by Greer Brightbill, with Rachael Herman, Deanna Horner, Olivia Kurylo, and Maddie Smith
Our “’Round Howard Street” UnClass at The University of Akron has been working to resurrect pieces of Akron history that have not gotten the respect deserved for a rich, fulfilling black neighborhood, especially when that lack of respect is followed by the pain of being forgotten. That’s what’s made me and my group members — Rachael Herman, Deanna Horner, Olivia Kurylo, and Maddie Smith – determined to find out more about the Cosmopolitan nightclub, a gathering spot on Howard Street that’s been slipping from memory.
Our class opened with a discussion of what little we know about the business district and lively neighborhood that thrived ‘round Howard street in downtown Akron prior to the planning and construction of the Innerbelt beginning in the 1960s. Guided by professors Hillary Nunn and Theron Brown, we were able to frame the importance of jazz music and culture, as well as of neighborhood, community, and business identity, to the Black Akronites living downtown from the 1930s and beyond.
Using the Green Book Cleveland project both as a guide and a goal to work towards, we looked through newspaper articles from popular press outlets like the Cleveland Call & Post, the Akron Beacon Journal, and The Pittsburgh Courier that would have been monumental to Akron’s Black community during our period of interest. Particularly, I recall reading through the Green Book Cleveland page on the Lake Glen nightclub and being bent on finding something that would acknowledge more of what was lost. We all feel a certain sense of urgency and obligation to the project.
From there, we discovered the Cosmopolitan as listed, on the Green Book site’s nightclub tab. It’s a stub entry, stating only that the Cosmopolitan club was listed in the Green Book from 1947-1955 as a nightclub at 33 ½ North Howard St. Having seen this name in several Call & Post articles, we decided to make it our mission to find more information. We are looking to bookmark just about anything in the hopes of building a profile that would extend to the community and beyond.
So far, all five of us are working in the online newspaper databases available to us through the University of Akron, and we are all spending time doing research in the Archives on campus as well. We are hoping to find further information on the Cosmopolitan nightclub and the surrounding community by utilizing city directories, death records, photographs (and negatives!), as well as other media, such as various documents that might give us a deeper understanding. We are also looking into any records and or reports we may be able to find concerning the trend of largely unjust and racially motivated raids carried out on African American clubs during this time.
What excited our group so much about seeing the name of a jazz club pop up repeatedly is that it would be feasible to find what made it a community meeting place; in building a profile that extends to the community, we have the opportunity to go in hundreds of directions.
However, in a class with a limited time frame and the goal of leaving something for others to build upon, we were able to put together a group that holds a highly interdependent relationship with the rest of our class; we all hold the same goal, but the ways that we’re working towards expressing it are broad, just like the community we want to resurrect.
Our goals are broad at the moment, and we are focused on finding information that we can narrow down to make more solid conclusions later.
If you, or anyone that you know, might have information regarding the Cosmopolitan club or the community on Howard Street from the 1930s-1960s, please contact us at roundhowardstree@gmail.com; we would love to sit down with you and have your stories brought to life again. Thank you.
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