief was subsidized in Cleveland. Previously, most charitable institutions relied on the direct philanthropy of Cleveland's prominent citizenry. During the second decade of the 1900s, community fund drives garnered popular favor. These relief organizations aggregated donations, and disbursed funding to vetted charitable groups. The newly established Playhouse Settlement fell under the umbrella of relief efforts sponsored by the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, and was financially backed by contributions to its Community Fund. The organized model for charity both simplified and promoted relationships between Federation committees and civic agencies.

A long-standing collaboration between the Cleveland Welfare Federation and Cleveland Metropolitan Park Board began in 1923. Brought together by a shared belief that nature provided a necessary counter weight to urban ills, sections of newly acquired park grounds were opened to social organizations for camping, education and recreation. The Welfare Federation handled applications for permits, coordinated resources, evaluated staff, and monitored the safety of camp facilities.

The Jelliffes wasted no time in taking advantage of the new partnership. On June 25, Playhouse Settlement opened Chippewa Valley Camp in Brecksville Reservation along River Road and Chippewa Creek. Brecksville Reservation remained the vacation grounds of Playhouse Settlement — later renamed Karamu House — until the camp closed in 1947.

The rustic retreat presented thousands of children a chance to explore and study nature in the Cleveland Metroparks, and was one of only a few summer camps in the Cleveland area available to the city's growing African American population. Just as a moonlit campfire dance helped guide the trajectory of cultural programming at Karamu House, the collaboration between the Park Board and community agencies to open summer camps during the early 1920s blazed a path for promoting educational and recreational programming in the Cleveland Metropolitan Park District during the next half century.

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For a generation in the 1940s-60s, Pla-Mor Roller Rink provided a much-needed recreational venue for all ages on the eastern end of the Cedar-Central (Fairfax) neighborhood and for a time was the only Black-owned skating rink in Cleveland. More than a place to skate, it also attracted top-billed musical acts.

On land now owned by Case Western Reserve University, Pla-Mor's location on Cedar Avenue at East 107th Street was a converted bus garage named the Coliseum, which opened in 1940. Built by the same syndicate that operated the Arena on Euclid Avenue, this multipurpose venue was intended for conventions, concerts, boxing shows, basketball games, and rollerskating. In 1942, Elmer "Al" Collins took over the "dark cavern," painted its interior, and opened the well-lighted Pla-Mor Roller Rink. He hired a full-time skating instructor and an organist to provide music for skaters. Not only did Collins enable many youths to compete in the National Roller Rink Operators Association that he founded, he also intervened in the fight against juvenile delinquency in Cedar-Central. In 1948 he even persuaded a "roving gang" that harassed the neighborhood to reconstitute as the Royal Dutchmen, a supervised social and athletic club that pledged to model constructive play for younger adolescents.

Pla-Mor hosted an array of events. Following World War II, the Negro Business Alliance of Cleveland sponsored the "Exhibit of Progress" several years in a row at the facility, drawing as many as 70,000 people to view displays and demonstrations of successful black enterprises, and in the latter half of the 1950s the Call & Post newspaper held its annual Home and Food Show there. The Future Outlook League, a civil rights organization founded in the 1930s, along with Black social organizations such as Coronet, the Ghana Club, and Les Charmantes, held lavish cabaret parties at Pla-Mor in the 1950s. Along with exhibitions and parties, the Pla-Mor ballroom attracted big-name music acts in the 1950s-60s, including Wynonie Harris, Dinah Washington, Frankie Lymon, the Marvelettes, and even B. B. King. In the late 1950s, DJs like WJMO's Ken Hawkins also spun records for dance nights.

