Sat 2/25 @ 7PM
Racial and environmental issues are connected more than you might think. Cleveland was ground zero for this intersection when during the term of Mayor Carl Stokes, the first black big-city mayor in America, the famous fire on the Cuyahoga River took place that attracted national attention and helped lead to the passing of the Clean Water Act.
If you’d like to learn more about this fraught period in Cleveland’s past, historian David Stradling will speak at Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s Happy Days Lodge about issues of poverty, racism and housing that faced the city on the decline. He’ll talk about the river’s recovery, the eventual revival of the areas on its shores and the contrast with its persistent racial and economic divide, still seen today in the city’s and county’s quickness to cough up $160 million to gussy up a downtown arena while struggling to find money to demolish crumbling housing stock or maintain streets in the residential neighborhoods.
Tickets are $8 for adults and $3 for children ages 3-12. (This might be over your three-year-old’s head though). Go to forcvnp.org/cvi or call 330-657-2909, option 4.
historian-to-speak-about-racial-and-environmental-issues-in-cleveland
Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Peninsula, OH 44264