SOUTHFIELD - :
AT RISK?
Award-winning integration program uses
money and markets to keep blacks and
whites living together.
SHAKER HEIGHTS
& CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OHIO
NOAM M.M. NEUSNER
Staff Writer
Jewish
Cleveland
Cleveland's estimated
65,000 Jews live east of the
city, in suburbs stretching
east from Cleveland Heights
and Shaker Heights to
Beachwood and Pepper Pike.
As the suburbs stretch
eastward, the homes become
more expensive.
hen bachelor brothers Oris
and Mantis Van Sweringen
built most of Shaker
Heights, Ohio, social engi-
neering was the last thing
on their minds.
During the 1920s, they
created a leafy, quiet suburb
on the eastern edge of
Cleveland, with spacious
Tudor mansions and distinc-
tive two-family homes.
But many of their homes
carried restrictive deeds,
designed so that Shaker
Heights would never see a
Jew, a Catholic or a black.
Times have changed in
Shaker Heights, home to
thriving Jewish and black
communities and used as a
model of a successfully in-
tegrated community.
Since launching one of the
nation's first pro-integration
government- and commun-
ity-funded projects in the
early 1960s, the city of
30,800 residents is 30.7 per-
cent black and about 29 per-
cent Jewish.
Three years after the pro-
ject got government funds in
1967, blacks were 14.5 per-
cent of Shaker Heights'
population.
"From all the communities
I've seen, I've never seen a
community as nicely in-
tegrated," said Eldon Jay
Epp, a Shaker Heights resi-
dent who has lived in Cam-
bridge, Mass., and in Los
Angeles.
"In some communities, in-
tegration means the time
from when the first black
family moves in to when the
last white family moves
out," said Belva Walker, a
resident who works at the
Shaker Heights Housing Of-
fice.
Shaker Heights bucks this
trend, but not without a
community-wide effort.
Integrated Island
In Segregated Sea
In the greater Cleveland
vicinity, Shaker Heights is
an anomaly. The Cuyahoga
River splits the city in half,
geographically and racially.
In the late 1800s, European
immigrant workers moved
to the west side, blacks to
the east.
Cleveland is one of the
nation's most segregated
cities, second only to Detroit
according to a recent article
in USA Today. Many of its
neighborhoods, both in the
city and suburbs, are racial-
ly monolithic. In 1986, 37 of
51 suburban neighborhoods
in Cuyahoga County were at
least 95 percent white. In
that same year, 11 city
neighborhoods east of the
river were more than 90 per-
cent black.
But Shaker Heights has
attracted attention from the
White House and urban ex-
perts for its three decade-old
approach to integration. The
residents of Shaker Heights
abide by market laws: people
move where the schools are
good and the streets are
clean and safe.
Block parties, community
meetings and city events
emphasize sharing tradi-
tions and respecting differ-
ences. Whites and blacks
live harmoniously together,
visiting each other's homes
and talking to each other at
school meetings.
"I like diversity in hous-
ing; I like diversity in peo-
ple. I do not want my chil-
dren raised in a world that is
all shiny and new," said
Anita Gray, president of
Cleveland's Jewish Com-
munity Relations Council.
Shaker Heights didn't get
that way by accident. Star-
ting in 1967, city govern-
ment, drawing on a ground-
swell of neighborhood pro-
integrative action, used local
funds to encourage blacks to
move into white neighbor-
hoods and whites to move
into black neighborhoods.
The Shaker Heights Hous-
ing Office, an arm of the
Anita Gray in front
of her Shaker
Heights home.
28
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1991
city's Community Services
Department, operates as a
middleman in the housing
business. They provide fi-
nancial incentives to
families to move into neigh-
borhoods where their race is
underrepresented.
"If we were limited to
those people whose top
priority is integration, we
wouldn't have a chance,"
said Donald DeMarco, direc-
tor of the housing office.
At first, say community
leaders, residents are drawn
to Shaker Heights for its
schools, shaded streets,
manicured lawns and prop-
erty values. Integration
alone is not an easy sell.
"Given that integration is
atypical, a certain amount of
intentional effort is re-
quired. If that can't be ac-
cepted, there won't be in-
tegration; there'll be racial
transition," he said.
Dollars are the bottom line
in Shaker Heights. The
deals are good, property
values are high, schools are
exemplary. No one said he or
she moved into Shaker
Heights solely to live in an
integrated neighborhood.
The schools best represent
Shaker Heights' struggles
and successes with integra-
tion. Close to 50 percent of
the 5,000 students are black.
"If they are uncomfortable
with their children going to
school with black children,
they shouldn't move here,"
said Mark Freeman, Shaker
Heights Schools superinten-
dent.
A quick tour of the schools
reveals classrooms of
motivated children and
teachers. On elementary
school playgrounds, black
and white children frolic
together. In high school,
they congregate in hallways.
In Shaker Heights,
achievement is racially
blind. While there are a
normal batch of school-age
problems — drugs, under-