Evan Morse Interview, 23 September 2014

Dr. Evan Morse owns and operates the Warrensville Animal Center in Warrensville Hts., Ohio, which he opened in June 1972. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, from a young age Morse had a strong interest in animals of all types. He attended Maggie L. Walker High School in Richmond, the University of Virginia and went on to study veterinary medicine at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. Morse moved to Cleveland after graduation and became an associate of Dr. David Rickards whom he worked alongside for four years before beginning his own practice in 1972. He later was elected President of the Cleveland Academy of Veterinary Medicine. A lover of jazz music and fly-fishing, Morse has served as President of the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society and was a founding member and President of the Trout Club of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. When Morse arrived in Cleveland in 1968, he was the second African American veterinarian in the state of Ohio and has devoted considerable energy over the course of his career to investigating the issues of diversity and inclusion within the veterinary profession. Seeking to add some scholarship to this subject, Morse enrolled as a master's student in Diversity Management at Cleveland State University in 2006. Of particular interest in this interview is Morse's discussion of attending Tuskegee Institute during the 1960s. He describes marching to Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and relates the circumstances surrounding the murder of his Civil Rights activist friend, Sammy Younge, Jr. Also of note are Morse's involvements with the establishment of the Northeast Ohio Jazz Society as a viable arts organization in Cleveland, his fly-fishing background, and his experiences as a non-traditional student at Cleveland State.