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- Cleveland's Jewish community played an active role helping Soviet Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union and resettle in the United States, and especially in Cleveland, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Approximately 12,000 Soviet Jews came to Cleveland during these years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the emigration continued, though at a slower pace. This collection, a project of the WRHS Cleveland Jewish Archives Advisory Committee, includes oral histories with Soviet Jews from the Greater Cleveland area and related materials. The collection consists primarily of abstracts, article drafts, correspondence, descriptions of the project, a dissertation, information sheets, interview protocols, lists, minutes, newspaper clippings, notes, oral history user agreements, procedures, programs, progress reports, reports, a script, a student paper, and transcripts of interviews.
- Carl Stokes, and his brother Louis, were groundbreaking African-American politicians from Cleveland, Ohio. Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city when elected in 1967. Louis Stokes was the first African-American congressman from Ohio when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, a position he held for 15 consecutive terms. During Carl Stokes two mayoral terms, city hall jobs were opened to blacks and women, and a number of urban renewal projects were initiated. Between 1983 and 1994 Carl Stokes served as municipal judge, and in 1994 was appointed by President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Seychelles. Louis Stokes began his career as a civil rights attorney, and helped challenge the Ohio redistricting in 1965 that fragmented African-American voting strength. In 1967, Louis Stokes argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Terry v. Ohio case, also known as the "stop-and-frisk" case. In the 1970s, Louis Stokes served as chair on Assassinations and in the 1980s was a noted member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. The collection includes 34 interviews with family and friends, associates and staff, and was conducted to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of Carl Stokes election as mayor and Louis Stokes to Congress.
- Thomas Howard White (1836-1914) was the founder of the White Sewing Machine Company, the While Motor Company, and the Thomas H. White Foundation, all of Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in Massachusetts, part of the White family which had immigrated from England ca. 1638. He moved to Cleveland in 1867. In 1876 he, his half-brother Howard W. White, and Rollin C. White (no relation) incorporated the White Sewing Machine Company. In 1899, his son Rollin Henry White invented the White steam car, put into production by the White Sewing Machine Company in 1900. In 1906, The automobile division was separated from the Sewing Machine Company as the White Company, later the White Motor Company. He and his wife, Almira Greenleaf White, had eight children; Mabel Almira Harris (wife of James Armstrong Harris), Alice Maud Hammer (wife of William Joseph Hammer), Windsor Thomas White, Clarence Greenleaf White, Rollin Henry White, Walter Charles White, and Ella Almira Ford (wife of Horatio Ford). The collection consists of a copy of the publication, Descendants of Thomas White, Volume II , written for Elizabeth White King by Betty King and Alice Coyle Lunn. The documentation collected during research for this book makes up the rest of the collection. It includes copies of wills, deeds, and patents; original correspondence and transcripts of correspondence of members of the White family; travel scrapbooks and a baby scrapbook; diaries; unpublished manuscripts; book; newspaper clippings; drawings; maps; oral history transcripts and memoirs; reports of Dr. Lunn to Betty King concerning her genealogical and historic research; and genealogical questionnaires filled out by family members.
- Walker and Weeks was the foremost architectural firm in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1920s. The firm specialized in bank buildings, religious structures in classical revival styles, and major commercial and public buildings. The collection consists of technical drawings and blueprints of the buildings, arches, memorials, and proposed plans designed by the Cleveland, Ohio architectural firm of Walker and Weeks.
- The Western Reserve Manuscripts is a collection of small manuscript accessions that have been donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society since its founding in 1867. These manuscripts often consist of one document but can include multiple items contained in one folder. This collection of material documents numerous subjects and themes in the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and the region of northeast Ohio known as the Western Reserve. The collection consists of advertisements, agreements, applications, articles, autobiographies, autograph books and autographs, biographical sketches, certificates, correspondence, deeds, diaries, drawings, envelopes, genealogies, histories, indentures, invoices, letters, lists, manuscripts, memoranda, newspaper clippings, notes, papers, photographs, poems, receipts, reports, scripts, speech transcripts, telegrams, and other material. Western Reserve Historical Society library staff began to describe these manuscripts in this finding aid in 2015. This is an ongoing project that will be updated for public access as the project progresses in real time.