Through the Ivory Curtain: African Americans in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, before the Fair Housing Movement

This article examines the largely neglected history of African American struggles to obtain housing in Cleveland Heights, a first-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, between 1900 and 1960, prior to the fair housing and managed integration campaigns that emerged thereafter. The article explores the experiences of black live-in servants, resident apartment building janitors, independent renters, and homeowners. It offers a rare look at the ways that domestic and custodial arrangements opened opportunities in housing and education, as well as the methods, calculations, risks, and rewards of working through white intermediaries to secure homeownership. It argues that the continued black presence laid a foundation for later advances beginning in the 1960s that made Cleveland Heights, like better-known Shaker Heights, a national model for suburban racial integration.

Introducción: Ronald N. Giere, un referente y maestro de la filosofía de la ciencia

Ronald N. Giere (1938-2020) nació en Cleveland, Ohio, Estados Unidos. Estudió física, doctorándose en Cornell University en Filosofía en 1968. En su larga carrera académica fue profesor en New York University y en University of Pittsburgh. Estuvo también en el Departamento de Historia y Filosofía de la Ciencia de Indiana University (Bloomington) y posteriormente en University of Minnesota. Pertenecía a la Asociación Estadounidense para el Avance de la Cien- cia, fue miembro del consejo editorial de la revista Philosophy of Science y antiguo presidente de la Philosophy of Science Association. Ha sido uno de los referentes de la filosofía de la ciencia de nuestra época, con un impacto muy importante a nivel internacional. El objetivo del monográfico en ArtefaCToS como homenaje a la figura de Ronald N. Giere es poner de manifiesto su pensamiento en las cuestiones claves que ha abordado la filosofía de la ciencia a lo largo de buena parte del siglo XX y que continúa siendo un punto de referencia para los retos que la filosofía tiene planteados actualmente. Vamos a señalar algunas de sus obras más significativas y sus ideas desarrolladas en las mismas.

The Concentrated Geography of Eviction

Preventing eviction is a tractable, efficient way to reduce homelessness. Doing so requires understanding the precise geography of eviction. Drawing on more than 660,000 eviction records across seventeen cities, this study finds the geography of evictions to be durable across time. Rather than occurring when the status quo is disrupted, through gentrification or other modes of neighborhood change, eviction is itself the status quo in some pockets of American cities. The study shows that a few buildings are responsible for an outsized share of cities’ eviction rates. Focusing on three cities—Cleveland, Ohio; Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona—it finds that the one hundred most-evicting parcels account for more than one in six evictions in Cleveland and two in five evictions in Fayetteville and Tucson. Policy-makers looking to prevent homelessness can use the diagnostic tools developed in this study to precisely target high-evicting neighborhoods and buildings.

Exploring a Social Identity Theory of Shared Narrative: Insights from Resident Stories of Police Contact in Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio

Narrative identity theorists have long held that individuals construct identities as a coherent tale of their past, present, and future selves. These life stories are structured along predictable scripts borrowed from cultural master narratives. Heretofore, legitimacy theorists have relied on social identity theory to explain legitimation processes. I propose integrating elements of narrative identity theory with social identity for a more complete legitimation theory. I analyze 92 in-depth interviews with individuals who encountered the police departments of Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio. Respondents’ narratives followed common narrative scripts, suggesting a shared master narrative guiding interpretations of police encounters. A significant proportion of the sample interpreted their views of the police from a group-based lens, while an equally significant proportion used alternative narratives. An integration of social identity, narrative identity, and current legitimacy theory holds promise for a more comprehensive model of legitimation and a more complete theory of self.

The Greater Cleveland Ethnographic Museum

Nothing lasts forever. Every organization has a lifespan, and at some point every organization’s lifespan reaches its end. Nevertheless, even extinct organizations can achieve useful afterlives and continue to serve as resources, so long as records of their work are maintained in analog or digital archival collections, and so long as the communities they served are still coherent and culturally vibrant. This essay tells the story of an extinct US public folklore non-profit organization, The Greater Cleveland Ethnographic Museum (GCEM), a small but important organization that was active for just six years—from 1975 to 1981—in the multiethnic midwestern US city of Cleveland, Ohio. During its brief life, the CGEM was typical of US public folklore organizations of the period: small and underfunded, but with an extremely dedicated staff, many strong partnerships with ethnic communities and their leaders throughout the city, and supported by what was at the time a significant investment by government in folklore and traditional culture. Even though the GCEM has been gone for almost 40 years, the archival documentary records of its activities have been preserved through the continued dedication of its leaders and staff and the support of other cultural and educational organizations in the Cleveland area, and are still available as a community and a scholarly resource.

The Effect of Home Foreclosures on Child Maltreatment Rates: A Longitudinal Examination of Neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio

Foreclosure rates have been linked to increased levels of neighborhood stress. Neighborhood stressors can impact a number of interpersonal and familial dynamics, including child maltreatment. Despite this, little research has examined the relationship between neighborhood foreclosure rates and aggregate trends in child maltreatment. Using substantiated child maltreatment cases, foreclosure, and census data at the neighborhood level in Cleveland, Ohio we find that home foreclosures are a significant predictor of neighborhood rates of child maltreatment. Importantly, this effect is durable and is not impacted by the housing crisis. Furthermore, this is a direct effect and is not shaped by other neighborhood conditions like poverty, as found in prior research. From a policy perspective, this suggests that policy makers need to be cognizant of the effect of foreclosures on child maltreatment regardless of the historical and economic contexts of the neighborhood.

Black Urban Growers and the Land Question in Cleveland

Black gardeners and farmers in Cleveland, Ohio see themselves as stewards not only of the land they work and live on, but of a culture and historical past rooted in an agrarian relationship to land that is conceived of as a path to social, economic, political, and spiritual liberation. While community gardens (and most urban farms) do not create significant revenue for residents, they produce something outside of the traditional economy. This chapter explores the effects of development in other areas of the city on alternative land reuse, or how ancillary impacts of gentrification touch down to impact the efforts of urban farmers and gardeners to access land in a disinvested neighborhood with a seemingly endless supply of vacant lots.

Fixing Up after Tearing Down: The Impact of Demolitions on Residential Investment

Does the presence of deteriorating housing affect nearby property owner’s decision to maintain their units? Does demolishing these distressed houses increase nearby homeowner’s maintenance investment? In this paper, I examine these questions by testing whether exposure to targeted demolitions of abandoned and distressed housing affects changes in the external condition of nearby houses. Using two waves of a property inventory in Cleveland, Ohio, my models suggest that, compared with a control group of houses located near vacant housing, proximity to demolitions decreases the likelihood that a property’s condition deteriorated between 2015 and 2018 and increases the likelihood that it improved.