Melvin Walker Interview, 25 February 2013

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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, people appreciated their mail and always remained pleasant toward him. Walker ended his career at a VA Hospital, retiring in 1990.

Participants: Walker, Melvin (interviewee) / Malone, Carol (interviewer)
Collection: Cedar Central
Institutional Repository: Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection

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Cedar Central

9 Interviews

The interviews in this series resulted from an initiative spearheaded by Campus District Inc. to document stories in conjunction with the planned closure of the high-rise building in the Cedar Estates housing project. Jane Addams High School students learned oral history techniques alongside CSU interviewers.

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