Without further ado, were very excited to be welcoming Laura Meckler. She is a National Education writer for the Washington Post, where covers education across the country as well as National Education policy and politics. She previously reports on the white house president ial politics, immigration and health care for wall street journal. As as health and social policy for the associated press. Her honors include nieman fellowship and livingston award for National Reporting, and she was part of the that won a george polk for justice reporting and she is a fellow at washingtonian was laura was due to be here today but instead weve got Jesse Holland which is just as good a nationally renowned journalist, educator and author with, a portfolio of stories that challenge perspectives, reshape narratives, inspire change. Hes the author of the Award WinningNonfiction Books the invisibles, the untold story africanamerican slaves inside the white and black men built the capital. Discovering African American history. And around washington, d. C. , jesse is a weekend host of washington journal and cspan, and the associate director of the school of media and Public Affairs at the George Washington university. So please me in welcoming Laura Meckler and jesse Jesse Holland. Wow, this is quite the turnout. This this is great, isnt it . Yeah, i was very much so. I mean, not so great for the people who dont seats, but, you know, really, really great from this point of view. Yeah, well, well keep engaging. Look at it. Engage again. Its interesting them you know theyll be light on their feet. Exactly. So, first of all, i to say thank you to laura for inviting me to be here with her, i was lucky enough to see it early. Copy of this book. And if you want to know what i, think about it. Just look on the back of my blurb is the last one on it. So. So im so thank you so much for. Allowing me to see it early copy of and for the work that youve done here. So were going to have a quick conversation. Well take a few minutes and well talk about the book, the process of writing it, but well ask for your questions so well ill ill stop talking after a while and ill turn it over to because you probably have better questions than i do and ive already learned there are several people from Shaker Heights, the audience and know yall have questions for her. So but i want to start this conversation off by asking you, laura, why did you decide write this book . Why was time to explore dream town now . Well, its interesting because i was never somebody who particular wanted to write a book. It wasnt something i aspired to. I was perfectly happy being newspaper reporter and journalist. I in fact, i people talked about exactly what it took to write. It sounded wholly unappealing and. I thought, its not for me. But as i was reporting, story started at the journal and ultimately ran in the Washington Post about Shaker Heights and relationship with issues of race. I just started to become just more and more attached. The subject. Its something ive been thinking about my whole from growing up there and and it started feeling like, you know, this could be a book. This is a story that has never been told in a book, although it has been told in many other forms and documents and Academic Work lots of journalism and in and around shaker and i just felt like this was a story needed to be told. It both sort has this incredible history that is very about how this community embraced integration over and very different from how it was founded evolve moved into this integration pioneer and then it has a very modern story as well about sort of this quest for Racial Equity today, especially in the schools seeing to, you know, whether black kids are getting the same high quality education and same opportunities as white kids there. So what but what made you the person to tell this book . Whats your connection to Shaker Heights . Why are you the person to tell this story to the rest of the country . Well, im from Shaker Heights. I grew up in Shaker Heights. So thats the first the first answer. There are i am the only journalist from Shaker Heights, though not by not by a long shot, but so i was very grounded in the material and i have been covering education for the last five years. So ive also very grounded in sort of the National Issues around around schools. And of the book is heavily, not exclusively but heavily about education. And it was just something that i really found myself thinking deeply about. And i thought that i had something to say so other people could would probably also do a great job with, this wonderful material. But, you know, they they, they can write the next book about explain to us how you landed on the title of dream town. What does that mean for you . What does that mean for the story that youre telling . So title was initially inspired, a quote in an article written by cosmopolitan magazine in 1963. This article came about because at the time Shaker Heights was the wealthiest city in america and they wrote a story, the headline on the cover of the magazine was the good life in, Shaker Heights, and it was this description of essentially opulence and the suburban dream. And theres a line that says this the story of an American Dream town. Come true. And i thought about that. And then that same year in 1963, of course, dr. King, about a different kind of dream. And thats also a dream that shaker midnight was in the beginning of at the time, but has also been trying for many years to make come true. So for it was the combination of those two ideas. Could one place be both things at once . And and ill just say one more note about the title, which is that for me, its, its when i think about it, its less about this is a dream