The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Cleveland regional oral history collection

Repository: Cleveland State University. Michael Schwartz Library. Digital Resource Commons

Collection Description (CRHP): The Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection is administered by the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities and includes a number of series. A series particularly useful in terms of civil rights material is the University Circle Inc. Interviews; a number of artists interviewed for the Cleveland Artists Foundation African American Artists series also comment at length on art in the context of black freedom struggles. Other relevant interviews may be found in Cultural Gardens Series One; the AIA Cleveland series; and the MidTown Cleveland Series.

Interviewees address topics that include changing racial demographics in Cleveland neighborhoods, race relations, the Hough and Glenville riots, black nationalism, black businesses, Black Studies programs, race awareness in art, school integration, African American artists and architects, and general social conditions at mid century.

New interviews will continue to be posted to the site, including material recorded by Dana Aritonovich as part of her master's thesis on the role of rock-and-roll music on race relations and protest movements. She interviewed musicians, music consumers, and music industry professionals, including Bill Spoon, Charm Warren-Celestine, George Hendricks, Jamilah Zand, Jean Cotton, Joan Orosz and James Orosz, John Tate, John Wilson, Linda Shisila, Lou Ragland, Lynn Tolliver Jr., Mike Olszewski, and Sheila Blecman.

Collection Description (Extant): The Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection consists of approximately 500 interviews collected since 2002. Students, faculty, public school teachers and researchers from throughout Northeast Ohio have contributed to the collection, which covers a breadth of topics in Cleveland and regional history.

Notable series in the collection include interviews on the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, the City Club of Cleveland, Midtown Cleveland, University Circle Incorporated, Cleveland Artists Foundation, and Cleveland members of the American Institute of Architects. Additional interviews cover a wide variety of topics in Cleveland history, including neighborhood and institutional history, and political, social, educational and environmental history.

Interviews have been used for a variety of educational purposes, including Teaching American History workshops, and have been excerpted extensively as primary source material for interactive public history kiosks along the Euclid Avenue Healthline rapid transit corridor. The majority of the collection emerged from the Euclid Corridor History Project, a collaborative effort of students and faculty at the Cleveland State University Department of History, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Cleveland Public Art, and Ideastream WCPN/WVIZ.

Collection URL: http://drc.csuohio.edu/handle/2374.CLSU/2

Date(s): 2002-

Digital Status: Born-digital

Extent: sound discs (CD) digital 4 ¾ in, digital audio files (mp3, WAV)

Language: English

Interviewees: Larry Rivers, Al Bright, Valerie Coates, Robert Madison, George Dixon III, Malcolm Brown, Fred and Anna Marie Johnson, Emily Peck, Moe Brooker, John Grabowski, Lawrence Baker, Virgie Patton-Ezelle, Anthony Mahone, Abdul Qahar, Michaelangelo Lovelace, Robert Banks Jr., Harry Davis, Kevin Snipes, Andrew Gilham, John L. Moore, Cushmere Bell, Angelica Pozo, Anna Arnold, David Buttram, Johnny Coleman, Mark Howard, Kevin Everson, Miller Horns, Eugene Ross, Emma Ross

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Subjects:

African American architects
African American artists
African American businesspeople
African American musicians
African American police
African American veterans
African Americans--Civil rights--Ohio
African Americans--Ohio
African Americans--Social conditions
Black nationalism
Black Panther Party
Black power
Civil rights movements--Ohio
Civil rights--Press coverage
Ohio--Race relations
Race awareness in art
Riots--Ohio--Cleveland
Rock music
School integration--Ohio
Segregation--Ohio

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings