 From L to R: Bob Render (grew up in Fairfax, now lives in Buckeye), Dionne Thomas Carmichael (grew up and lives in Fairfax), and Reverend Carla Jo Howlett and Rev. Dr. Napoleon Harris V from Antioch Baptist Church. Last week, I had a great tour of Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood with Bob Render and Dionne Thomas Carmichael, who talked about their family history and what the area was like when they were growing up in the 50s and 60s. We drove around looking at old houses, checking out historic churches, visiting with artist Tim Willis and his amazing, flamboyant robots, and stopping at the corner of E. 79th and Central where Dionne lives and owns several buildings including Josephine's Bar (Cleveland's oldest African-American bar) and Central Roots gallery. At Bob's encouragement, we stopped to get a pic with Senior Pastor of Antioch Baptist Church Rev. Dr. Napoleon Harris V and Reverend Carla Jo Howlett, Operations Manager (shown above). These folks were wonderful. I recorded the interview and will use some of the material in the family memoir I'm working on, since my grandfather lived in the neighborhood as a young boy a generation or two before from 1910-1918 (he was part of the white migration out of the area into the Heights in the 1910s and 1920s). Below is an edited version of the interview along with some photos. I'm going to figure out how to edit and post audio, as well, but I'm not there yet. Here's an edited version of the Fairfax interview, part 1 (it's long but it's worth reading the whole thing). We opened with some chitchat, including talking about how Dionne's family came to Fairfax and their property at E. 79th and Central Ave. What is now called Josephine's Lounge was originally called Thomas Tavern. They later named it Josephine's after Dionne's mother and grandmother, who were both called Josephine. Lee: Your grandfather was the first one to move into the neighborhood? Dionne Thomas Carmichael: Yes, my grandfather came from Tuskegee … oh, this is too much story. My grandfather was in the Tuskegee syphilis study back in the day. On my father’s side. Jesse Thomas. We were all housed in the same place. Same place. Then he went back and forth to Tuskegee because we still had family there, and we still have family there, still in Tuskegee. Lee: Tell me a little bit about what the neighborhood was like when you were growing up. Dionne: Oh my goodness, it was just wonderful. We had everything we needed. I don’t know anything that we did not have. I’m giving you this from the perspective of looking back now, you know. Because at the time it seemed ok. But now looking back I realize we had grocery stores … and when I say grocery stores, I mean stores where there was a butcher. We had butchers. As a matter of fact, a portion of my property where the driveway was, that was Bill Bryant’s grocery store. Wait a minute ... it was Bryant’s Stop and Shop grocery store. Bob Render: These were all minorities that owned these businesses. Dionne: Yes. So later, when we wanted to get a house, it’s a ranch style, so my house now sits on three parcels of land. The lots were short but deep. The lots go back almost to Golden Avenue. We had everything. If you wanted something from the grocery store, your mother would tell you to go have Mr. Bryant cube you some steaks. And then he would bring up the half a cow on his shoulder. I can see him slam it on the big butcher block, chop with the big chopper, whatever they did, then run it through this machine that would put the holes in it. Then they’d wrap it up in paper and give it to you. Bob: Brown paper or white paper? Dionne: Mr. Chapman had brown paper. Bill Bryant had white paper. No bags, just give it to you like that, and you’d just trot off. Now that’s two grocery stores within 100 feet. Bill Bryant’s grocery store and Mr. and Mrs. Chapman’s grocery store. Same thing. They lived upstairs, their business was downstairs. Their business now is the gallery (Central Roots Gallery). Fruits and vegetables would line Central and 79th with a scale. Because I lived across the street, sometimes when he got busy, I would go and weigh up the fruits and vegetables. I just thought that was wonderful. Bob: There was no such thing back then, we didn’t live in food deserts, as you know them now. Because you could go anywhere and get fresh fruit. Dionne: Oh no. And everybody had gardens. Everyone had backyards and the backyards had something in them, they weren’t just cute, they were utilitarian, they had to serve some function. You either had some chickens back there – Bob: You had some greens, tomatoes, onions. Dionne: Yes. And of course our parents hunted. So there was always squirrel, rabbit, pheasant. They hunted everywhere. As a matter of fact my nephews still hunt. There was a club my dad and his buddies formed. There was a group of men that hunted together. They went to I guess Iowa. It would always be a week, week and a half trip, and they drove, and would come back with deer and whatever else. At one time I even had the deer lamp, the deer foot, the deer feet, the pelt that they cured themselves with the salt. I was real cute, that was my room, I had my own deer stuff (laughs). And crazy enough, the head. Now, where are those things? They’d be worth a fortune now. How did I let that get