The Shakerite VOL 91 ISSUE I

been complete racial turnover, if you didn’t reintegrate
that, it sort of stood as an image of failure, and
those who wanted to point to it would say, ‘Moreland
today, and all of Shaker Heights tomorrow,’ ”
Carolyn Milter, a white Ludlow community resident
said to Richter.
Lucille Anderson, former head of the city’s housing
office, expressed ambivalent feelings about the
Moreland integration efforts.
“You know, we didn’t do terribly,
but we didn’t do well. How
could we? You can’t do it if you
don’t have the material to work
with,” she said to Richter. But
the definition of “doing well”
varied across Shaker. To Ludlow
residents and integration
champions, “doing well” meant
attracting new white residents
to the community. To them, Moreland
was a problem.
Moreland residents’ definition
of success was notably different
from Ludlow’s. To them,
“success” meant a strong community
with a good school, not
the racial balance of the community.
“Their position was far
more advanced than ours,” Alan
Gressel, a leader in the Ludlow
housing program and the organization
of the city’s Housing
Office said to Richter. “Theirs
was, ‘Just because we’re in a
90 percent black neighborhood doesn’t mean we
should panic, we should leave, or we shouldn’t have
good schools.’ ”
Moreland’s goal was no longer integration, but
Black excellence. “Moreland residents questioned
the argument that the end justified the means, and
focused directly on the desired goal of the suburban
dream, asserting that Moreland could be a success,
even as a resegregated African American community,”
Richter wrote.
By 1979, the Moreland community became a
strong voice in the Shaker community. Their goal
Moreland was an
issue not just
because it was
now a segregated
Black
community, but
because it
challenged the
narrative of
success being
spread about the
rest of Shaker.
was no longer to attract white residents but to force
the community to see them as equals.
Ava Moore, president of the Moreland Association,
emphasized this in a letter to the editor of the
Sun Press. “Moreland Community Association has
other concerns to work on other than housing. Community
awareness is our top priority at this point...
Because we are a mostly black community, we work
hard to keep from being written
off by the city,” she said.
This position was controversial
even among Black residents
outside of Moreland. Winston
Richie, a Black Ludlow
resident, said to Richter that
for the children it was particularly
important. “I think blacks
don’t do justice to their kids
if they confine them to black
neighborhoods. I facetiously
say sometimes that I wanted
my kids to know some dumb
white kids, that there were
some dumb white kids in this
world. I wanted them to go to
school with whites so that they
could compete at college, in the
corporate level, or wherever
else they wanted to go,” he said.
“I’ve seen blacks at Dartmouth
that couldn’t make it through
the first year because they just
felt totally out of place.”
Since the initial integration,
Shaker Heights has changed drastically. The
people of Shaker Heights dress, speak and think differently.
Schools have been opened and closed. Children
have been bused across the district, hoping
that someday they will appreciate one another in
a way our parents never did. Shaker still struggles
to detrack, to desegregate and to decolonize itself.
Shaker marches against police brutality and grapples
with the divide in its schools. But in times like
these, it is all the more important to look at history.
It is important to reflect on the conflicting ideologies
of this suburb to find a path forward.
Spring 2021 THE SHAKERITE 11