Overview:
Cleveland is a diverse city.
A prime destination for Blacks during the great migration, it held a place in the forefront of the civil rights movement during the 60’s.
In June 1967, NFL star Jim Brown called on almost a dozen well known athletes to meet in town to talk about the impact of Muhammad Ali’s abstention from the Vietnam War draft.
The lone politician in the meeting, Carl Stokes, garnered national headlines when Cleveland voters made him the first elected black mayor of a major American city.
Going back to the 1930s and ’40s, Cleveland’s sizable Black population took an active role in the community, working in a variety of fields, many owning their own businesses.
So why was it important for a big northern city like Cleveland, or any city in Northeast Ohio, to be part of a guide for Black travelers that helped them find lodging, gas stations and restaurants considered friendly to them, called the “Green Book”?
J. Mark Souther, a history professor at Cleveland State University, and his students are compiling the answer to that question and more. Souther created Green Book Cleveland out of his work at the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities, a department he chairs. With community collaborators such as ThirdSpace Action Lab and Cleveland Metroparks, the hope is that Green Book Cleveland will preserve the legacy of Northeast Ohio locations that appeared in the “Green Book” as well as some that didn’t.
Souther told Signal Cleveland that even though a 19th-century Ohio civil right statute prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations, it still happened frequently.
“Even high-profile businesses like the major downtown hotels often turned away Black patrons,” Souther said. “Which gives an indication of why Black travelers to Cleveland needed to know alternatives. It was certainly worse in much of the South, but that never meant that one was necessarily safe, let alone welcomed and treated in the same way as if they were White. “
Many Cleveland locations, including the storied Leo’s Casino and the Majestic Hotel, the largest Black-owned hotel between New York and Chicago, are no longer standing. But their stories are now part of a digital history.
Signal Akron’s Brittany Moseley was intrigued by The Green Book Cleveland project and its digital trail of Black history across Northeast Ohio.
This is what she learned.
The unassuming beige house at 645 Moon St. has a history that belies its modest appearance.
For several decades beginning in 1920, the home served as a boarding house, primarily for Black people. In 1940 and 1941, the property was featured in “The Negro Motorist Green Book” under the category “Tourist Homes.” It was listed as C. McQueen’s, in reference to the proprietor, Claude McQueen.
It’s unclear who stayed in the house — maybe locals in need of housing, or travelers passing through town. What is clear though, is what the home symbolized during a period when the ugly effects of segregation and racism were rampant: This was a safe space.
The house at 645 Moon Street was formerly C. McQueen’s, and is the only remaining Akron Green Book location. (Kassi Filkins / Signal Akron)
Created by Victor Hugo Green in 1936, the Green Book was a guide for Black Americans traveling the country. The book listed establishments — restaurants, gas stations and lodging such as C. McQueens — that were friendly to Black people in the Jim Crow era, a period when harassment, and sometimes violence, were common occurrences for Black people across the country, not just in the South.
“With the introduction of this guide in 1936, it has been our idea to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable,” Hugo wrote in the introduction to the 1949 edition.
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The first edition of the publication focused solely on New York City establishments, but as the guide’s popularity grew, so did its reach. It eventually became a guide for the entire country as well as parts of Canada, Mexico and Bermuda. The Green Book ceased publication after its 1966-1967 edition, two years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
As far as J. Mark Souther can tell, C. McQueen’s is one of the few remaining Akron sites from the Green Book. The other site that still stands is the former Goodwill’s Barber Shop at 422 Robert St.
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Souther, a history professor at Cleveland State University, is well suited to know this. In 2021, he created “Green Book Cleveland,” a restorative history project from the university’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities, which Souther also oversees as the director. The goal of the guide is simple yet ambitious: to preserve and share the history of Northeast Ohio locations that appeared in Hugo’s Green Book as well as some that didn’t.
Today, 320 sites are cataloged.
“It can be an inspiration once people know that here was a place that was really important in the Black community decades ago, and they know where that is, even if that place is gone,” Souther said.
“I think that once you know something like that, you feel differently about the space.”
More than 300 sites are documented in Northeast Ohio
Souther learned of the Green Book guides about a decade ago. His work focuses on, among other things, urban history and the history of tourism, so he began researching Cleveland sites that were featured in the publication. He wasn’t surprised to learn that very few Cleveland sites were still standing.
“I’m well aware of the impacts of various policies and practices in Black and brown neighborhoods historically — urban renewal to name just one of many — that claimed a lot of African American commercial districts and residential areas,” Souther said.
Still, he was curious about the history of these sites.
“Who were the people who operated these businesses that were listed? What can we learn about their histories?” he recalled.
