The Glenville shootout was a gun battle that occurred on the night of July 23–24, 1968, in the Glenville section of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Gunfire was exchanged for roughly four hours between the Cleveland Police Department and the Black Nationalists of New Libya, a Black Power group. The battle led to the death of three policemen, three suspects, and a bystander. At least 15 others (police, gunmen, and bystanders) were wounded.
The gun battle sparked the Glenville Riots, which began on the evening of July 23 as the gun battle was winding down, and continued through the evening of July 26–27. During the first day of the riots, the African American mayor of Cleveland, Carl Stokes, refused to allow white police officers to patrol the area. When African American leaders in the neighborhood were unable to quell the violence, Stokes sent the Ohio Army National Guard and the rest of the Cleveland Police into the area to stop the violence. The riots ended early in the morning on July 27. Losses due to the riots were about $2.6 million, and proved to be the political death knell of Mayor Stokes' Cleveland: Now! redevelopment effort. In 1969, Ahmed Evans, tried by an all- white jury was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
Racial tensions in Cleveland The city of Cleveland suffered a significant loss of heavy industry beginning about 1950, which led to markedly higher unemployment. Meanwhile, large numbers of African Americans left the Deep South during the Second Great Migration. Cleveland saw a significant influx of blacks (who mistakenly believed the city was still a source of good jobs), but racial segregation and racially discriminatory housing practices left most African Americans able to find housing only in the city's eastern neighborhoods. The number of residents living there jumped from 150,000 in 1950 to 250,000 in 1960. Among the changing areas was the Glenville neighborhood. In 1950, Glenville was overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and Jewish. As these residents left for Cleveland's far eastern suburbs in the 1950s, single-family homes were turned into rentals, and thousands of African Americans moved in. By 1960, Glenville was overwhelmingly black and poor. Most people in Glenville also lived in crowded, substandard housing. Quite often, single-family homes in Glenville were subdivided into four or more apartments, each of which accommodated a large, extended family.
Racial tensions in Cleveland were exacerbated as the city began busing African American children to all-white schools in order to racially desegregate its schools and to reduce overcrowding in minority-majority elementary schools. Black parents were outraged when they discovered that their children were not eligible to participate in arts, sports, and after-hours activities at these schools. In January 1964, the United Freedom Movement, a coalition of black civil rights groups, decided to march on the Murray Hill School in the city's Little Italy neighborhood. When city leaders learned that local white residents intended to stop the march, they feared a riot would break out. The black civil rights groups were persuaded to cancel their protest. But the white mob still formed, and throughout the day on January 30, 1964, white citizens threw rocks and bottles and assaulted any African American person they found on the streets. The Cleveland Police made no arrests.
Cleveland's Black Power movement grew substantially in 1964 and 1965, as African American residents of the city viewed the Murray Hill riot as a symbol of their powerlessness. Despair bred extremism and violence. White and black gangs formed in the adjacent Superior-Sowinski area just west of Glenville, and physical assaults and gang wars occurred in broad daylight in the spring and summer of 1966. In July 1966, the week-long Hough Riots occurred throughout much of northeast Cleveland. Racial tension in the city worsened in the aftermath of these riots. A number of arsonists burned buildings and several stores were looted in the Hough neighborhood (the center of the riot) during the spring of 1967. Although many in the local and national media believed Cleveland was headed for another summer of violence in 1967, local African American anger appeared to be channeled politically instead. African American state legislator Carl Stokes unseated incumbent (and white) mayor Ralph S. Locher in the Democratic primary, and went on to win the mayoralty against white Republican attorney Seth Taft in November 1967.
Radicalization of Ahmed Evans Fred Evans was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1931. His family moved to Cleveland in 1943. Evans dropped out of high school and enlisted in the United States Army in 1948. He served in the Korean War, where he won several medals for meritorious service. After suffering a severe injury when a bridge he was helping to build collapsed, he was discharged in 1952. He drove a city bus for two years, then reenlisted in 1954. He struck an officer, was court-martialed, and was sentenced to two years' hard labor and a dishonorable discharge. His sentence was later reduced to undesirable discharge, and he left the Army after just seven months. Army physicians had concluded that his 1952 injuries had left him with migraines, partial disability, epilepsy, and a personality disorder. He now suffered from severe rage issues which (under stress) he was unable to control, and that this, in part, had led to his confrontation with the senior officer. Evans returned to Cleveland and worked as a menial laborer for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
After seeing what he believed to be a UFO in the early 1960s, Evans turned to astrology for spiritual guidance. After his astrological mentor was hospitalized for insanity in 1966, Evans adopted the first name Ahmed, began wearing garments of an African design, and began preaching an increasingly militant form of black nationalism. About 1964 or 1965, he joined a group calling itself the Black Nationalists of New Libya. He opened the Afro Culture Shop and Bookstore on Superior Avenue, which drew the attention of local police because it often served as a gathering place for young black militants. The police closed his store three times in 1967 (ostensibly for sanitary violations, but Evans felt this was a pretense to harass him), and Evans assaulted African American Patrolman James Payne in April 1967. In March 1967, The Wall Street Journal reported that Evans had predicted that the United States would be consumed with violence on May 9, 1967. Although the media ridiculed Evans after his prediction failed to come to pass, Evans' status among local African Americans soared.
