After college, Klunder and his wife moved to Cleveland where he was hired as assistant executive secretary of the Student Christian Union at Western Reserve University.

[5] He had a passionate interest in civil rights, headed the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and led a restaurant sit-in in Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1962.

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.

[6][1] 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.

[7] The Plain Dealer reported that "police ... were forced to use tear gas bombs to scatter crowds that would not clear out of the neighborhoods. ...

Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, delivered the eulogy and 1,500 people attended.

[11] In 2013, the Stephen E. Howe Elementary School on Lakeview Road, whose construction sparked the protests, was torn down and long-time Cleveland residents were interviewed about its history.

E Theophilus Caviness of the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church was at the scene in 1964; he told The Plain Dealer: "Every time I pass that school, it's sacred ground.