away? Bob: Where did you go to school? Dionne: I went to Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. Lee: Did your whole family live at the corner of E. 79th and Central? Dionne: Yes, we lived upstairs on the second floor, and we rented out the third floor. My grandfather, my parents, and me and my brothers and sisters. My sister got married out of there, I got married out of there, my brother got married out of there. We never lived anywhere else. There were two storefronts. There was the bar and there was a unit next to it, it was a cleaner and then it was a pool hall. Back in the day, directly across the street was the Black Panther party, that was one of their headquarters. and we had several, 1-2-3 breweries right between 79th and 105th. Lee: It sounds like you could walk places to get things, you went to the local Catholic school, and you could walk there. Dionne: Yes, you could walk there. Bob: There was walkability, like when your grandfather was here. Most people didn’t have cars, those who did were fortunate to have cars. But there was walking. You had public transportation, trolleys and the bus, and you could walk everywhere. Dionne: This is what made this wonderful. The Central bus, when the RTA took the Central bus off the line, they said it was too short, we didn’t need it. The 33, I have the last schedule for the 33, showing how often it ran. We could stand out there and in a half an hour, less than 20 minutes be downtown. Take public transportation, and if I wanted to come from Euclid, get on the bus. You could go anywhere. Lee: What was the community like? You had a lot of friends in the neighborhood? Dionne: Oh yes. Bob: They didn’t use the term then - village. We lived in a village; we just didn’t refer to it as such. It was very cohesive, very safe. Dionne: And our playgrounds were usually in churches. Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament had a playground because it’s a school also. You guys would say, 'Meet you at the rec center' ... well, there was no rec center. We played basketball or whatever in the church parking lot, the church playground. There is another Baptist church, and it had a playground. Then there was the Salvation Army down the street, and it had a playground. If you went to Cedar where New Canaan is, there was St. James and Antioch. You could play anywhere. There were playgrounds everywhere. Lee: What did people do for work? Dionne: Right about here started the Ohio Buckeye Garment Company. We called it the overall factory. Bob: You remember at the turn of the century, 1910s, 1920s, blacks were not allowed to work just anywhere they wanted to work. You still had ... you know, Cleveland’s still one of the most segregated cities in the country. But there was an awful lot of entrepreneurship on the part of Negroes … Negroes, Blacks. African Americans. Like she said, you had a number of small grocery stores, a number of small cleaners. A lot of entrepreneurism. Ownership by African Americans, or Negroes then. And people knew how to hustle. Dionne: The overall factory was not African-American. Nor was Reliable Steel Company, which is directly across the street from this house, and it was a massive structure. Lee: Like blacks weren’t allowed to work there? Dionne: Back in the day, there were only one or two. There were always blacks at the overall factory. But there wasn’t blacks at reliable steel. And then of course you had Wellington come back this way. That building is still there. Blacks didn’t work there. Nor did they work across the street. Some of these buildings are still there because they were brick buildings, very well constructed. Bob: What you don’t have now that you had then, there were a number of black banks. Dionne: Oh, the empire! Bob: Dunbar. Quincy Savings and Loan. Dionne: When they tore down Quincy Savings and Loan, and this is so funny … they could not implode the safe with whatever their technology was at the time. Bob: It was built that good. Dionne: It stayed there as a skeleton until they mustered up whoever could bomb this thing and take it down. Yes, yes. Absolutely. And I don’t mean a month or two, I mean a year or two before they could get enough dynamite, strong enough dynamite, the A bomb, whatever, to drop on this thing to implode it! Bob: The other lending institutions wouldn’t loan black folks money. Dionne: And Cleveland Trust was around the corner on 79th. Bob: And 105th and Euclid. Dionne: And you couldn’t get a loan. Bob: Couldn’t get a loan. That’s why many of the black folks too their money out of Cleveland Trust and put their money in Society which is now Key Bank. Lee: So, how's the neighborhood changed over the years? Dionne: Oh. Per se, we don’t have a neighborhood. A neighborhood in my estimation is just a place where you have families, intact families, who have children that are in school, most of the time the mother worked in the home and not outside of the home, the fathers they were laborers, we didn’t have bankers or doctors. Only a few. Dr. Gunn lived in the neighborhood, Dr. Starling, but they were farther down on Cedar. Eventually we had some lawyers. And strangely enough, Father Wilson, one of the first Black priests, he was from the neighborhood, and so was Sister Juanita Sheeley. Bob: Here’s another interesting fact they seldom tell you. I