Browse Interviews

Charles V. Williams is a longtime advocate for the Black Deaf community at both the local, state, and national levels. In this second of two interviews, he discusses his advocacy in the Black Deaf community from the 1970s to the present, including volunteering at the Cleveland Society for the Blind, his efforts for greater inclusivity in the provisions of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, getting closed captioning added for the 1980 Democratic National Convention, creating an interpreter training…

Robert Madison was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923. A graduate of Case Western Reserve University and Harvard, he was the first black man to become a registered architect in Ohio. He opened his firm in Cleveland in 1954 and has worked on major projects locally and worldwide. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.

In this 2006 interview, 58 year old Cleveland native Buck Harris, a prominent member of Cleveland's gay community for decades, talks about his life in Cleveland as a gay man and his residency near West 52nd Street and Bridge Avenue in an area of the west side of Cleveland known as Ohio City Heights. Mr. Harris discusses his experience of "coming out" in the late 1970s; some of the prominent gay bars in Cleveland in the 1970s, including, Twiggy's; and his development and activities as an activist…

Isaac Haggins was born in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1930. He grew up in Tennessee and Asbury Park, New Jersey. After graduating from West Virginia State College in 1949, Haggins moved to Cleveland to join his brother in the Glenville neighborhood in 1953. In 1956 he bought his first home near Rockefeller Park. After a stint selling shoes, he entered the real estate business, opening an office in Glenville and later in Union-Miles. In 1968 he was the first black real estate broker to open an…

Peter Van Dijk has worked as an architect in Cleveland since arriving in the city in 1961. In this 2006 interview, he talks about some of the architectural renovation projects on which he has worked, including the Huntington Bank restoration and his work in preserving the theaters at Playhouse Square. Van Dijk shares his general thoughts on Cleveland's architecture and development, lamenting the city's development mistakes and stressing that Cleveland's many assets have been misused. Missed…

This is a follow-up interview to Dr. Goldberg’s initial interview. He discusses in detail his experience in prison as a result of refusing his draft induction physical. He relates the prison conditions, various jobs, and means of keeping busy. While at Danbury prison he helped organize a black history course and a series of guest speakers from local universities, including Columbia. He spent time in three different federal prisons over the course of his 19 month prison sentence. Dr. Goldberg…