Bruce W. Klunder

Reverend Bruce W. Klunder
Klunder in an undated photo
Born	(1937-07-12)July 12, 1937 Greeley, Colorado, U.S.
Died	April 7, 1964(1964-04-07) (aged 26) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Cause of death	Crushed to death during a protest against construction of a segregated school
Resting place	Church of the Covenant, Cleveland, Ohio
Alma mater	Yale Divinity School Oregon State University
Occupation	Minister, activist
Years active	1955–64
Organization	Congress of Racial Equality
Movement	Civil Rights Movement
Spouse(s)	Joanne Lehman
Children	2

Reverend Bruce W. Klunder (July 12, 1937 – April 7, 1964) was a white Presbyterian minister and civil right activist, born in Colorado. He died when he was run over by a bulldozer while protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio. Klunder graduated from Yale Divinity School and then went to Cleveland in 1961 as assistant executive secretary of the Student Christian Union at Western Reserve University. He quickly became involved in the city's civil rights fight. He had a passionate interest in civil rights, headed the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and led a restaurant sit-in in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1962. He was married, with two young children.

Klunder frequently did picket duty, demonstrating for fair housing and against racially segregated public facilities and racial discrimination in hiring. When the Cleveland City School District decided to build new schools that would have reinforced the pattern of segregated neighborhood enrollment, Klunder took the lead in attempting to stop construction.

One afternoon about 100 demonstrators threw themselves at the wheels and treads of bulldozers, power shovels, trucks and mobile concrete mixers to prevent the school from being built. A power shovel operator watched as six people—including a woman five months pregnant—leaped into a ditch and stretched out prone just beneath the shovel's jaws. Police officers tried to disperse the demonstrators, but many came out of the muck fighting. Twenty-one were arrested that day, and two were injured.

The next day Klunder and about 1,000 other demonstrators returned to the school. Already awaiting them were dozens of Cleveland police officers. Moments later, Klunder, two women, and another man dashed across the school lot toward a bulldozer. Three of them flung themselves into the path of the steel treads. Klunder lay down behind the machine. The driver, John White, 33, stopped when he saw the three in front. He looked around but did not see Klunder, and he backed up. When he finally stopped the vehicle, Klunder was dead.