had to learn it myself. By the 60s at least 70% of the black households were two family households. The mother and the father was there. And back then if they weren’t married it was called common law, ok? But there was a male and a mother in the household. Uncles might live down the street. There’s a misnomer that Blacks or Negroes come out of all these broken homes, that was not the case back when we were coming up. All the way into the 60s, in the majority of families, there were two parents there. Mother and father. Or a common law marriage. Dionne: Modern technology is good for some people, I don’t think it was really good for us. It gave you unreal expectations. The expectation is the grass was greener if you leave this area, this situation. If you leave this living situation you can do better. Television showing the mother baking cookies in her high heeled shoes and pearls and that’s not the case. Mothers had to get a job once the father moved out, well, your living conditions change, they have to change, your economics change, everyone takes on different roles, different responsibilities, children have to fend for themselves. That’s when you get latchkey kids, you know, no one was home and kids start getting in trouble because kids start congregating in the house or on the front porch and say, 'Now, oh look, let’s see if we can take that, let’s see if we can do this.' Different things that would come into their heads as children, as young people, and they’re not really knowing the extent of the devastation that they’re getting ready to unleash by getting involved in these different activities. Then everything just started deteriorating. Lee: It sounds like there was a Black middle-class community. Dionne: Oh yeah! I never knew. Did anyone tell me I was poor? I didn’t know I was poor. Well, I didn’t know I was middle class. Bob: I would say on the scale it was probably low middle class. We didn’t have the earning power that your white counterpart did. Dionne: But you didn’t know that. You had enough to eat, you had clothes, your daily needs were taken care of. You usually had a vacation once a year because we would always go back down south. Y'all tell me I was poor? OK! I didn't know that till I was in college. Bob: We never heard that word. Dionne: I never heard that. Bob: The most striking difference from the 90s up to now, compared to the 40s, 50s, 60s, everybody knew everybody on that street. Everybody. Dionne: Oh, too much! Lee: Too much in everybody’s business? Dionne: They didn’t even get in your business, but your business would get back to your house before you could get back to your house. We had a two way telephone. A party line. Bob: That was the fascinating thing. Your parents knew everything you were doing before you got home. Whether you did something at school, or on the way home … the neighbors would tell them. It was astonishing. There was no cell phone. There was no iPad. And yet they knew. And they knew exactly. They were notorious for saying, 'Are you saying that Ms. so and so is lying? Are you saying they're telling a lie on you' Dionne: Oooh … I didn’t get whoopings but let me tell you with my smart mouth, we had a drunk lady, what you would call an alcoholic, she just drank a little too much. Her name was Princilla. I can see Miss Princilla now. And I better be calling her Miss Princilla because that’s how I got that whooping. Miss Princilla told mama I did ... I don’t know what she said I did. And I was smart, I said, 'Are you going to listen to old drunk Priscilla?' Bob: You got sassy, that’s what they would have called it, you got sassy. Dionne: And you didn’t just get an isolated whooping, or an isolated thrashing, the sisters would get involved. She would call Nanny, Aunt Easter, Aunt Ossie … you just never lived it down. That’s after you've gotten a whopping. How much punishment... Bob: Do I have to endure (laughs). Dionne: And I mean, I was a good kid. Bob: But they did not tolerate being sassy or disrespectful. No matter what. That was taboo. You a child. The other thing I would say is so different, the stark contrast, was the respect factor. There were just certain things you did not do and if you crossed that line there’d be hell to tell the captain, as old folks say. You was gonna pay dearly. And the discipline was a part of coming up. In loco parentis … I went to Catholic school like she did, and if you got out of line, teachers had a right to discipline no matter what. Then when you got home you got it again. I remember once, Dionne, I got it three times, I got it at the school, and my mother knew about it before I got home. I must've sassed somebody. I could see her at the end of the street, I could see her all the way down there with that belt. You know, it took me forever to get there from where I was because I knew what I was gonna get. And she started on me right in the street. That was just a no-no. That was a complete no. The other thing they didn't tolerate, the criminal element did not solicit children to do anything. That was another no-no. There’s always been crime. That was among adults. You didn’t solicit children. Dionne: They would tell, you, boy go home. Get out of here. Bob: They knew who your parents were. Dionne: And if they were talking about something they didn't think you needed to hear, they