Euclid Beach Park - The Euclid Beach Park Riot

The Euclid Beach Park Riot

By around 1915, Euclid Beach Park would only admit African Americans on certain days as part of its efforts to promote what its management saw as a family-friendly atmosphere. On the other days, the park's special police enforcement team would see to the exclusion of blacks entirely. On the days when blacks were allowed into the park, they were not permitted to interact with white park-goers.

A series of protests occurred at Euclid Beach Park in 1946. On July 21, 1946, twenty people from American Youth for Democracy, United Negroes and Allied Veterans of America, and the National Negro Congress visited the park as an interracial group. They were evicted after a park policeman told them that it was park policy that there be "no sitting, no talking, no mixing of any kind... between the races." Subsequently, Euclid Beach Park was picketed on several occasions by these and other organizations.

On August 23, 1946, twelve members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), another interracial group, attempted to visit the park, but were also ejected by park police. Albert T. Luster, an African-American man who had gone to the park to meet the CORE group but never actually met with its members, was later beaten by a park policeman.

CORE continued to fight the segregation policy. A six-member interracial group from CORE visited the park on September 21, 1946, and were again removed from the park by the park police. However, on this occasion two off-duty Cleveland policemen, Lynn Coleman and Henry MacKey, both African-American, intervened and a fight broke out between the city police and the park police. In the scuffle, Coleman was shot in the leg with his own gun. After this incident, the park closed a week early, per the Mayor's request.