On May 1, 1968, Mayor Stokes announced that he was forming a $1.5 billion fund, named Cleveland: Now!, to completely redevelop the city of Cleveland within a decade. Money for the effort would be contributed by business, private foundations, the city, the state, and the federal government. Cleveland: Now! focused on job training, neighborhood and housing rehabilitation, education, youth development, health, welfare reform, and downtown revitalization. A significant number of grants were made immediately available to a wide range of neighborhood groups to help build civic pride, reduce racial tension, help end poverty, and for other aims. Ahmed Evans applied for and received a $10,300 grant from the city to help local youth learn African arts and crafts.
Rumors of an uprising, and police surveillance
At 2:30 PM on July 22, 1968, Cleveland City Council member George L. Forbes and Mayor's Council on Youth Opportunities director Walter Beach met with Cleveland Police Inspector Lewis Coffey at Cleveland City Hall. Coffey said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had given the Cleveland police information that Ahmed Evans and his New Libya group were stockpiling weapons at Evans' home at 12312 Auburndale Avenue in Glenville in preparation for assassinating several prominent African Americans (including Mayor Stokes) and instigating a general "uprising" on July 24. The police expressed doubt about these reports, as the sole source of information was a paid FBI informer who was not a member of Evans' group and who seemed under the influence of illegal narcotics. However, police subsequently discovered that black nationalists had been seen at a local department store the morning of July 22 inquiring about high-powered rifles and purchasing bandoliers of ammunition and first aid kits at an army surplus store. But it was unclear if these men belonged to Evans' group. Furthermore, Evans was angry. He had just been told by his white landlord that he could no longer rent space for his Afro Culture Shop and Bookstore, and he had been served with an eviction notice to vacate his apartment on the morning of July 22.
At the meeting with Forbes and Beach, the police decided that a "roving surveillance" of Evans' home should be implemented. Forbes and Beach also agreed to speak with Evans in an attempt to calm him down and attempt to address his grievances.
At 6:00 PM on July 23, Forbes and Beach drove to the Afro Culture Shop and Bookstore at 11105 Superior Avenue to see Evans. Not finding him there, they drove to the Evans' apartment at 12312 Auburndale Avenue and were surprised to discover that the Cleveland Police had, in fact, established a stationary surveillance around Evans' home. One unmarked car with white officers sat on Lakeview Avenue between Moulton and Auburndale, and another with white officers sat at the intersection of Auburndale and E. 124th Street. At 7:50 PM, Forbes and Beach arrived at Evans' home. They talked with him for 15 minutes, during which time Evans expressed his anxiety about the police and his concern that he was going to be harassed again. Forbes attempted to have the stationary surveillance removed, but was advised by the city's Safety Director, James McManamon, to speak with Mayor Stokes. Forbes reached Stokes, but Stokes was interrupted by another call and asked Forbes to call back in 15 minutes. During this time, Forbes drove to the home of Harllel Jones, an Evans associate. While speaking with Jones, they learned that the shootout had begun.
The shootout It is not clear whether the police or the Black Nationalists of New Libya opened fire first. However, most press outlets stated that the Black Nationalists of New Libya initiated the gun battle.
Shots at the Evans house According to police, shortly after Forbes and Beach left at 8:05 PM, an African American man with a carbine emerged from the Evans house and stood guard. A few minutes later, Evans and about 16 others, all of them heavily armed and wearing crossed bandoliers of ammunition, emerged from the house. The guard crossed the street and aimed his gun at the unmarked police vehicle sitting at Auburndale and E. 124th Street. The surveillants radioed for instructions, and at 8:20 PM were told to flee the area. The police vehicle turned right onto E. 124th Street, followed by a station wagon. The police claimed they heard a shot. The other police vehicle also fled the scene, turning right (south) onto Lakeview Avenue. The police in this car also said they heard several shots.
Cleveland Police Car No. 604 (a marked vehicle then at E. 123rd Street and Beulah Avenue) broadcast a report of shots fired at 8:24 PM.
A radio broadcast over the police radio alerted the second surveillance vehicle to the shots fired at the tow truck. It turned back, traveling east on Beulah. When it came within view of the tow truck, police say, they saw the tow truck driver running from an armed man. Then two snipers behind the tow truck fired on the unmarked police car (hitting its hood, grill, and windshield). The police returned fire, emptying their weapon ammunition magazines. The police vehicle then fled north on E. 123rd Street, all four of its tires shot out.