town. This is a Perfect Place has come. Everything has come true. You know go here and all your dreams will be fulfilled. Not that simple. It never is that simple. But it is a its to me the word dream is almost more of a verb. It is a place that is dreaming. It is, a place that has these dreams and is constantly working on them. And im sure well get into that as we go before we get into the substance of the book, which once again, i was lucky enough to read an early copy of it. Tell us about your reporting and writing process. Many interviews that you do. How much did you spend working on this book . So i had done a lot of work on it already for. The article that ran in the post, the article ran there, a lot of journalists in the room. It was a 6000 word article which is long for a newspaper article. By far the longest one i had ever published. I had interviewed than 100 people at that point i thought, well, you know, im halfway there. Well, it turned out i was not quite halfway there. I was little bit out of the way there. I did count them. I ended up interviewing more than 250 people. Some of them were main characters in the story who i talked repeatedly, many, many interviews of them were kids sitting in a cafeteria and i went around went around the table and from, you know, five people at once. But lot of different perspectives. It was also heavily documented. There have a heavy reliance on documents, especially well, not just for the early history, for some of the mid history as well. Theres a lot wonderful resources in the cleveland area where the groups parent and Community Associations, the housing office, all of these different institutions have those records have all been preserved and, available and were just found many fascinating things in i looked at according to my evernote program. Well over a thousand documents. Wow. Now just for the audience, its knowledge. I used to teach Nonfiction Book writing and go to college for years. So ive talked to many, many authors and i always ask them this question for future authors. Tell us about your writing process. When did find time to write . Whens that sweet . In the day where words just flowed for you. After my kids went to bed, thats basically what it was for me. I am a night person, so every night at around. 9 00 and rather than you know settling in for another episode of tank, i was at my computer writing and, you know, it was one of these things and i think a lot of us probably had this experience or just regular journalism as well. Where i started out with, i knew how many words i had to have sort of divided that by the number of chapters, think, okay, i get to this point. And then there came a point where it was, oh, this is, this is too long. I better start, id better start cutting. So it was mostly at night and you know, of course weekends and wherever i could find i took a couple of short book leaves, but a lot of it was done on my own time. Honestly, that thats the way it is. Most writers when people ask me, when do i write, is usually between 11 p. M. And 2 a. M. Yeah, thats the only quiet time in the house. Yeah, because im a father. So yeah. Luckily my kids were a little younger, so they went to bed all before 11. Otherwise i would have been completely in trouble. So lets talk. Lets delve into the book. You start with the founding of Shaker Heights. Tell us a little bit about that story, how it sets up what we saw as the for the of the book. Sure. So was developed by the pair of brothers ive ever read about. Their names were mj and o. P. Van swearingen. They were raised poverty themselves and went on. But very ambitious. Went on to become essentially real estate and creating community that was meant to be as elite as they came. The sort of the best of the best with exacting standards. It was a Garden Suburb that was modeled over the idea that you were not just living near a park, but in a park. There were expansive lawns front of the homes, all the houses look. Just so there were rules about, what materials you could use, what the garage had to look like, what color scheme you could have. There was no industry. There was just a few little commercial areas, land set aside for schools, for a country club. The idea was that this was to be for the the the the cream of the crop in the city of cleveland and its an inner ring suburb. It joins the of cleveland at the time this was the sticks but they were as families were moving out wealthy families were moving out of cleveland and into this area. Thats thats what was creating. These brothers were just very odd. They like an eight bedroom mansion, but they shared a bedroom with each their own single twin bed. They were basically had no social life. They were just basically about work. All the time and just never wanted any press. Didnt show up to their own events. Theyre just very odd people, but they they created had this vision and they saw it through. And it was also, we should say, given given the subject of the book, a overtly racist place as well, that you could not it was meant for white people. Black people could get in. They were drummed out if they to get in. Early on there were. Covenants on the deeds. The covenants did not specifically say who wasnt allowed. You had to get permission from the band square and company. If wanted to sell and they made sure who that who was allowed and who was not. That seems be an unlikely origin for a town that becomes known for trying to reach a racial equality. How do we get from a for wealthy white elites to the Shaker Heights were talking about. Yeah thats why. And that is in fact, why its so important to understand that history, appreciate what happened next. So the early black families who moved in were drummed out. They did