Browse Interviews

Leo Martin grew up in Glenville, living on Empire as well as e. 120th, until he moved after high school. He met his wife through friends at Glenville High School, and they have been married for 42 years.

Minerva Primes was born on a farm in small town in Georgia. She was reared in the church. At an early age, Primes developed a nuanced understanding of racial discrimination and segregation. She was well-educated and became an advocate for education. She discusses her experience working as a teacher, including working with white colleagues, her teaching method, and how black and white students interacted.

Ann Nelson, who came to Cleveland in 1965, provides a fresh account of growing up on the East Side of Cleveland and her experiences as an African American woman in Cleveland. She describes changes in the urban environment over time and the racial divisions that have remained constant throughout. As a teacher, Nelson offers her opinions on the state of primary and secondary education in Ohio, as well as the lack of investment Cleveland puts into African American children.

Bruce Melville discusses his involvement with various civil rights organizations in the early 1960s. He comments extensively also on the Hough/Glenville areas, particularly pertaining to school segregation.

Donna McIntyre Whyte is a Cleveland native, born in 1948, and grew up in the Glenville neighborhood, and then later on to the Mt. Pleasant area. Her father taught her and her sister many domestic and handy skills such as how to work on cars. She lived close to her grandparents, close enough to walk their alone as a child. Her grandparents have interesting stories, and she appreciated them and spent a lot of time with them. She does not recall any distinct instances of segregation, but does…

Lucille Jackson was born in 1937 and grew up in Abbeville, Alabama. She tells a few stories about how she loved growing up in the rural area, and has a few sour memories of discrimination. One case she recalls was that of a black man who worked at the soda fountain who would re-use the white kids' cups and give them to the black kids. Once Jackson grew a bit older, she recognized he was doing this and told him she wanted a new cup just like everyone else. She went to a segregated, all-black…

Steve Bullock grew up in a large family in eastern North Carolina. His father was a sharecropper. Bullock attended Virginia Union University and recalls discrimination he faced while working in Virginia Beach the summer before enrolling at VUU. After college he entered the U.S. Army and was assigned to guard against communist infiltration at one of the many Nike missile sites along the Great Lakes. He shares many memories of different manifestations of Jim Crow in the South in the 1950s-60s,…

James L. Jones, aka "Buddy" Jones, was born in Union Springs, Alabama, in 1912, the son of a sharecropper. At age 7 the family moved to Matewan, West Virginia, for his father to work in the coalfields. Trouble soon developed when his father became involved in the UMWA's effort to organize coal miners in the region. Jones recalls being evicted from company housing and having to live in a tent. Company-hired "detectives" fired upon the tents at night in the buildup to the infamous Matewan Massacre…

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…

Elliot Gordon is interviewed for his thoughts on Cleveland and its development since he moved to the city for school in the 1980s. Poor sound quality.

Dargan Burns talks about coming to Cleveland to find work in the emerging field of Public Relations. He discusses his educational background and the desegregation of Boston University. Other topics include segregation, World War II and Civil Rights. He talks about Carl and Louis Stokes and meeting a young Martin Luther King, Jr. Other topics of interest include confronting segregation at Cleveland YMCA and “targeting” institutions in need of civil rights reform such as the Cleveland Clinic,…

In this 2006 interview, Carmel Whiting talks about growing up in Washington D.C. and segregation of the schools and businesses. She married Cleveland native Elmer Whiting and talks about their Shaker Heights residence, segregation, and racism. There is a great deal of discussion about Carl and Louis Stokes throughout the interview including their personal relationship and the Stoke’s legacy. Whiting talks about the impact of the Hough Riots and other topics such as civic education, local history…

Frank Kidd Jr., born in 1935, has lived in Cleveland his whole life. His parents were originally from the South (Alabama and Mississippi) but moved to Cleveland to seek refuge from harsh racism. Kidd lived most of his childhood with his grandmother, as his father served in the Army. He recalls many aspects of his childhood and teen years. Kidd is a strong advocate for the Cedar-Central area and aims to improve the neighborhood through his various influential programs. In 2010, the mayor awarded…

Melvin Walker was born in Cleveland in 1943 to parents from Mississippi. He moved to the Cedar-Central neighborhood in 1962. He shares memories of diving with friends at swimming pools around the city, black businesses including those in the "Gold Coast" of Glenville, and visits to Gleason's Musical Bar and Leo's Casino in his younger years. He shares that he worked 32 jobs and discusses some of them including being a postal worker. He comments that, even during the Hough uprising of 1966,…