By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau ChiefCLEVELAND -- Smitty’s Seaway Barbershop, straddling the corner of 89th Street and Hough Avenue for 57 years, is like so many Black hair care establishment across America.
It’s worn vinyl furniture testify to a steady clientele, dust-covered JET and Ebony magazines add spots of color while the tinny sounds of an ancient stereo serve as a backdrop for voices raised in fierce debate or raucous laughter. For people in Cleveland’s Hough community, however, Smitty’s is also carries special significance: it was one of three businesses to survive the 1967 Hough Riots.
Today, 40 years later, it is a monument of the past and of the presence.
“Many people asked me why I didn’t leave but I felt like one day Hough will be a new Hough again and I wanted to be the one that never left,” said Smitty’s co-owner Equal L. Smith, 62. “This is my home.”
Once known as a White middle-class haven for its string of elaborate mansions, called “Millionaire’s Row,” exclusive private schools, two streetcar routes and its entertainment and commercial centers, Hough, by the 1950s had descended into disrepair.
“Four decades later, the neighborhood still bears the scars of its ordeal – vacant lots, buildings in need of repairs, the paucity of commercial interests – but it has been limping back to recovery.”
Goaded by the sharp teeth of the depression, about 60,000 low-income Blacks flooded into the 2-square-mile area, squeezing into a warren of tenement buildings and crumbling mansions chopped up into apartments where rats reigned supreme, prostitutes openly plied their trade on street corners and criminals acted with indemnity.
The eruption of violence in the neighborhood, by then known as “Rough Hough,” seemed inevitable.
“It was a dump,” said James Battey, 65, a longtime Hough resident who lived through the riots. “It had all kind of problems – congestion, rental shortages, high unemployment – and people were fired up.”
Smith said, though, that the riots were a call for racial equality and justice from a government that had ignored their pleas and done nothing to alleviate their suffering. By then, the signature non-violence of the civil rights movement had given way to shouts of “Black Power.”
“These were everyday, blue-collar folks who were sick and tired of the mess that was going on between Blacks and Whites and they fought back,” he said. “It is always sad when people have to go to a lower level to get the attention of the people in charge.”
Smith, who was a 21-year-old husband and father of a toddler and 2-month-old baby at the time, said he had braced himself for the impending outbreak as rumors began circulating about a week before it happened.
Ironically, it was a glass of water that ignited the firestorm.
At twilight on July 18, 1966, the 79’ers bar, located at the corner of 79th Street and Hough Avenue, posted a sign that declared, “No Water for Niggers.” When a Black male customer was denied a glass of water, the atmosphere turned ugly and a crowd began to gather.
The appearance of Cleveland City Police, long accused of racially-motivated brutality against Blacks, incited the crowd even more. Gunfire erupted and residents began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
“Pranksters may have gotten this thing going but there is a great deal of ill will involved,” said the Rev. Donald J. Jacobs, then-president of the Cleveland NAACP in a July 26, 1966, AFRO article. “The presence of the police force, which is predominantly white, and which has been rather harsh in the treatment of colored persons, has made the situation worse.”
For the next six days, Hough turned into a war zone. The neighborhood was smothered in smoke and the smell of burning buildings; at night the rat-tat-tat of guns pierced the gloom as vigilantes traded gunfire with police and the nearly 2,000 National Guards, who rolled into the area with tanks. The violence spread to nearby neighborhoods. By the end of the riots, four Blacks had been killed, more than 40 were critically wounded, nearly 300 arrested and millions of dollars in property decimated.
“I didn’t recognize my neighborhood. It was a skeleton,” Battey said.
A mass migration also took place, said Norman Krumholz, former director of planning for Cleveland from 1969 to 1979, reducing property values and the tax base.
“After the riots many Whites and some Blacks left and the population declined to 13,000, less than a fourth of its original population. That migration left a great deal of housing and stores empty and many were vandalized and torched,” he said. “Much of Hough looked like the Great Plains.”
Four decades later, the neighborhood still bears the scars of its ordeal – vacant lots, buildings in need of repairs, the paucity of commercial interests – but it has been limping back to recovery.
Several private and community-based organizations attempted to develop the area with varying success. Many, such as the Hough Area Development Corp. (HADC), a locally- based organization formed in the spring of 1967, undertook many ambitious projects but were stymied by changes in federal law that cut off the flow of funds.
Not until the late ‘80s into the 1990s did sustained development begin. Community Development Corporations began to play an active role and the government also played its part.
“In the late ‘80s the city put together a subsidy package which included very cheap land and mortgages below market price and tax abatements for 100 years,” said Normholz, a professor of urban planning at Cleveland State University Most agree, however, that it was the influence of Ward 7 Councilwoman Fannie Lewis that had the biggest impact.
“They wanted to turn all of Hough into a dump, then they wanted to make it a golf course but Councilwoman Lewis had a vision. She was the only one fighting [and] she’s still fighting,” Battey said.
Under Lewis’ leadership, the area is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, albeit a slow one, with new homes and apartment complexes going up where burnt buildings once stood, including the Lexington Village townhouse complex and a shopping center at East 79th and Euclid.
Now, the focus is on single-family homes. According to Bill Patmon, consultant for the Consortium for Economic & Community Development Inc, Hough has become “Cleveland’s No. 1 custom housing market,” where million-dollar homes can sit next to three-bedroom bungalows.
And there are several housing projects in the works, including:
• 200 homes for low-income residents made affordable by a 15-year tax credit, after which residents have the first option to purchase.
• 800 market-rate homes of 80,000 square feet each on upper Chester Street.
• 6 market-rate houses at La Grange and 79th Street.
“Be sure, positively sure, that none of this would be possible without the astuteness and determination of Councilwoman Lewis,” Patmon said. “I wouldn’t hesitate to call her the Mother of Hough and Conscience of the city of Cleveland.”
Community workers say they see other signs of progress like the growth of street-based clubs, the willingness of residents to report crime and the slow trickle of residents and businesses into the area.
There are still remnants of the old Rough Hough.
“Essentially, Hough is still a poor neighborhood,” Krumholz explained. “We have a troubled school system and crime and joblessness is still a problem. Most people work for less than $10 an hour, if they have work. Many convicts are released from prison and go to neighborhoods like Hough and they have a particularly hard time finding jobs. The city and county are losing revenue, the whole region is moving slowly. It’s not a single issue.”
Surveying the neighborhood from the doorway of his barbershop, Smith was in a reflective mood.
“I think [the riot] was important because it was a wake-up call to the people who had been oppressing Blacks, though I never want to live it again,” he said. “But the part of Hough’s story that I’ve been waiting for is here – the rebirth.”