The LOMOND ASSN. is a neighborhood organization that was formed in Nov. 1963 to promote peaceful racial integration in the Lomond School District in SHAKER HTS. Like its counterpart, the LUDLOW COMMUNITY ASSN., the Lomond Assn. used education, communication, and good organization to maintain community stability during the strife-filled 1960s. In spring 1963, the Lomond Parent-Teacher Assn. formed a discussion group on "The Changing Neighborhood," the catalyst for a group concerned about "facing the reality of integration in a mature way." Lomond Assn. founders and leaders included Dr. Chester Plotkin, Ruth Blumenthal, Stephen Alfred, Joseph A. Becker, and Stephanie Kulinski. The association held its first community-wide meeting in late Nov. 1963 and in early 1964 began to sponsor neighborhood discussions, reaching more than 600 people by 1965. The association started publishing the Lomond Newsletter in early 1964. Lomond Assn. successfully lobbied city council to prohibit "for sale" signs, seen as detrimental to neighborhood stability.
In 1966, with CLEVELAND FOUNDATION funding, the association hired a housing coordinator to promote the neighborhood to white buyers. Between 1963-65, the annual percentage of Lomond home sales increased from 15% to 50%; the annual percentage of homes bought by AFRICAN AMERICANS dropped from 51% to 39% from 1966-68. At the same time, the total number of homes sold in Lomond increased by 10% in 1967 and by 5% in 1968. In 1966 the Lomond Assn. and other fair housing groups convinced white real estate brokers to show homes in integrated communities. In 1967 it founded and helped finance Suburban Citizens for Open Housing to help blacks gain access to housing in other suburbs. The same year, the Shaker Hts. city council and school board agreed to finance and supervise the work of the housing coordinator of the local neighborhood associations, forming the Shaker Communities Housing Office. With Congress’s passage of the Fair Housing Act, the Lomond Assn. redoubled its efforts to maintain an integrated neighborhood; in 1968 it established a financing program that loaned money for down-payments to whites interested in buying homes on "heavily integrated blocks." By mid-1969, African Americans owned 20% of the Lomond homes.
According to the 2010 census, Shaker Heights, like other inner-ring suburbs, continued to lose white residents but remained more racially integrated than Cleveland or Cuyahoga County.
In 2018, the association, one of nine Shaker Hts. community associations, functioned as a link to Shaker Hts. city government and schools and sponsored monthly meetings and newsletters on neighborhood and city issues. Its motto was “People Peaced Together.”
Updated by Marian Morton
See also FAIR HOUSING.