The Greater Cleveland Project (1976-1981) was a non-profit organization whose stated purpose was to ease the implementation of court-ordered desegregation in the Cleveland, Ohio, public schools. Federal Judge Frank J. Battisti ordered the desegregation as part of his decision in Reed v. Rhodes, wherein a student, Robert Reed, filed suit with other parties against the Cleveland Board of Education, the State Board of Education, and the governor, James Rhodes. The Greater Cleveland Project formally organized in May of 1976, having grown from an ad-hoc committee within the Greater Cleveland Inter-Church Council. To achieve its goals, the Project dispensed information about desegregation, held seminars, and gave lectures to citizens and educators to promote non-violent desegregation of the schools. Prominent in the leadership of the organization were Leonard Stevens and Daniel Elliot, as well as Jordan Band, Stanley Tolliver, and Francis Hunter. In 1978, two years after the original court order, Judge Battisti ordered the formation of the Office on School Monitoring and Community Relations at the suggestion of the federal court's Special Master and the leadership of the Greater Cleveland Project. This group was formed as an independent entity whose mission was to report directly to the court concerning the progress of Cleveland's school desegregation. Judge Battisti chose Leonard Stevens and Daniel Elliot to direct the organization. The Greater Cleveland Project was funded initially by the Greater Cleveland Inter-Church Council. Shortly thereafter it was funded by the Cleveland Foundation and the George Gund Foundation. Additional funding later came from the federal government's Emergency School Aid Act. The organization ceased operation in May of 1981 when federal and local funding was not renewed.
The Greater Cleveland Project Records, 1976-1981, consist primarily of correspondence, budgets, funding proposals and legal briefs relating to the desegregation case of Reed v. Rhodes.
This collection is of value to researchers interested in public school desegregation nationally and, in the specific case of Reed v. Rhodes, in Cleveland, Ohio. This case, which was not settled until 1994, illustrates the difficulties that courts and citizens had commencing and continuing the integration of America's public schools. Also of note are materials concerning the court-ordered formation of the Office on School Monitoring and Community Relations and materials relating to school busing.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by document type and then chronologically.
Processed by Robert A. Linn in 1995
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 4720 Greater Cleveland Project Records, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Jordan C. Band, 1995
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.