Cleveland eviction riot of 1933 bears similarities to current woes

by balbrecht [at] plaind [dot] com

Sunday March 08, 2009, 4:14 AM

Cleveland Press Collection/Cleveland State University LibraryA cloud of tear gas rises near the Lardet Avenue home where more than 4,000 Clevelanders tried to prevent a family's eviction and battled police, who used tear gas, clubs and fire hoses in repeated attempts to disperse the crowd.

Time probably has cleared the fog of tear-gassed memories along Lardet Avenue of the day more than 75 years ago when several thousand Clevelanders raised their voices and fists in protest of the foreclosures, unemployment and economic ruin sweeping the nation -- problems not unlike today.

The families of Boledovich, Zamiska and Ordorensky who once lived on this short, tree-lined street just north of the former Woodland Hills Park, now Luke Easter Park, have since been replaced by the Johnsons, Robinsons and Washingtons.

TV satellite dishes now scan the skies from rooftops of Lardet's 1920s-vintage "Cleveland doubles," wood houses with twin front porches and classical columns.

But contemporary reminders of Lardet's historic moment have appeared in the plywood-covered windows and doors of two vacant houses on the street.

One, with a sign advertising it as a "handyman's special," stands diagonally across the street from 11413 Lardet -- epicenter of a day during the Great Depression when financial frustrations exploded in rioting.

The house at 11413 recently sold for $5,000, or about $3,300 less than what John and Sophie Sparenga paid for it in 1928. Five years later, Sparenga had lost his job as a laborer and fallen behind on $7,200 worth of mortgage payments, interest and penalties.

The bank foreclosed, and come sunrise on a sweltering July 18, 1933, Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies arrived and evicted the Sparengas and their four children.

Cleveland Press Collection/Cleveland State University LibraryThousands of people jammed Lardet Avenue in 1933 to protest an eviction when an unemployed homeowner fell behind on his mortgage payments. A day and night of rioting ensued when police arrived to help enforce the eviction.

As the family's furniture was carried from the house, an official of the Small Home and Land Owners' Federation, a local ad hoc "home defense" organization, jumped in a loudspeaker-equipped car and spread the alarm up and down neighborhood streets.

Sympathizers were blocked in efforts to move the Sparengas' belongings back into the house, which had been the scene of previous federation demonstrations.

More than 150 police officers were called to the street as people gathered in crowds that would reach an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 by the end of a long day of protest and violence.

As police arrived, they were greeted by taunts, jeers and volleys of rocks, bricks, sticks and even kitchen utensils. The officers responded with nightsticks, tear gas and fire hoses. Four times during that day and night, the protesters were dispersed, only to re-form and battle again into the darkness.

"This is a crowd that won't scatter, a crowd that is strangely grim and determined," wrote James Steele in an account of the incident for The Nation magazine.

Some 14 people, including two policemen, were injured in the fracas, most suffering minor bruises, scrapes and tear-gas burns. Four people were arrested but later released.

It's unclear what happened to John and Sophie Sparenga after they were evicted. Family members would not comment, nor would current residents of 11413 Lardet.

Tracy Boulian/The Plain DealerLardet Avenue has changed in some ways since the day in 1933 when thousands of Clevelanders battled police on this street, protesting an eviction at this house. Yet in other ways, many of those same Depression-era woes that prompted the protest have returned.

Depression facts and figures

From 1929 to 1933, wage income fell 42.5 percent, the gross national product dropped from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion, nearly half the commercial banks in the country failed and home building plummeted 80 percent.

• In 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers were unemployed.

• Some 273,000 families were evicted in 1932.

• Milk cost 14 cents a quart, bread was 9 cents a loaf.

• When the Depression started under President Herbert Hoover, his name became a popular part of cynical everyday lexicon, as in "Hoovervilles" (shanty towns for the homeless), "Hoover blankets" (newspapers used for blankets), and "Hoover hogs" (wild rabbits consumed for food).

• Popular songs of the Depression often reflected despair and dreams, as in "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" "We're In the Money," "I've Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" and "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams and Dream Your Troubles Away."

SOURCES: National Park Service, "Panati's Parade of Fads, Follies and Manias," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

 

Events of that day are "a reflection of the times, and our times, and how we deal with the same type of situations," said Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka, who sees his share of current foreclosure matters and has studied the Lardet Avenue incident since running across a photo of the riot last year in a Cleveland history book.

"To see that amount of fervor in the city and its neighborhoods reflects what was going on at that time," he said.

What was going on was perhaps the worst year of the decade-long Depression. Unemployment hit 25 percent in 1933 (versus about 8 percent now). About half the mortgages were delinquent during the Depression (about 12 percent now), with the foreclosure rate peaking in 1933.

Until 1933, there was no Securities and Exchange Commission or Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; no jobless benefits or Social Security until 1935.

But there were efforts being made to address the nation's financial woes that were similar to those now in place or being considered today.

During the Depression, Ohio was one of 27 states that enacted laws to put a moratorium on foreclosures, as is now being considered in the state legislature and already practiced by some banks.

The federal Home Owners Loan Corp. of the 1930s provided aid to homeowners threatened with foreclosure, much like the intent of the Treasury Department's proposed Making Home Affordable program now being considered by Congress.

Yet could another "Lardet Avenue" happen today?

Many homeowner-assistance efforts now being made at a county and state level, and by private nonprofit groups, weren't around during the Depression, Pianka said. "I think if people feel you're at least making some progress, you're not going to have 10,000 people out on the street," he said.

And the Lardet Avenue riot was an exception to the more common public response to the Depression, according to David Kyvig, a distinguished research professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and author of "Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940."

"I'd say it was quite unusual," he said. "The more common experience was just resigned acceptance rather than resistance."

One of the most telling reactions was a dramatic decline in the birth rate, as people apparently were so depressed by the Depression that they didn't have enough faith in the future to have children, Kyvig said.

"That's really a reflection of the way most people responded," he said. "They're not standing up and rioting. They're making individual accommodations, most of them in an acceptance of less."

The outburst in Cleveland also may have been an outcome of the more severe economic hit taken by the city and Northeast Ohio than in other areas in the country, much like today, he added.

Kyvig said there were glimmers of hope nationally in the year of the Lardet Avenue riot when newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt initiated a rescue of the banking system and launched public-works programs intended to stimulate jobs and the economy.

Nowadays, "I don't think we're anywhere near Depression conditions," he said. "But we haven't learned everything we should've learned from the Depression experience."

What we have learned should keep the current economic slump from lasting as long as the Depression, Kyvig said.

For now, the brown and beige house at 11413 Lardet quietly endures as a paint-peeling, shrubbery-chopped testament to the day when Clevelanders -- bowed but not beaten by a shattered economy -- fought back.

A sign on the porch warns "Beware of dog." But there are much worse fates to be wary of today, as there were 75 years ago.