The intersection of Mayfield Road and Euclid Ave. once home to ‘The Jazz Temple’ The Museum of Contemporary Art-Cleveland and Tony Tasset’s silver sculpture, ‘Judy’s Hand’ Credit: Helen Maynard / Signal Cleveland
He filed the idea away until 2020, when the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create PlacePress, a website plugin for WordPress.
Developed by Erin Bell, PlacePress allows users to create location-based content in WordPress, which is a content management system used to build websites. This prompted Souther to think about the Green Book again. He pitched the idea of creating a site dedicated to cataloging Cleveland locations that appeared in the original guides. It eventually expanded to sites around Northeast Ohio, plus a few outliers.
Some of the Cleveland sites, such as the Jazz Temple in Cleveland’s University Circle and the Cosmopolitan Club on Akron’s North Howard Street, have detailed descriptions, complete with photos. Others, like Camp Robin Hood in Geauga County and Bagnet, a restaurant in Youngstown, have only a few sentences with the hopeful promise of “additional information coming soon.” The research was compiled by students in Souther’s Introduction to Public History course and his graduate assistants, as well as by University of Akron students.
Souther chose to also include establishments that were not in the original guide because he wanted to provide a more complete picture of Black culture and life in Northeast Ohio during that time period, specifically in regards to recreation and leisure.
“Where did Blacks go if they wanted to go horseback riding or fishing or swimming or camping, all these sorts of things, or to the beach?” Souther said. “And so ‘Green Book Cleveland’ emerged as a project that used the Green Book as a starting point or a touchstone for talking more broadly about Black access to leisure, recreation and entertainment in that era.”
Theron Brown, accomplished jazz pianist and a professor at the University of Akron’s School of Music, plays piano during the ‘Round Howard Street history showcase Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at Blu Jazz+ in downtown Akron. (Kassi Filkins / Signal Akron)
University of Akron teams up with ‘Green Book Cleveland‘
The history of Black entertainment in Northeast Ohio is a subject that’s also close to Theron Brown’s heart. Besides being an accomplished jazz pianist and a professor at the University of Akron’s School of Music, Brown is also the founder of the annual Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival.
Brown began researching Akron’s jazz history during the pandemic.
“Once I started going down the rabbit hole,” he said, “[I] started just connecting with other people in the community, and Hillary just happened to be one of them.”
Brown is referring to Hillary Nunn, an English professor at the University of Akron. They were introduced through Arrye Rosser, an interpretive and education specialist at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Rosser invited Nunn to a meeting to discuss the park’s role in downtown Akron after coming across a walking tour created by students in Nunn’s fall 2019 class, “Roundabout Akron.”
This web of connections plays a large role in the success of the Northeast Ohio guide. Since its launch, the project has collaborated with Cuyahoga Valley National Park, University of Akron, Summit Metro Parks, Ohio & Erie Canalway National Heritage Area, Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Akron Zoo, among others, to gather research and oral histories.
This spring, Brown and Nunn teamed up to teach “‘Round Howard Street.” The class focused on the music scene of Howard Street, once a predominantly Black neighborhood in Akron that was all but destroyed when construction on the Innerbelt began in 1970.
Students present their research to attendees during the ‘Round Howard Street history showcase Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at Blu Jazz+ in downtown Akron. (Kassi Filkins / Signal Akron)
It was the second University of Akron class tied to “Green Book Cleveland.” Last fall, students in Gregory Wilson’s “Graduate Seminar in U.S. History” focused on researching sites on Green Book Cleveland. His class completed about 40 entries.
“I think in terms of what they found was, first of all, just realizing the extent of Black Akron in terms of what was here: the number of houses, the businesses, the restaurants, all of those things,” Wilson said. “Realizing that there’s this whole experience, this whole set of lives being lived in the city that aren’t necessarily there for us to see anymore because a lot of it has been destroyed.”
Brown and Nunn, with the help of their students, wanted to share the stories of Howard Street that were also lost. The 13 students in the class researched sites on “Green Book Cleveland” and added or revisited 16 entries, including the Cosmopolitan Club, Dot’s Record Shop, Hi-Hat Cafe.
“This is a story about a thriving culture that had been damaged by the city, and that still has important remnants that are part of the culture and known to people,” Nunn said. “But the question of, what was the full extent of Howard Street, the street’s impact, that’s the thing people don’t necessarily know.”
Brown said learning about a period of Akron’s history that is unknown to many can create a sense of civic pride among residents.
“That type of culture, if we’re able to highlight that for the next generation, then they have a pride, a reason to want to play, to want to stay here, to want to give back to their community,” he said. “They feel like they’re a part of a bigger legacy, a bigger picture. I wish I had that when I first came here.”
