Institutionalizing Inequalities: Black Children and Child Welfare in Cleveland, 1859-1998

Abstract

Public and private child welfare institutions in Cleveland have provided for black children often separately, always unequally, and sometimes punitively. Created and sustained by the community, these institutions have reflected its racial mores. Private orphanages that initially accepted small numbers of black children barred them during the 1910s, and dependent black children consequently became the responsibility of public agencies, especially after the Great Depression. Orphanages remained racially segregated until the 1960s when political and financial imperatives compelled their integration. Racial inequalities remained, however, illustrated by the disproportionate number of black children in an overcrowded, dangerous public detention facility that became a public scandal and a symbol of a child welfare system that institutionalizes and sustains the city's racial inequities.