Finding aid for the Community Action for Youth Records

History of Community Action for Youth

Community Action for Youth was a social services agency in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, created through a federal matching grant from the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime in 1963. Its goals included the reduction of juvenile delinquency and poverty through increased social services, educational opportunities, and job training.

Hough area planning activities were initiated in 1958 by the Welfare Federation of Cleveland at the request of the Cleveland Foundation. Social Worker David M. Austin (1924-2008) was the executive secretary of the Welfare Federation's Group Work Council and was an active social worker in the Hough neighborhood. Austin was a 1943 graduate of Lawrence College who received his master's degree from the Western Reserve University School of Applied Social Sciences in 1947. Austin worked in the Hough neighborhood as the coordinator of the Hough Community Development Project in the early 1960s. When President John F. Kennedy announced his Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime, Austin applied for a $100,000 planning grant to create a demonstration project in Hough. His proposal was funded and matched by the Cleveland Foundation, and the Greater Cleveland Youth Services Planning Commission (GCYSPC) was created to write a full proposal to conduct a demonstration project in Hough.

The mayor of Cleveland, president of the Cleveland Board of Education, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, chairman of the County mayors and City Managers Association, and president of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland were appointed to the board of trustees of the GCYSPC, and David Austin was appointed director of the program. Social workers throughout Cleveland were granted leaves of absence to work with Austin to create the long-range plan that would be submitted to the federal government for millions of dollars in funding over three or four years.

In 1962-1963, the GCYSPC conducted a nine month planning project in Hough, an area of concentrated poverty and juvenile delinquency of 71,000 people between Superior and Chester avenues and East 55th and East 105th streets on Cleveland's east side. Three out of four teenagers in the neighborhood were unemployed high school dropouts, and 25% of Cuyahoga County's welfare recipients lived there. The neighborhood had undergone drastic demographic change in the 1950s as well. In 1950 Hough had 2,600 non-white residents, and by 1960 it had 52,000 non-white residents. The population in Hough increased drastically as well, but no corresponding increase in housing units was realized. The GCYSPC determined that Hough's African American youth needed intensive teaching in reading, writing, and speaking; training for employment; reduction of job discrimination; and intensive work with families to improve home life. the area itself needed a reduction in transitory population and greater engagement of churches to provide moral education. The report identified poverty, lack of education, and racial discrimination as the major obstacles faced by Hough youth.

The GCYSPC submitted its final report to the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime in 1963, and Cleveland was the the first city to be chosen for long term funding. Cleveland was awarded $1 million in funding for the first year of the Hough project, with a matching requirement to come from the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Cleveland Public Schools, and private sources. The master plan called for the creation of nursery schools, special classes for public school students who had fallen behind, work-study programs, vocational programs, and family counseling programs. Overall, GCYSPC expected the project to receive $10 million in funding. David Austin was named the 1963 Social Worker of the Year by the Cleveland Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for his work on the project.

The GCYSPC created Community Action for Youth (CAY) in May 1963 to administer the federal project in Hough. David Austin was appointed interim director of CAY for 30 days in June 1963 while its board of trustees was appointed. Former mayor of Cleveland Thomas Burke was appointed president of the board of CAY. Political bickering immediately ensued, particularly through the Cleveland Board of Education which demanded greater representation and control over CAY due to its matching requirement within the federal grant. Cuyahoga County Commissioner Henry Speeth and Board of Education president Mark McElroy were immediately critical of Austin's appointment, Austin's budget allocations, and Austin's insistence that the social workers taking leaves of absence from their regular jobs be highly compensated for the risk they were taking in career advancement at their regular jobs. McElroy believed that matching agencies were underrepresented on the CAY board and that administrative people were outnumbered by academics. Speeth wanted a more administrative-minded director for CAY instead of a social worker. In July 1963, the CAY board of trustees appointed deputy Cleveland school superintendent Alva Dittrick as director of CAY and David Austin as associate director of planning and research. Burke expected Dittrick, a seasoned administrator, and Austin, a respected social services planner, to complement each other. Dittrick initially said that he might not take the job since Cleveland mayor Locher and Hough residents were critical of him being considered for the job. Dittrick's CAY salary was paid by Cleveland Public Schools as part of its match of the federal grant.

Members of the Hough Community Council immediately objected to Dittrick's appointment as director of CAY and demanded more representation on the CAY board for Hough residents (at the time, there was only one Hough resident on the CAY board). Dittrick was openly critical of the $1,000 salary differential between himself and Austin, but the CAY board refused to change the salary structure. By November 1963, a few days after the assassination of President Kennedy, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the rift between Dittrick and Austin over pay, job responsibilities, and changes to the plan Austin created was so great that CAY's future was in serious jeopardy. CAY was widely viewed as being politically undermined before it had launched a single program. David Austin resigned from CAY in December 1963 and joined the faculty of Western Reserve University, thus leaving CAY without its founder and main visionary. Similar disputes in project leadership between planning and action executives in other cities receiving the same funding were experienced throughout the United States.

