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The Ohio Baptist General Association (OBGA) acquired 48 Parkwood Avenue in 1954 and used the former residence as its headquarters until 1996. Formed in 1896, the Association includes more than forty African American churches, many formed prior to the Civil War. Baptist general associations nationwide became an important voice during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as they addressed the wrongs of racial violence and discrimination in business, housing, and education. The OGBA fought for the ideals of justice and freedom with its strongly-held Baptist beliefs. “America with her wealth as a great nation,“ OGBA President Wilber A. Page declared in 1957, “is well able to face integration and give a democracy to all her citizens.” The former Association Headquarters was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on December 3, 2020.
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Stonewall Union (later Stonewall Columbus) was founded in 1981 by central Ohio LGBTQ+ activists. The organization focused on activism on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as providing physical spaces where that community could prosper. Deriving its name from the 1969 Stonewall Uprisings in New York City, Stonewall Union formed with the goals of bringing legislative reform, community building, and education to Columbus for the benefit of the LGBTQ+ community. Stonewall Union organized its first Pride March, on June 26, 1982, with over 500 participants. Additionally, Stonewall Union launched such community-building initiatives as the 1982 television program Gay Pride Report and the 1984 Lavender Listings business guide. In 1985, Stonewall Union moved into its first building. (Continued on other side)
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Here in 1963 congregants of Beth Israel-The West Temple, led by Louis Rosenblum, Herb Caron, and Rabbi Daniel Litt, founded the Cleveland Committee (later Council) on Soviet Anti-Semitism, the first American organization created to advocate for freedom for Soviet Jews. In 1970 this work led to the formation of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) under the leadership of Louis Rosenblum. The UCSJ, whose national office was located here 1970-1973, became the largest independent Soviet Jewry organization in the world. By the turn of the 21st century, the efforts begun here helped 1.6 million Jews leave the former Soviet Union. (Continued on other side)
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Cory United Methodist Church is an icon of Cleveland’s civil rights movement. As one of the city’s largest Black-owned churches during the 1960s, Cory hosted events for national, local, and grassroots organizations such as the Fair Employment Practices Committee, NAACP Cleveland Branch, Cleveland Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and United Freedom Movement. Over 75 years later, Cory UMC continues its long tradition of community programming that promotes equity and education. Originally designed by architect Albert F. Janowitz to house the Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo congregation, the building served as the Cleveland Jewish Center from 1922 to 1945. The Methodist congregation purchased it in 1946. Since 1961, the building has also been home to the Glenville Recreation Center. Cory UMC was designated as a local landmark by the Cleveland Landmarks Commission in 2012.
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Civil unrest rocked the Hough neighborhood for five nights during the summer of 1966.When the white owners of the Seventy-Niners Cafe refused to serve a Black customer a glass of water, a sign bearing a racial epithet subsequently appeared outside the bar. Decades of institutionalized racial practices that had caused Hough’s substandard and overcrowded housing, high unemployment, economic exploitation, lack of access to quality education, and systemic police harassment sparked an urban uprising in response on July 18. Angry crowds gathered outside the bar only to be confronted by the owners brandishing firearms. When the police belatedly responded, tensions escalated into targeted firebombing, looting, and vandalism. On Tuesday night, July 19, Cleveland’s Mayor Ralph Locher requested that the Ohio National Guard restore order. (Continued on other side)
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A group of Jewish immigrants fleeing Germany after Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) settled in Cleveland in 1940. The refugees formed a congregation and named it Shaarey Tikvah, “Gates of Hope” in Hebrew. They met in private homes until obtaining premises above the Tasty Shop Bakery on Euclid Avenue. As the congregation thrived it moved and merged several times before settling in Beachwood in 1986. Rabbi Jacob Shtull, Shaarey Tikvah’s first English-speaking Rabbi, sought to honor the founders by establishing Cleveland’s annual Kristallnacht commemoration. “Face to Face,” a Holocaust education program that shares the refugee story with local schools, began in 1994. Today, this “Small Shul. Large Community” remains a tribute to the German immigrants that found their way to Cleveland to unite in friendship and faith.
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The building at 1380 E. 6th Street, designed by Walker and Weeks, served as the Cleveland Board of Education 1931-2013. During the 1950s and 1960s, the segregation of Cleveland Public Schools was the center of the city’s civil rights movement. Parents, like Daisy Craggett and Eddie Gill, protested relay classes and intact busing. The United Freedom Movement, a coalition of 50 civic, religious, and parent organizations, initiated demonstrations, sit-ins, and pickets, to galvanize the fight for education equality. On April 7, 1964, Reverend Bruce Klunder, vice president of Cleveland’s Congress of Racial Equality, was accidentally killed by a bulldozer at the future Stephen E. Howe Elementary School while he lay in a construction ditch to protest school re-segregation. His death ignited an April 20 boycott in which 85-95% of Cleveland’s Black students participated. (Continued on other side)
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The Bay Village Chapter of the League of Women Voters was established in Spring 1948, with Dorothy M. Austin as president. The goal of the chapter was to ensure all citizens of Bay Village had the information they needed to cast an educated vote. They first met in the Cahoon family homestead, which then served as the city library and later as Rose Hill Museum. Gladys H. Luecke led the group on its first study, a city charter form of government for the village. Voters approved the charter on April 12, 1949, and the Village of Bay officially became the “City of Bay Village” in 1951. Since its founding, the Bay Village Chapter has made an educated voter its first priority by supporting citizen participation in government and influencing public policy through education and advocacy.