But the Pla-Mor was best known for skating, which ranged from children's lessons to teen nights to skating shows such as those by the Roller Vanities. Racial discrimination contributed to Pla-Mor's popularity in the Black community. Although forbidden by law, segregation was common in Cleveland at mid century. From time to time, Blacks reported difficulties at Skateland, another popular roller rink at Euclid Avenue and East 90th Street. These problems seem to have escalated in the 1950s, when the adjacent Hough neighborhood transformed from 4 to 74 percent African American in only a decade. As late as 1955, after an interracial group of youth from Boys Town, Nebraska, went to Pla-Mor after exclusion from an undisclosed East Side rink, a spokesman at Skateland denied knowledge of the incident but openly admitted that the rink tried to deny African American entry except to private parties held by church or school groups. Although Skateland more openly hosted black events by the late 1950s, the Pla-Mor remained essential in the Black community.

In 1965 the Pla-Mor underwent renovation, and took the new name University Party Center. Count Basie's orchestra belted out jazz tunes at the Go-Go Girls Big Cabaret Party in June of the following year. It turned out to be the last of the storied shows at the place many still called the Pla-Mor. Just over a month later, the Hough Uprising broke out on Cleveland's East Side. The University Party Center went up in flames and, according to the Call & Post, was reduced to "twisted lengths of burned steel." Amid the chaos, the Townes family, who lived across the street, attempted to flee the danger in their 1957 Ford. When they drove through a nearby National Guard roadblock, police fired into their windshield, striking 16-year-old Diana Townes, who lost an eye. Four months later, the family's home also burned to the ground.

Today the mention of the Pla-Mor evokes bittersweet remembrances--both happy recollections of good times spent skating or dancing and sorrow for the roller rink's tragic end. Fondness for the good times led a handful of investors to reopen the former Euclid Rollerdrome as the new Pla-Mor in 2009 at 22466 Shore Center Drive in suburban Euclid, promising to keep the memory of its namesake alive.

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The fight to desegregate schools in Cleveland in the post-World War II era led to a contentious and complicated debate in the city over the issues of race, freedom, and equality. Glenville's Stephen E. Howe Elementary School is central to the tale. On this site, in 1964, one man gave his life for his belief that all children should have equal access to a quality education.

Between 1950 and 1965, Cleveland's black population grew dramatically while the population of Cleveland as a whole decreased. This resulted in overcrowded schools on the city's predominantly black east side and under-enrollment in the predominantly white west side. By the early 1960s, black students were placed on waiting lists for kindergarten and subjected to half-day classes as white schools remained under-enrolled in full-day kindergarten. In response, parents formed the Relay Parents March to Fill Empty Classrooms and organized protests to challenge the inequities perpetuated by the School Board's policies.

School Board President Ralph McCallister agreed to bus some black children to under-enrolled schools in white areas, but to appease white voters his plan included stipulations that black students could not attend physical education classes, eat in the cafeteria, and could only use the bathroom once per day. As a result, African Americans looked to the Cleveland Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the United Freedom Movement (UFM) to take action and stand up to the school board.

When whites rioted in Little Italy in January 1964 to protest against black children being bused to schools in their neighborhood, it became clear that McCallister either would not or could not honor his September 1963 agreement to integrate the schools. The construction of new schools was seen as a less volatile alternative, especially as these schools would be built in black neighborhoods in order to maintain segregation in the district. The UFM demanded a stop to the construction of these new schools, arguing that any new schools should be built in racially mixed areas on the east side.

On April 6th, 1964, around 50 UFM protestors arrived at the construction site for the new Stephen E. Howe Elementary school, set to be built in a predominantly black area of the east side's Glenville neighborhood. On the following day, 27-year old Reverend Bruce Klunder - a founding member of the Cleveland CORE, father of two, and white - laid down behind a bulldozer as four protestors laid in front to prevent the construction from taking place. The operator, in his attempt to avoid the protestors in front, backed up the bulldozer without seeing Klunder, instantly crushing the reverend to death.

The following evening, over 2,000 people attended the memorial service for Klunder. Although these attempts to desegregate the schools were considered a failure and the new segregated schools were eventually built, Klunder's death helped to unify the black community to fight against injustice. The fight for equal schools continued, resulting in a 1976 federal court order to desegregate Cleveland's schools through the implementation of a comprehensive busing program.

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