CLEVELAND — Leah Hudnall’s grandparents moved to Cleveland, along with hundreds of thousands of other Black families from southern states during The Great Migration. She said many incoming residents were forced into redlined neighborhoods with overcrowded schools that were segregated under the city’s historic “Relay” policy.
The Cleveland Relay Policy split the school day into morning and afternoon sessions with Black students only attending for half of the day, rather than sending them to white schools with space in their classrooms during the 1950s and 60s. The NAACP sued the State of Ohio and Cleveland Schools in the 1973 Reed. v. Rhodes court case. The policy didn’t come to an end until 1976, when U.S. Federal Judge Frank Battisti declared that Cleveland schools had been operating a segregated system, Hudnall said.
As part of subsequent reintegration efforts, Batiste also mandated crosstown busing, transporting students from predominantly Black schools on the city’s east side to whiter suburban schools on the west side.
(Spectrum News 1/Tanya Velazquez)
“Now what you have are Clevelanders, elders in our community who are 70 and 75 years old, who may have only gotten three hours of the third grade or they may not have started kindergarten until they were seven years old,” Hudnall said.
The exhibit also highlights the Cleveland’s larger role in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Hudnall said.
“You have parents, like Mrs. Daisy Craggett and Mrs. Clara Smith, who created a committee called Relay Parents March to fill empty classrooms,” she said. “… parent groups like that all banded together with historic organizations like the NAACP and Core Congress on Racial Equality, and they came together under a banner, calling it the Unite Freedom Movement.”
While the exhibit celebrates nearly half a century of progress in education, Hudnall said, it is only a piece of an ongoing journey toward educational equity.
Public data from the Ohio School Report Card shows many schools rated under 4 stars in 2024.
(Spectrum News 1/Tanya Velazquez)
“Cleveland saw a growth in many areas, graduation rates and academic success,” she said, “All of that led to what we all experienced together as a global community. The pandemic, which kind of shattered all of that hard work.
Greg Deegan is the executive director of Teaching Cleveland, which joined other local groups, researchers, educators and leaders on the Relay Campaign Committee team. Deegan, who worked as a high school teacher for over 20 years, said many challenges still remain in Cleveland’s school system.
The Cleveland School District approved a plan Tuesday to close and consolidate dozens of schools in the city after facing a decades-long enrollment decline and budget deficit.
“The more we talk about it, the more we sort of have a community conversation about this, the more we can be more well equipped for the challenges and opportunities today and what we see in schools,” Deegan said.
Now, Hudnall said, the’re calling on other community members to “carry the baton.”
“Our children in Cleveland need us,” Hudnall said. “They need us as neighbors, and they need us to actually get back in the game, on to fight for fair education.”
Tanya Velazquez
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