On a recent afternoon in Cascade Valley Metro Park, Summit Metro Parks cultural resources specialist Charlotte Gintert walked across a snow-covered trail that used to be a road called Honeywell Drive.
In the mid-20th century, when housing discrimination was common, this was a neighborhood where African Americans could buy a home, she said.
“The majority of those initial property owners were Black, so that is something very unique,” Gintert said.
The neighborhood, located on what is now the north side of Akron near the Cuyahoga Falls border, was known as Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres. In the late 1940s, the land was outside of the city limits, she said.
“[Residents] had to maintain the road themselves. They were responsible for taking their trash. They didn't have electricity. Nothing was provided for them,” Gintert added. “But, they saw this as an opportunity to live out their version of the American dream.”
A dream that, at the time, wasn’t attainable for everyone. Discriminatory policies, like redlining, made it difficult for Black individuals to obtain loans and mortgages, she said.
But Gintert found old newspaper advertisements that show the properties at Wheelock Acres were available to both white and Black families.
“It was racially integrated in a time when that wasn't very common,” Gintert said.
Despite this unique history, the neighborhood was long forgotten, Gintert said. In the late 1970s, the homes were sold and demolished to make way for the Valley View Golf Club, which closed in 2016.
But there’s still signs of the neighborhood that once was - if you know where to look, she said.
Tucked away in the brush off the side of the trail, Gintert pointed to a foundation and front steps of what was once the home of Victor and Esther Johnson.
“Esther's greenhouse is just on the other side of those steps,” she said.
Summit Metro Parks took over the land after the golf course closed. Since then, Gintert has been uncovering its history, leafing through historical records and conducting archaeological digs.
Many of the Black families on Honeywell Drive moved to Akron during the Great Migration, she said. Most of the men found work at the rubber factories, while their wives were homemakers or did housekeeping work, Gintert said.
Some families grew their own vegetables and raised animals. They wanted to be self-sustained – partly because the area was so isolated, but also because many of them came from farming backgrounds in the South, she said.
Connecting the dots with the help of descendants
Descendants of two of the Black families, including the Johnsons, have helped Gintert piece together this neighborhood’s history.
Tracy Beard, granddaughter of the Johnsons, has fond memories of visiting the house with her siblings and cousins when she was younger.
“It's the place we always felt safest as a child,” Beard said. “It was out in the country, and a lot of it was self-preservation, you know, the giant garden was for self-preservation. My grandmother would can stuff, and things like that.”
Esther taught them how to cook and make soap, and Victor taught them how to butcher chickens, beavers and groundhogs, added Kimberly Jackson, Beard’s sister. Much of their time was spent playing outside, she said.
“There was a lot of birds and trees and forests and bullfrogs,” Jackson said. “My memories were stuck to the smells, the essence of the area; the wild raspberries that we used to pick along the driveway.”
Beard and Jackson were too young at the time to realize the significance of this being an interracial community, they said. For them, it was their happy place.
“It was magic,” Beard said.
“It was the best life,” Jackson added.
Beard and her cousin, Allison Lockhart, attended the archaeological dig at her family’s former property, she said. They helped Gintert identify some of the artifacts, including an old Mickey Mouse toy and a Christmas decoration, she said.
Gintert also found pieces of clay pots from the greenhouse, she added.
Preserving the history of the Prathers
Gintert’s first dig at the park in 2018 was at the property that once belonged to George Conrad and Willie Mae Prather.
The Prathers moved to Akron from Alabama, Gintert said. Prather, who went by his middle name Conrad, was an organist at a local church and lived in an apartment with his wife while building their home on Honeywell Drive in the 1950s, she said.
The Prathers’ niece, Ethel Satterwhite, still lives in Akron, about a mile away from the park. She found out about the Honeywell Drive research project when her daughter attended an Akron Roundtable presentation about the Metro Parks.
Noticing a picture of Willie Mae’s obituary in the slideshow, Satterwhite’s daughter, Emone Smith, took a picture and sent it to her mother.
“I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s my Aunt Willie,” Satterwhite recalled.
Satterwhite and Smith connected with Gintert and helped Gintert piece together their family’s history.
“My mother was able to connect the dots to their stories, to everything they found out, the pieces, the puzzles, the questions that they had,” Smith said.
Satterwhite has fond memories of visiting the home while it was being built and taking in the scenery of the secluded area, she said.
“When you sat out on my uncle's porch - sometimes I get kind of caught up in it because it brings back a lot of memories,” Satterwhite said. “Lots of times we would sit out and just watch. It was absolutely beautiful, and I see why my uncle loved it down there, and he didn't want to give that up.”
In talking with Satterwhite, Gintert learned that Prather was trying to create a self-sustained community like he’d experienced with his family back in Alabama.
“That is a method of Black resistance that has been used since they were forcibly brought to the Americas, is finding ways of taking care of each other outside of systems,” Gintert said. “Economically, and certainly for just not needing to deal with the systems in society - having to go to doctor’s or having to go to the store a lot – like, this is what they were used to doing, and it worked very well for them.”
Satterwhite recognized some of the artifacts recovered from the dig, including a green glass bottle.
“My uncle loved ginger ale,” she said.
Satterwhite recalls the significance of the neighborhood being open to Black families, she added.
“It was such a prestige thing among the Blacks that, ‘Oh, you're on Honeywell Drive,’ because at that point, it was close to Cuyahoga Falls … you couldn't move out there,” she said. “He saved his money, and he bought that land. So, it really means something, but he was never able to live in the house.”
Prather passed away before he and his wife could move in, Satterwhite said. Records show the house was burned by arsonists, then demolished for the golf course, Gintert added.
Summit Metro Parks recently worked with Satterwhite to name a trail near the property “Prather Path,” which Satterwhite said is an honor.
“I remember when we used to walk in there and pick bull berries and play. And now, to see that my uncle's sacrifice was not in vain,” she said.
Future plans for Honeywell Drive
Gintert wants to honor the history of other Honeywell Drive families, too. She is working with a University of Akron graduate student who plans to do another archaeological dig this summer.
Gintert is always looking for more descendants to speak with, she added.
“Then of course, to interpret this for the public, as the parks continue to develop as well,” Gintert said. “People can walk by these houses and learn something about this period about the families and Akron history as well.”
No other structures have been built on top of the land, so the neighborhood and its artifacts have been preserved, Gintert added.
That is especially significant given much of Akron’s Black history has been lost due to urban renewal projects, she said. For example, the construction of the Innerbelt highway uprooted Black families and erased their homes, she added.
“This is a place, although the houses are no longer standing, we can say with absolute certainty that a house was here, and we know the history of who owned these properties and where they were coming from,” Gintert added. “That’s something really unique, where most of it has been erased from the landscape - here, it hasn't been. So, it's important to preserve that and tell those stories.”
Her ultimate goal is for the area to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, Gintert said.
