Browse Exhibits (1 total)

This exhibit will discuss racism and segregation against African-Americans at Cleveland's Euclid Beach Park, a world-famous amusement park owned by the Humphrey family from 1901-1969.

The decision by the park's owners to prevent blacks from using certain attractions culminated in the summer of 1946 when protests and violence occurred.  Euclid Beach closed early that year, and the following spring Cleveland City Council passed an ordinance designed to prevent further discrimination at the park.  

Not only will this exhibit illuminate the kind of racial discrimination faced by African-Americans in the supposedly liberal North, but it will also seek to demonstrate that World War II played a major role in shaping race relations in Cleveland.  After the war ended, many white Clevelanders looked nostalgically to the years before the Great Depression and the war, seeking to return to normality and stability after so many years of disorder. Meanwhile, an increasing population of black Clevelanders, emboldened by their participation in the war effort and anti-Nazi rhetoric that seemed to discredit racist ideologies, sought to solidify gains made during the war and stake a claim to full equality in the postwar city.

These differing visions of Postwar Cleveland would collide at Euclid Beach. By looking at these events and their aftermath we can hope to get a clearer picture of how the fight for racial equality after World War II in Cleveland would develop, what resistance it would be met with, and why it seemingly failed.