Fifty years ago this month, a federal judge ordered Cleveland schools to desegregate.
But it took decades of activism by parents and others — and the loss of one activist's life — to get to that point.
The Rev. Bruce Klunder, a young white Cleveland Presbyterian minister, died in 1964 when protesting schools that remained de factor segregated in Cleveland, years after the Brown v. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision deemed segregation unconstitutional.
Member station Ideastream Public Media's education reporter, Conor Morris recently looked into Klunder's legacy and joined The Ohio Newsroom to discuss.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On the story of Bruce Klunder
"Bruce Klunder was killed while protesting school segregation in Cleveland in 1964. He was a part of a local civil rights organization chapter called CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality. They were protesting construction of schools on Cleveland's majority Black East Side. They argued that this would continue de facto school segregation. Klunder laid down in the path of a bulldozer on one school construction site and the driver backed over him and killed him. Authorities ruled it an accident and the family said that they accepted that conclusion. Although some activists who were there pushed on that conclusion."
"Still, it ignited massive outrage across the city and inspired a big sea change in Cleveland after it happened. There was a huge boycott of schools that followed and at least 60,000 Black students stayed home from school two weeks after it happened, instead electing to go to 'Freedom Schools' set up by local civil-rights activists."
On the role Klunder's death played in school desegregation in Cleveland
"Two historians I spoke to have argued that this was a big watershed moment that led to more direct attempts at change. People realized we've got to do more than protest and do sit-ins. Eventually, over the next decade, there was the election of Black leaders to positions of power: Mayor Carl Stokes, the first Black mayor of a big American city, and the first Black school board president, Arnold Pinkney. There were also lawsuits from Black parents who were galvanized by these events, that eventually caused a federal judge to rule that the school district was segregated and forced the city to begin busing students to break up segregated schools."
"This all started because of activism from people like Klunder, who were calling out the fact that the city was still de facto segregated. Roughly 80% of schools in the early 1960s were racially homogenous, meaning there were only white students in some schools on the West Side and just Black kids in some schools on the East Side."
On how Klunder's story fits into the bigger picture of school desegregation in Ohio
"Klunder was the first northern casualty in the civil rights movement, and he's the only one listed as a civil rights martyr by the Southern Poverty Law Center in northern states."
"Generally, schools even in the North had to be forced to desegregate due to policies, both direct and indirect, that left schools de facto segregated even after the 1954 Brown v. Board decision. This happened in Columbus. There was a lawsuit similarly filed there in the 1970s that led to a judge mandating busing to desegregate the city. And there's some other stories of activism in smaller cities like Hillsboro. There was a really fascinating story I found out about where a group of Black mothers marched their kids to school and kept pressure on the white district to accept their kids. Eventually, they filed a lawsuit and the district did accept their kids. Every city has their own story of what happened."
On why Klunder's story is important today
"Public schools in many big cities have appeared to resegregate since the 1980s, based on some research studies and enrollment. It's not hard to see it in Columbus and Cleveland and elsewhere. The public school district's enrollment in Cleveland is two-thirds Black, even though the city is 50% black. At some schools on the East Side, student bodies are as much as 95% Black."
"There's a lot of race-based learning gaps that have persisted in big cities due to inequalities and roadblocks facing students of color. So this is a story that's much bigger than Bruce Klunder. The issues he and thousands of other parents protested in the moment are relevant to today."