Klunder frequently did picket duty, demonstrating for
fair housing and against
racially segregated public facilities and racial discrimination in hiring. When the
Cleveland City School District decided to build a new school in the predominantly African American neighborhood of
Glenville, Klunder organized a protest over the city building schools that would reinforce the pattern of segregation. Klunder led a group in an attempt to stop construction of
Stephen E. Howe Elementary on Lakeview Road, approximately a mile south from where the newly relocated
Glenville High School campus opened in 1964. On the afternoon of April 6, 1964, about 100 demonstrators threw themselves at the wheels and treads of bulldozers, power shovels, trucks and mobile concrete mixers to prevent the school from being built. A power shovel operator watched as six people—including a woman five months pregnant—leapt into a ditch and stretched out prone just beneath the shovel's jaws. Police officers tried to disperse the demonstrators, but many came out of the muck fighting. Twenty-one were arrested that day, and two were injured. The next day, April 7, Klunder and a larger group of approximately 1,000 demonstrators returned to the site of the school. Already awaiting them were dozens of Cleveland police officers. Moments later, Klunder, two women, and another man dashed across the school lot toward a bulldozer. Three of them flung themselves into the path of the steel treads. Klunder lay down behind the machine. The driver, John White, 33, stopped when he saw the three in front. He looked around but did not see Klunder, and he backed up. When he finally stopped the vehicle, Klunder was dead. == Aftermath ==