ROLDO: Saul Alinsky Came to Cleveland

By Roldo Bartimole

It’s odd that as you get older the past keeps popping up to surprise you.

Recently, the Plain Dealer ran on its website a copy of a page one from back in 1967 that I had written when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Cleveland. It brought back memories.

Now in the 2012 Republican primary the name Saul Alinsky has risen to prominence again. And memories return for me.

I suspect not too many people remember that Alinsky almost came to Cleveland to ply his talents. Actually, he did appear here but he didn’t stay.

In this year’s Republican primary Newt Gingrich has tried to associate President Barack Obama with Alinsky. Some believe that Gingrich is trying to tar Obama as a socialist radical by linking his name with Alinsky, dead for some 40 years. Alinsky was a community organizer as was Obama. Both in Chicago.

The first notice of Alinsky’s possible arrival in Cleveland was an article I wrote on December 23, 1966, for the Plain Dealer. The headline read: “Come to Cleveland, ‘Agitator’ is Urged.”

The first paragraph said:
“Saul D. Alinsky, a radical community organizer, has been approached to serve as a consultant for a mass citizens organization effort in Negro neighborhoods by the Council of Churches in Greater Cleveland.”

The article noted that members of the church council met with Alinsky for six hours in New York. The Council of Churches in the 1960s was seriously involved with the civil rights movement.

You have to remember that the period of the 1960s was a tumultuous time here in Cleveland as the civil rights era, poverty, the Hough riot and Black Nationalism combined to make Cleveland a center for acrimonious protest. It was one of the aspects of Cleveland that attracted me here.

The U. S. Civil Rights Commission held a week of hearings here in early April of 1966. The hearings exposed many ills of Cleveland from poor housing to police problems, union and business discrimination for all to see.

The commission revealed, for example, that in the five major construction trades there were only 13 blacks of 11,500 workers. Unemployment in March reached 15.6 percent in the black community. There were only 43 blacks among 1,350 apprentice trainings in federally sponsored programs the prior year.

Civil Rights Chairman John Hannah’s sober appraisal of Cleveland was that “The list of accomplishments is very short, and the agenda of unfinished business is very long.”

I wrote at the time in The Nation: “Cleveland is a recipe for violence.”

In the same article, written with Murray Gruber, a faculty member at SASS “…the Civil Rights Commission ripped away Cleveland’s carefully nurtured facade of social progress. Hearings gave the ghetto a chance to speak, and even it was shocked by the cumulative findings. However, there was little time to redress social and economic grievances before summer, and in July Hough erupted in five days of rioting that took four lives.”

The hearings rubbed raw the feelings of anger in the Cleveland ghetto. Racism in almost every aspect of community life was unveiled for all to see.

And the Hough riots in July further heightened tensions here.

Alinsky may have signaled his intentions by saying, “Wherever I go there is trouble.” He was telling the truth.

The mere announcement of a visit by Alinsky sent shivers up the spines of corporate leaders.

An article I wrote the next day suggested his visit would not be welcomed by some. “Ghetto Organizer’s Visit Opposed,” read the headline. The reaction became my first brush with some of the town’s Establishment leaders.

I called two of the top business leaders of the day to get their reaction. The reactions I got provided insight into corporate thinking.

I called Jack Reavis first. Reavis was the managing partner of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. It was and is the leading law firm in Cleveland, today known as Jones Day. Reavis was also head of the Businessmen’s Interracial Committee on Community Affairs (BICCA). BICCA was formed to deal with the growing racial tensions. It included top corporate and civil rights leaders.

Reavis told me: “I think it (bringing Alinsky here) would be a tragedy.”

Tragedy? Pretty strong sentiment.

Ralph Besse, a former Squire Sanders lawyer and president of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and head of the Cleveland Inner City Action Committee (formed after the riots to supposedly work on problems) was equally negative.

“I do not know him or anything about him first hand but I’m sure if a quotation (likely the one about bringing trouble) was right that he’s an agitator. We don’t need him in Cleveland.”

The tensions of the day demanded that business figures who usually work privately behind the scenes assume public roles. It was an uncomfortable time for them.

It provided me with insights into how power worked in the community.

Several other articles followed as the impending visit of Alinsky stirred up controversy among not only business leaders but civil rights leaders who began taking sides.

One prominent grassroots activist, Baxter Hill, promised to picket Alinsky. Eventually he did. Some believed he was acting in concert with Establishment figures.

There were several more stories in early 1967 about the impending visit.

Alinsky appeared here on Feb. 14, 1967.

He lived up to his radical reputation with a sharp rebuke of black leadership here.

Before some 700 people at the Ezella theater at 7007 Superior Avenue, Alinsky told the gathering what he thought about Negro (black or African-American were terms not in use at the time) leaders in Cleveland.

He couldn’t have been more blunt.

The headline of my article read: “Cleveland Negro is called ‘Beaten’.”

“Cleveland has a reputation of having a beaten Negro population. Its leadership is pretty much bought out. That’s your reputation,” Alinsky told the audience. Wow.

Alinsky said he would come to Cleveland as an organizer only with an open invitation from the black community. He didn’t get it.

Later in 1967, State Rep. Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor of a major American city. He defeated Mayor Ralph Locher. The election of Stokes seemed to contradict Alinsky’s view of Cleveland’s black population as “beaten.”

I think, however, Stokes’s victory didn’t negate what Alinsky’s view of black leadership here. Stokes indeed had to overcome resistance to his candidacy among blacks, especially many black elected officials who didn’t rally to his candidacy.

The Council of Churches radical period waned thereafter.

Stokes lasted two terms — four years — but Cleveland’s problems that marred the 1960s remained as they do today nearly 40 years later. Mayor Frank Jackson and the Cleveland Establishment have induced a sleep trance on the city without any visible community action on any front. Cleveland is asleep and many would like to keep it that way.

We could use a Saul Alinsky here today. Badly.

 

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

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