Rockefeller Lagoon is located in Rockefeller Park near where Martin Luther King Jr. Drive crosses East 105th Street in University Circle. The lagoon had a boathouse with rowboats, but once African Americans became the majority in the surrounding Glenville neighborhood, the city removed the rowboats in 1953, prompting protests of racial discrimination, but the decision was never overturned.
Additional information coming soon.
Resources
- Michney, Todd. Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
- Miller, Marilyn. “Glenville’s Racial Transition.” Cleveland Historical. clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/637.
- “Protest Removal of Boats from Lagoon.” Call & Post. June 6, 1953.
- Rotman, Michael. “Rockefeller Park.” Cleveland Historical. clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/144.
- Seawell, Stephanie L. “The Black Freedom Movement and Community Planning in Urban Parks in Cleveland, Ohio, 1945-1977.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014. 172.