A team of Summit Metro Parks employees and volunteers are completing an archaeological dig this week that they hope will reveal more clues about a long-forgotten Akron neighborhood.
Beneath a section of Cascade Valley Metro Park lie remnants of Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres, an interracial neighborhood from the late 1940s to the early 70s, said Metro Parks Cultural Resources Specialist Charlotte Gintert.
At a time when housing discrimination was common, this was a neighborhood where Black residents could buy a home, she said.
“Here was a place that was outside of the city, you could own a good-sized piece of property and live a self-sustained life, if that's what you were interested in doing,” Gintert said. “The houses that were Black-owned, a lot of the Black families were trying to do that. They had small farms or large gardens.”
Gintert has been piecing together the history of the community for several years. Through her research and archaeological digs, she learned that many of the Black residents moved to Akron during the Great Migration, when many Black families moved from the South looking for industrial jobs, Gintert said.
The neighborhood existed in what is now the Valley View area of the park. Most of the men worked in the rubber factories and the women were homemakers or did housekeeping work, she said.
“It’s an overlooked community. These are working-class people, Black and white working class, people making, pursuing their American dream out here,” Gintert said.
After many residents moved out in the mid-1970s, a golf course took over some of the property, and the rest was purchased by the Metro Parks, Gintert said.
The homes were demolished and nothing was ever built over them, unlike in other historically Black areas, Gintert said.
“A lot of those neighborhoods that we talk about, like the Innerbelt Project, the Wooster Avenue neighborhoods, getting demolished and removed - but even though the houses are gone here, we still have the foundations,” Gintert said. “We still have all this archaeological material, and it preserves that moment in time.”
The golf course closed in 2016 and the Metro Parks took over the remaining property, she said.
Gintert has previously conducted archaeological excavations at plots of land once owned by two families, the Prathers and the Johnsons. One of the park’s trails is now named Prather Path in honor of George Conrad and Willie Mae Prather, Gintert said.
This summer, the team is focusing on the Atkinson family, who lived up the street from the Johnson family, she said.
Leading the dig is Zoe Brown, a graduate student at the University of Akron who learned about the project in one of her undergraduate courses.
Brown hopes to uncover and preserve stories of families that helped Akron’s rubber industries boom.
“We are the ‘rubber capital’ … but we are also the people who are from Akron, not just these industries,” Brown said. “So, learning about these individual stories kind of connects you more to one individual, rather than just this large idea, and it’s more on a personal level.”
The team is analyzing artifacts from a plot of land that once belonged to Edward and Ruby Lee Atkinson.
Brown has been researching the couple for her graduate school capstone project, she said.
The couple did not have children and were very active in their church, Brown said.
“Edward is listed as a minister at the Lods Street Church, which is now the Shelton [Temple Church of God in Christ.] And Ruby, after his passing, then went to St. Ashworth’s, and she is listed a missionary mother,” Brown said. “They both held important roles in the church, and I thought that that was very interesting.”
The couple is listed on property records as "Atkinson" while obituaries spell the name "Atkins." Brown and Gintert have not been able to figure out yet why their last name may have changed over time, Gintert said.
Over the past two weeks, the team has recovered dozens of facts, including pots, zippers and car parts, Brown said. Next week, they’ll take the artifacts into a lab and analyze them.
They’re also hoping to locate descendants to learn more about their story, Brown said.
Several other University of Akron students participated in the dig, as well as Jim Myers, a seasonal employee for the Metro Parks.
Working as a steel engineer for 40 years, Myers had always been interested in history and archaeology, he said. He decided to take courses at the University of Akron and help with archaeological digs as a hobby-turned-part-time-job in his retirement, he said.
“One of my retirement goals was to volunteer at dig sites, because there's never enough money and that sort of thing for doing this work,” Myers said. “I've been taking classes for four years now, and this is, I probably got close to 500 hours of field experience so far doing this. It's fantastic, it really is.”
Myers is looking forward to learning more about the artifacts when they are processed in the lab, he said.
Gintert eventually hopes to put signage in the area so parkgoers can learn about the historic neighborhood. A long-term goal, she said, is to commemorate the land in the National Register of Historic Places.
