Shaker Heights: The Struggle for Integration

Overview

Filmmaker Stuart Math submits a report card on a brave social experiment begun right here in Cleveland more than 35 years ago, when liberal activists used the city of Shaker Heights to reverse a pernicious national trend of white flight whenever black families moved in. Special housing programs and a much-admired school system deliberately bred a cooperative, affluent suburb that looked like America - 65% white, 30% black. And still black-white separatism existed, in school lunchrooms, athletics and, most ominous of all, academic excellence. Why?