At the same time, federal officials were critical of CAY progress, noting that only one of five planned programs had been launched. CAY was warned that it was moving too slowly and in danger of having its funding expire before it could be disbursed through the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act. CAY acted quickly, establishing its own newspaper in December 1963 and arranging for Cuyahoga County's Welfare Department to open an office in Hough at 8329 Euclid Avenue as part of its funding match in January 1964. With the addition of fifty social workers, the welfare department's individual caseload in Hough was reduced significantly. CAY then opened its first pre-school family nursery in January 1964 in a converted mansion at 1966 East 82nd Street. Twenty-eight youth in CAY's work orientation program prepared the building for the program. Children were selected for the nursery based on the poor academic performance of older siblings, and parents were required to participate with their children. That same month, CAY paid League Park Center and the Bell Neighborhood Center to add thirty-four workers to their sites. Finally, CAY established programs in Hough public schools to extend the school day by several hours to teach remedial reading and enrichment classes.

However, by August 1964, little of the federal grant had been spent due to difficulties getting programs off the ground and difficulties operating the programs themselves. At the same time, all CAY programs that were fully operational, including the school, nursery, and research programs, were operating over budget. Over one hundred workers had been hired by CAY in 1964, and the lack of progress and high staff pay were contributing factors to public criticism. All cities in the United States that had received similar funding were experiencing problems. Detroit had already abandoned its program, and New York City was not making any progress in its schools. CAY was experiencing serious criticism within Hough for slow and faltering progress.

In March 1964, the superintendent of Cleveland Public Schools resigned, and Alva Dittrick was recalled to his position as deputy superintendent. Dittrick was replaced by Raphael O. Lewis, an administrator who relished the political game in which CAY was immersed. Lewis was open to incorporating elements of the Civil Rights Movement into CAY's programming that had not been considered when CAY was developed.

In July 1964, CAY initiated the Incentive Budgeting Plan for welfare recipients in Hough. This program allowed employed welfare recipients to earn up to 100% of the minimum income standard before benefits were reduced as opposed to the federal income limit of 70%. Cleveland was the first city in the nation to implement this plan, which became the Ohio standard in 1965. Simultaneously, CAY started a system of rent rebates for clients as a reward for good maintenance of rented property. By October of 1965, CAY had launched support programs for teen mothers, vocational programs for unemployed youth, educational programs for low-achieving students, counseling programs for incarcerated youth, and neighborhood mobilization projects to develop grassroots leadership skills among Hough's residents. However, the anticipated partnership between probation officers serving youth in Hough and CAY social workers was not realized due to budget cuts in the county probation office.

CAY and its funding was transferred to the Council for Economic Opportunities in 1966. As part of a routine investigation of CAY's finances, investigators found that $1,632 had been paid to a fictitious employee in 1965 and that CAY had suffered heavy losses due to theft and vandalism. Investigators also discovered that two CAY board members had been on the CAY payroll that summer. As the transfer of CAY to the Council for Economic Opportunities continued, the Hough Riots broke out in July 1966. The riots resulted in four deaths, over 300 arrests, and approximately 240 fires. The Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act expired in 1967, and CAY ceased to exist due to lack of funding.

Scope and Content

The Community Action for Youth Records, 1958-1967 and undated, consist of correspondence, diaries, financial documents, memoranda, minutes, newsletters, newspaper clippings, notes, papers, proposals, reports, speeches, and statements.

This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1950s and 1960s, particularly efforts by the federal government, local government, and social services agencies to combat juvenile delinquency, poverty, and racial discrimination in the 1960s. Those studying the activities of the Greater Cleveland Youth Services Planning Commission and Community Action for Youth on behalf of the African American community in Hough will find this collection particularly useful. Those studying juvenile delinquency prevention programs and pre-school programs that included the participation of entire families funded through the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961 and President John F. Kennedy's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime will find this collection useful. The collection documents early efforts in Cleveland to launch what became the Head Start Program that involved the entire family in the pre-school education of its youngest members. The collection documents the conditions of the Hough neighborhood immediately before, during, and after the Hough Riots of 1966, and the obstacles faced by African American families, teenagers, and children there in the 1960s.

Those seeking documentation of the social services career of David M. Austin, particularly his activities on behalf of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland's Hough Community Development Project, the Greater Cleveland Youth Services Planning Commission, and the early months of Community Action for Youth will want to use Austin's diaries. Austin's diaries include summaries of the day, meeting minutes, memorada, newspaper clippings, reports, and notes that Austin added to his diary at a later date to supplement his understanding of his activities and provide additional details and context.

The proposals that created the Hough planning project that preceded the creation of CAY, and the proposal that created and guided CAY itself are included in this collection, as are many reports that document the progress made by CAY on its goals and objectives.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Access

None.

The researcher should also consult MS 4341 Fannie M. Lewis Papers.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 5227 Community Action for Youth Records, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

Acquisition Information

Gifts of David M. Austin in 2005 and Doris Linge in 2009.

Processing Information

Processed by Margaret Burzynski-Bays in 2014.

Detailed Description of The Collection