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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Shaker Heights’ Revolt Against Highways

Chew, Megan Lenore
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1252436871

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.
This narrative details how highway building, environmentalism, race and class intersected in suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio, during the 1960s. The methodology combines local, environmental, political and social histories. While the city’s successful racial integration narrative has defined Shaker Heights, its class narrative is also significant. The unsuccessful attempts to build the Clark and Lee freeway through the eastern suburbs of Cleveland reveal important aspects of the class narrative and had national resonance, directly and indirectly connecting to important individuals and movements of the era. The success of the anti-freeway movement adds to Shaker’s atypical postwar social narrative. Part of a larger movement of freeway revolts, the Shaker Heights activists benefited from class advantages, political connections and the evolution of Interstate highway legislation since 1956. Activists benefited from built and natural environmental movements of the 1960s as well. In succeeding in preventing the highways, citizens managed to protect the suburb’s prewar character during an era of massive physical and social change. Rejecting an archetypal view of suburbs in the postwar era, this project stresses the importance of looking at the variability of actions, individuals and ideas within individual communities. Singular narratives of postwar suburbs, or of suburbs themselves, obscure these differences and prioritize certain narratives over others, including the narrative of this project.
William Childs, PhD (Advisor)
Paula Baker, PhD (Committee Member)
Kevin Boyle, PhD (Committee Member)
80 p.
History
Shaker Heights; Clark Freeway; Lee Freeway; Albert Porter

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Chew, M. L. (2009). Shaker Heights’ Revolt Against Highways [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1252436871

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Chew, Megan. Shaker Heights’ Revolt Against Highways. 2009. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1252436871.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Chew, Megan. "Shaker Heights’ Revolt Against Highways." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1252436871

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1252436871
6,669
© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.