Classes shine light on little-known Black history in Akron
Some of the students in Nunn and Brown’s class, as well as some from Wilson’s, were unaware of the Green Book and this time period of Akron’s history.
Avery Bishop, a senior English major, grew up in Akron. He learned about Akron’s history as the Rubber City, but he never learned about Howard Street or the rest of the area the Innerbelt dismantled until enrolling in Nunn and Brown’s class.
“I think our generation, we were just kind of born into this certain spot in Akron. We just kind of accepted it without really revisiting it, if that makes any sense,” Bishop said.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Hannah Kemp-Severance, a graduate student studying history.
“The only thing I knew about the Green Book, I’m sad to say, was that I knew it was a movie,” she said. “And so I knew the basic background of it from having seen those movie ads and stuff, but I didn’t know anything else.”
The students’ knowledge of Akron’s Black history has increased tenfold, thanks to their extensive class research. They spoke of falling down research rabbit holes, digging through old editions of the Akron Beacon Journal and the Call & Post, a Black newspaper based in Cleveland, and scouring the 1940 “Akron Negro Directory” and Shirla McClain’s landmark dissertation, “The Contributions of Blacks in Akron: 1825-1975.”
Rose Vance-Grom took Wilson’s class last fall, as well as Brown and Nunn’s class this past spring. She researched six sites, including Matthews Hotel and Brady Lake. At times, Vance-Grom’s research led her to larger questions about Akron’s history. She recounted one article she came across from The Ohio Informer that talked about “Operation North Howard Street” and the “Gestapo-like fashion” the police “pour down on Howard street.”
“This is 1955, so this is well before any of the Innerbelt and any of that happened,” she said. “But even at that point, they’re talking about all these constant police raids and all these issues, and then, 10, 15 years later, the Innerbelt comes through and effectively wipes it off the map.”
She continued, “It’s hard to piece together how much of this was intentional, if there [was] a conspiracy here … Akron isn’t the only place something like this happened, to have a highway come through and completely obliterate a community. That’s not a unique-to-Akron problem, but still, to see it here in our own communities. Was there a concerted effort? Did it just happen? That was, for me in my research, a big part of trying to piece together that aspect of things.”
Olivia Kurylo (center) talks with Professor Hillary Nunn (left) during the ‘Round Howard Street history showcase Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at Blu Jazz+ in downtown Akron. (Kassi Filkins / Signal Akron)
For Greer Brightbill, discovering this history and being able to share it with a wider audience is the reward from all her work in Nunn and Brown’s class.
“I think the thing that has really just driven me the most this whole project has been the fact that there is so much more information than we will literally ever know,” she said. “It was just gone. And it wasn’t gone gone, but it was just not discussed, not present, not available, and now … it is available. We just have to poke around and dig it up a little bit. That’s been absolutely fascinating.”
For Kemp-Severance and Vance-Grom, their work highlights a growing trend in the history field to focus on underrepresented stories.
“This really puts a focus on, there are other histories besides the dominant history, and this helps us make available those resources to people, which is really really important,” Kemp-Severance said.
“I’ve always preferred more of the bottom up history. The top down, rich, white man history has never appealed to me,” Vance-Grom said. “It’s boring. We’ve done it. I’m excited to see … this turn happening in the history world of paying more attention to these underrepresented communities and the bottom up history. It’s encouraging to see. It’s important history.”
The future of ‘Green Book Cleveland‘
Looking ahead, Souther and his team are focused on connecting with more local groups and gathering oral histories from people who have memories of the sites listed on “Green Book Cleveland,” all while getting the project in front of as many eyes as possible.
J. Mark Souther, a history professor at Cleveland State University, created “Green Book Cleveland,” a restorative history project from the university’s Center for Public History + Digital Humanities.
“What we’re really hoping to do is just to continue shining a light on this history and to invite as many people in the conversation as we can,” Souther said, adding that he’d like to see more public spaces honoring Black history in Northeast Ohio.
“We want to see more green space in the region that is welcoming and that African Americans can see their history in. It may not be in the places that were lost. … We’re probably not going to recreate North Howard Street as it was. That is not going to happen. We have, I think, a role to play and things to say about what the future city can look like.”
For Souther, when he looks at Cleveland today, he sees the stories and history of what was once there. And now he wants others to see those too.
“When I go by a place, in my mind’s eye, I see those Green Book locations now. They inscribe that history in the present day city in my mind. If that’s powerful for me, I feel like this is something that other people can find powerful too, and empowering,” he said.
He added, “Because once those stories are known, what are you going to do with them?”
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