not were not able to stay. But then in the mid 1950s, there were few black families who managed various ways, various very creative ways to buy property in was actually the city of. But the Shaker HeightsSchool System, which was a swath of the city of cleveland thats in the Shaker School district. And the the initial was just like it had been 30 years earlier when a black family arrived a meeting an urgent meeting at the elementary. What are we going to do about the socalled undesirables as the lovely term that was used . I think they thought they were being clever by not actually black people. So under rebels. No, its just not were not against black people. Were just against undesirable people anyway. But theres Something Different happen there. And in fact, i should also say soon after one of the houses of one of the black families that was under construction was firebombed and the garage was destroyed. And the response to this, though, was different than what had happened 30 years earlier. There were white People Living there who were horrified by this who did not want to be what their community was they want. They they wanted a different path and they decided to do something is actually both very ordinary and perhaps somewhat, which was to get to know each other. They just started out with black clubs where they would get together for barbecues. And then this evolved into a Community Association. This neighborhoods knows a lot, though, and there actually are a couple level kids here. I know at least. And this evolved into a Community Association that decided to work, actively work against the forces of systemic racism that were keeping this, this and other white neighborhoods white which im sorry, i misspoke. They decided to work against. They initially tried to keep it all white, but once black people arrived, then the Real Estate Agents and the banks did, everything they could to essentially help that neighborhood flip block bust them, scare white people into leaving in the beginning, if you are a black family, you couldnt get a loan to move into a white neighborhood. Once the neighborhood started. If you were a white family, you couldnt get loan to move into that neighborhood. It was a bad investment. It was risky, quote unquote. And this group of of families, these these pioneers and both white and black decided that they were going to fight back against this. So they essentially created their own housing service. They recruited they advertise, and they brought they celebrate their wins. They manifested success. Think its fair to say before they even had it . And slowly the numbers started to change and white families started moving in and that eventually ethos just sort of spread to the rest of the city and it eventually changed the very identity of the city well. I grew up in the south in 1970s and the first half of that story sounds very. But the second half is the part where everyones working together is bit different from my experience in the south. What was so different about neighborhood . What made that happen . Who made that happen . Well, i think it was a combination of the fact that initial group of love, though, i think is the was the most important people. They now keep in mind, you know, this is as the Civil Rights Movement really gaining force, they saw themselves as kin. There were a of jewish families there who also there were a lot of who were active, the Civil Rights Movement nationally and the families who were living there felt that that part of their calling as well, they they just there was something also putting aside their sort of moral interest in that there was also sort of a shared class interest to it as well in that they didnt want to move. They didnt want to leave, and they wanted they saw a kinship with these families. These were these these black families who moved in were incredibly accomplished people. They were. Had a lot and they had a lot in common as well. And they were able to see that. And that, i think, was the basis of of the work that they did together. One of the things that impressed me when i read the early copy of the book, i think i might have actually told you this is that many of these stories are always told from the white perspective and people are always interviewing the white families about what happened. You actually talk to some of the black as well. How did you ensure that their voices were authentic and, what you were writing . How did you ensure that their stories are actually being included in this and theyre being represented fairly in this story . Well, thats something, of course, as journalists, that is our job in general to do to interview people who are both that we have things in common with and also who we have differences with as well. But i was particularly to the fact that i was a white reporter, white journalist writing about these issues, race. And so i was very careful, spend a lot of time with and not just this is true with white people. Well, who i talk to but to make sure i was representing the way especially their family, the way that felt that accurate and authentic to them. So reviewing with them exactly what i was planning to say. You know, spending a lot of time, these were not just like one off interviews for the family, stories that were told. These many conversations over a long period of time. But lets move away the town and talk about the school. So how is all this affecting the School System and what are the parents and the children doing . What are they seeing in the School System as the town is going through all of these changes . Right. So, you know, integration, the of black families is sort of spreading other neighborhoods. And in fact, one particular there was one neighborhood in shaker that