Hough riots
| Hough riots | |||
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Now-empty lot at the intersection of E. 79th Street and Hough Ave. where the Seventy-Niner's Café once stood
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| Date | July 18–23, 1966 | ||
| Location |
Hough neighborhood, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. 41°30′33″N 81°38′04″W / 41.509162°N 81.6345665°W |
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| Causes | Racial tension, poverty, racial segregation | ||
| Methods | Widespread gunfire, rioting, looting, assault, arson, protests, property damage, murder | ||
| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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| Number | |||
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| Casualties | |||
| Death(s) | 4 | ||
| Injuries | 50 | ||
| Arrested | approx. 275 | ||
The Hough riots were riots in the predominantly African-American community of Hough (pronounced "Huff") in Cleveland, Ohio, which took place from July 18 to July 23, 1966. During the riots, four African Americans were killed and 50 people were injured. There were 275 arrests and numerous incidents of arson and firebombings. City officials at first blamed black nationalist and communist organizations for the riots. But historians generally dismiss these claims today, arguing that the cause of the Hough Riots were primarily poverty and racism. The riots caused rapid population loss and economic decline in the area, which lasted at least five decades after the riots.
During the 1950s, middle-class whites largely left the neighborhood of Hough in Cleveland, Ohio, and working-class African Americans moved in. By 1966, more than 66,000 people, nearly 90 percent of them African American, lived in Hough. Most businesses in the area remained white-owned, however. Residents of the Hough neighborhood complained extensively of inferior and racially segregated public schools, poor delivery of welfare benefits, a lack of routine garbage collection, no street cleaning, and too few housing inspections. Recreational facilities in Hough were nonexistent except for minimal equipment at a few school playgrounds. Hough was a relatively small area, but the population density in the neighborhood was one of the highest in Cleveland. Housing was often substandard in Hough, with a fifth of all housing units considered dilapidated and absentee landlords (most of them white) were common. The deindustrialization of Cleveland hit the African American community hard, and unemployment was over 17 percent.Median income for black residents was just 65 percent the median income of whites. Although Hough contained just 7.3 percent of Cleveland's population, it had more than 19 percent of its welfare cases. Single mothers (half of them teenagers) bore one-third of the children in Hough in 1966, and infant mortality was twice as high as the rest of the city. High unemployment and the rapid deterioration of the neighborhood created extensive racial tension in Hough. Although the city had engaged in some urban renewal housing projects in Hough, these had displaced more people than they housed and those displaced had received little to no help in finding new housing. Moreover, failed urban renewal to the east of Hough had displaced several thousand poor families, most of whom moved into Hough.
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