Glenville Timeline: The Historical Context And Key Events

The Glenville Shootout, which played out from 23 through the 28 July, 1968, happened after decades of changes in Cleveland, changes that triggered racial tensions. Until 1940, Glenville was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, but by the late 1960s, it was 96 percent African-American. This timeline shows the key dates in the history leading up to the shootout and tries to plot key moments during the violence. The timeline is taken from multiple sources including James Robenalt's "Ballots and Bullets: Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1968 Cleveland"², the Masotti report³, the Cleveland Memory Project at Cleveland State University, ClevelandHistorical.org, and a transcript of the police radio calls¹ during the shootout.

In some instances to clarify the sources of specific language or quotes, we refer to the specific sources, marked above by the superscript numbers.