would stop talking, even if you didn't know what they were talking about. When we came home from school, we would have to go through the bar to go upstairs. Listen, they understood that after I said 'Hello, everybody' I needed to be making myself through that bar to go upstairs because there was no lingering. No lingering. No listening. And if things got really hot and heavy, we'd go down the back steps and stand at the door to see what's going on. Most of the time there was nothing going on. But it was just the idea. You knew you could not come into the bar and hang and listen and get into adults' conversations. It's so much fun to think about now. How come I couldn't be taking notes then? I worked in the bar. When I was 21, I loved working in the bar. I loved working in the bar on Saturday morning, because you could find out what went on Friday night. If I served them and they were down here, they wouldn't talk. I knew, how am I going to do this? I took my book and went over to the other end of the bar. Most of the time they weren't talking about anything, but if they were discussing something, they would say, 'You need to go upstairs.' Now, I’m 21 years old. But they would say, 'You need to go upstairs.' And I'm like, what are you talking about that I need to hear? Oh boy. That is funny. Bob: Before integration ... Dionne: Oh yeah, we had no white children in our neighborhood. Bob: Well, there were no whites in your neighborhood. Dionne: Oh, you had whites in your neighborhood? Bob: Yeah. Same neighborhood, just a different part of it. Dionne: Our church was founded because the other churches did not want us to come there. I mean, they gave us a hard time. The Catholic churches. As a matter of fact, the priest would tell people like Aurelia Elliott, 'You need to go down to the church down the street.' She was trying to go to St. Agnes, and they sent her up to Blessed Sacrament. The Sanders, even though the school was founded for Negroes and Indians, I've never seen a Native American in Our Lady of Blessed Sacrament, but Katharine Drexel founded it for Negroes and Indians. We're the first Black Catholic church in Cleveland, and the second only to Xavier in New Orleans. Katharine founded both. She later became a nun and a canonized nun. She was from a wealthy family, a philanthropist, you know, that kind of thing. She has a fascinating story also.
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Spring has sprung and we've bought the house next door. Contractors are hard at work fixing it up, bringing the electrical up to date, repairing the broken plumbing, adding insulation where there was none at all, and more. Right now, we're planning to remove the cement board siding and restore and paint the original wood siding underneath. Ironically, instead of ruining the house it's acted like armor all these years (it's been there since the 60s) and protected the wood. We haven't yet decided on colors, but right now the choices range from muted browns and beiges to "irresistible" pink. When it's done, the house will be good for another few decades at least and we'll have another nest egg.
This house project reminds me of when we bought and fixed up our house next door for the first time, back in 2010, in the midst of the Great Recession. While it now seems laughable that we fretted over whether that was a smart move, since our neighborhood is now expensive with a rehabbed home on our street recently selling for more than $600,000, at the time things were a lot more uncertain and wobblier. Here's a pic of the house we just bought and something I wrote from that era, more than a decade ago, when we first moved onto our street in Detroit Shoreway. Oh, I remember those days when we were living in the city with little kids and we felt like we were the only ones, when we felt lonely and special.  Since the beginning of April, I've been teaching a class through Literary Cleveland called Writing About Dead Relatives: Turning Family History into Story.
In prepping for my class this week, I wanted to do some research that would show my students how they could access information about people, places, homes, and neighborhoods from the past. So, I reached out to Olivia Hoge from Cleveland Public Library about finding a historic photo of my great-grandfather's house at 2229 E. 80th St., which he built and lived in from 1910-1918. It fell into foreclosure and was torn down about 10 years ago, and though I visited it, I don't have a photo of it. She told me to email [email protected] for help, and within a few hours, Mark Tidrick had hooked me up with a photo. I've pasted it above. It's from 1961. I learned a lot from seeing this, since the only time I viewed the house was in the early 2000s when it was covered in vinyl siding. This photo gave me a sense of what the historic home looked like. It was built as a single, so I'm also fascinated by the fact that there are two front doors. I think maybe it was turned into a double or a triple sometime after my great-grandfather sold it and moved to Cleveland Heights, which wasn't uncommon at the time. The students in my class have some fascinating family stories, and I love learning about them and helping them do research, come up with ideas, and write their stories. |
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