Cleveland Bar Association Criticizes Mayor for Not Meeting with Martin Luther King
The Cleveland Bar Association on this day criticized Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locher for not meeting with Rev. Martin Luther King over civil rights issues in the city.
The president of the association charged that the mayor was “building a stone wall” with his “continuous and dangerous” refusal to meet with “responsible” African-American leaders.
Cleveland had experienced a serious riot the summer before, in mid-July, 1966, which is why the Cleveland Bar Association had a duty to meet with King.
The mayor replied that the Bar Association was comprised “almost entirely” of people from Greater Cleveland (meaning from the suburbs) and not the city.
Learn more about the 1960s disorders in Cleveland here
Learn more: Louis Masotti, Shoot-Out in Cleveland: Black Militants and the Police (1969)
Read Shoot-Out in Cleveland here
Read the monumental Three-Volume biography of Dr. King by Taylor Branch: Parting the Waters (1998); Pillar of Fire (1998); At Canaan’s Edge (2006)
Visit the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC: http://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm