Abstract

Rebecca Kempton discusses growing up in the Clark-Fulton and Ohio City neighborhoods in the 1970s, including memories of Puerto Rican and Appalachian neighbors, Aragon Ballroom, West Side Market, and Tremont. She discusses her memories of the controversial school desegregation order to implement busing. She also recalls her decision to return to live in Clark-Fulton in 1999. She shares her affinity for historic preservation, her campaign to recall a city councilman, and her involvement in what became the Metro West Community Development Organization. She concludes with an extensive recounting of the challenges and rewards of implementing the Neighborhood Connections–sponsored City Repair Cleveland project to clean up and paint murals on alleys in Clark-Fulton in 2013.

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Interviewee

Kempton, Rebecca (interviewee)

Interviewer

Nemeth, Sarah (interviewer)

Project

Metro West

Date

7-7-2017

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

77 minutes

Transcript

Sarah Nemeth [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Sarah Nemeth. It is July 7, 2017. We’re at the Metro West Community Development Organization offices. I’m here with Rebecca Kempton for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Could you please state your name for the record?

Rebecca Kempton [00:00:16] Rebecca Kempton.

Sarah Nemeth [00:00:17] And where were you born?

Rebecca Kempton [00:00:18] Right here in Cleveland at Metro Hospital.

Sarah Nemeth [00:00:21] Really?

Rebecca Kempton [00:00:21] Yep.

Sarah Nemeth [00:00:22] What side of town did you live on?

Rebecca Kempton [00:00:24] At that time I believe, actually, my parents lived on the east side, so I’m not 100% sure how I got to Metro, but they lived near the Broadway area, I believe.

Sarah Nemeth [00:00:33] Okay, so, like, Broadway and, what, East 55th?

Rebecca Kempton [00:00:36] Yeah, near there. I mean, I can think of some landmarks, but they might not be relevant right now. Yeah, the old St. Alexis Hospital. I believe that. I think it was Jewett Avenue, but I don’t think that that avenue exists anymore. I think it might have been taken out with a highway expansion. Or if it is, it’s probably real small.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:01] Perfect. I can look, though.

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:02] Oh, okay.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:05] So what year was that?

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:06] 1967.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:07] Okay. So you were coming in. Well, you were born.

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:10] I was born.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:11] Right when they put in, like, [I–]71 and 90?

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:14] Yeah. That was all the expansion, because the city had, populace was really was a lot larger than it is now. So, I mean, the city was just expanding. There were lots of money for infrastructures and things like that, so, yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:25] And what did your parents do?

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:27] My mom was a stay at home mom, and my dad was over the road truck driver.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:31] Oh, that’s cool.

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:32] Yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:01:35] And so you lived on. Where did you attend school?

Rebecca Kempton [00:01:37] So then, by the time I went to school, I actually went to Walton School for first grade, right over here, because they had moved to the west side and lived on Kinkel Avenue, which is right off of West 25th. And I went to Walton school from first- I don’t know why I didn’t go to kindergarten. I don’t know why. Maybe that explains a lot that’s wrong with me nowadays. [laughs] But. So first through second grade, I went to Walton school, and then we moved out of state for a little while. And then when I came back, when we came back, I went to- So, third grade, I was in Indiana. And then when we came back, I went to Orchard School, and then I went there through 6th grade. And then there was a lot of issues with busing and desegregation. And so my class, the 7th grade class, would have been the first class to actually be bused. And there was just a lot of fear, there was a lot of uncertainty, there was a lot of violence. And then I went to a private school in, a couple different private schools, because a lot of them popped up during that time because they were trying to cash in on different things. And I went to a private school in Parma, but I’ve always pretty much lived right here on the west side.

Sarah Nemeth [00:03:03] Do you have any remembrances of your time in first grade? Like, who were your classmates? What did your school look like?

Rebecca Kempton [00:03:11] So. Oh, my goodness. My first grade teacher, her name was, what was her name? Mrs. Beamer. And I remember Walton School so specifically because it was a newer school at that time. I mean, I don’t think that it was brand new, but I mean, I guess if we looked it up, but I bet it was only a few years old. And they had an inside courtyard and they had, like, a terrarium. And it was so fascinating to me that it was inside, you know. And I remember also English as a second language, or Spanish, English as a second language, ESL, yeah, I had to think. That was- That would have been, like, the first or second year, I believe, maybe even the first year that it was being taught in Cleveland public schools. And so there were lots of children in my classroom that didn’t speak good English, that were going through these, you know, that they had not an interpreter in the classroom, but they would go out of the room for special learning, and then they’d be back in the room and stuff like that. So I can remember that.

Sarah Nemeth [00:04:19] So there was a large Spanish-speaking-?

Rebecca Kempton [00:04:22] Yes, yes. Yeah. [crosstalk] Already at that time. So that would have been like, I don’t know what year.

Sarah Nemeth [00:04:29] Like 70-something?

Rebecca Kempton [00:04:30] Yeah. So about ’72, I guess, or so trying to think. Yeah, my sister was born in ’74, so if I go backwards. So ’72, ’73, something like that. Yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:04:43] And were there any other languages spoken or was it just Spanish and English?

Rebecca Kempton [00:04:49] Just Spanish and English that I can recall, yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:04:53] And your neighborhood, do you remember who lived in your neighborhood?

Rebecca Kempton [00:04:57] So when I was that age, hmm. I do know that there were some Hispanic people. I remember that. It’s just the funny, the memories that you have, because I know that there was this lady that lived next door, and she spoke Spanish, and she would have me come over to her house sometimes, you know, just as a little kid, and she was from Puerto Rico, and I always remembered because her couches all had plastic slip covers on ’em. And I used to think that was so weird. [laughs] Isn’t that funny? Like a weird remembrance? And she would give me orange juice with ice in it, and I used to tell my mom, that is so cool. I just thought that was, like, the most amazing thing. And there were also a lot of Appalachian people that lived in this area. So, you know, and it’s- You know, you could just tell, like, lots of people from West Virginia or Kentucky and not so much Tennessee as I really recall, but lots of people from West Virginia and Kentucky. And then there were also some people that were, you know, like, there was also a higher population of Italian people too.

Sarah Nemeth [00:06:08] Okay. I know that you were young, but, or if you even remember, maybe those groups clashing? Was there issues?

Rebecca Kempton [00:06:15] You know, I don’t really remember that. I don’t. I just remember that there- That there were. I do remember maybe not exactly at that age, but as a little older, you know, people wanting to leave, like, some of the older people that lived here who had lived here for a long time, they were gonna move to Parma or they were moving to Lakewood. I do remember, like, my parents discussing that, like, well, this person’s gonna move or that person’s gonna move. And I’m not really sure why. It just seemed like that kind of upwardly mobile, like, you know, you get to a certain point in your life, maybe you move instead of- Or maybe they were fearful. I’m not really sure.

Sarah Nemeth [00:06:51] Okay, so you had- You were hanging out with your next-door neighbor and having a good time.

Rebecca Kempton [00:06:58] Yeah, it was like, so seven years old in my orange juice. [laughs]

Sarah Nemeth [00:07:03] Do you remember any of the smells in the neighborhood? Any of the cooking? The restaurants, maybe? Did you guys go out?

Rebecca Kempton [00:07:12] No, I don’t really, I don’t really remember. I mean, I guess we did. I mean, I know there was a little tiny diner that we used to pass that used to be on West 25th. And my mom didn’t drive, so we took the bus a lot. I used to think it was so cool. I always wanted to go in there, but I don’t think- Or if we did, it wasn’t anything. One of the things I really remember about when I lived on Kinkel and I was that age was that the Aragon Ballroom was still operating then. It’s a large building that’s- And they literally had ballroom dancing in there. So in the evenings, especially on the weekend, you would see these people in, like, suits and ball gowns, like, walking down the street. It was so awesome as, especially imagine, like, five or six years old, you know, seven. And they were so beautiful. And, I mean, they have these beautiful gowns on and everything. And then you could hear the music and everything. And shortly it closed after that. But I have very, very distinct memories of that.

Sarah Nemeth [00:08:09] Could you describe it a little bit?

Rebecca Kempton [00:08:11] So the building looked, I think in my mind it looked elegant. I don’t really think that it did, because it was old and it was already beginning to start to decay. But it had sort of, like, columns. And there’s no parking. The building, which I learned just a few years ago because of another reason, the building literally takes up its whole footprint. So it had no parking. So the people would- And there’d be several hundred people that would come, and so they’d park a lot of different places. So you’d see them walking for a long way, like maybe over a block. So, you know, and just the ladies with their long gowns and, you know, their, you know, and you could always tell their hair would be up. And they have on a lot of makeup. They just look so, so elegant and beautiful, you know, so, yeah, I always. This was a cool. And then a little bit further down, there was an adult bookstore that was very, you know, and even though I didn’t know what it was like, I knew it wasn’t, like, a cool, like, don’t ask your dad about this. [laughs] That’s a bad place, you know? And it had a marquee ’cause it was a theater. It was called the Paris theater. And it had been a normal movie theater, like, maybe in the forties and the fifties and the sixties. But, like, so many movie theaters that happened, you know, in urban areas, they just became abandoned. And they showed, you know, pornographic movies there. And literally on the marquee, the big marquee with the lights, it would say XXX [laughs], you know, and even though I didn’t exactly know, I had a feeling.

Sarah Nemeth [00:09:42] So you’re watching all of these- [crosstalk]

Rebecca Kempton [00:09:44] [laughs] Yeah. Right. It was just like a block apart. Like a short block apart, too. It was really kind of funny. Well, you asked! [crosstalk] Right. You know, it was- You know, it was changing. You know, it was changing. And shortly after that, I would say, I don’t know, but I bet by 1975 or 1976, the Aragon was probably closed. And then we moved from there. And then I lived on Columbus Road, which is in Ohio City. Well, they don’t always claim us. They didn’t before. We weren’t really Ohio City. But if you look at the map, I think that is, now they claim it again, I guess. That’s local politics for you. But so I grew up there, and the rapid on Columbus Road, there’s only homes on one side of the street because the rapid comes through. And so that was a really weird experience when we moved there because, like, you know, your stuff in your dresser would shake just a little bit. I mean, after a month or so, you just learn to get used to it. But the noise from, from the train was kind of strange, you know, and we could walk real close. We could walk to the West Side Market and other things like that.

Sarah Nemeth [00:11:00] Do you remember what that neighborhood looked like? It was at that time-

Rebecca Kempton [00:11:06] So it was like a lot of neighborhoods still are today. It was like one part was a little bit better than the other part. So Columbus Road, per se, was very nice because it had two businesses, four houses, and then the church. St. Gwendolyn’s Catholic Church was there. So, too, there was sisters that lived on the street. They had never married. They lived there, and they kind of took responsibility. The one particularly, she took responsibility for mowing the grass on the tree lawn on the other side. I’m sure she got- As an adult, I realized that she probably got paid by somebody, but at the time, I was like, why does she do that? But she always kept it clean and cut the grass every week in the summer and stuff like that. But then on the streets right behind there, which was like West 20th and Freeman going to Abbey Avenue, those type places, it was really- There was a lot of, I would say, people that were, again, Appalachian and really poor and also maybe not really educated. You know, I can just remember people that didn’t graduate school or just people, a lot of them worked or their husband worked, but just barely making ends meet, just always struggling, that kind of stuff.

Sarah Nemeth [00:12:33] Where did people work at?

Rebecca Kempton [00:12:36] Hmm, I think. I don’t know. Let’s see. Where do people work at? I think retail. A lot of people worked in, like, Kmart’s, and we used to have a department store called Zayre’s. They went out of business a long time ago. People worked there. I think some people worked at some of the car manufacturers too. You know, I think, like, Chevy or Ford was a little bit bigger then. But I think I remember that. But I think it seemed to be as people didn’t ever really get full time work. Like, maybe they weren’t as skilled, so they would work for a certain period of time, or they were only, they weren’t actually hired in by the company as permanent, you know, so people kind of struggled. I’m not really sure what else. I don’t know. Hmm.

Sarah Nemeth [00:13:32] When- So you lived on Columbus Street after you left Kinkel, and then you went to Indiana?

Rebecca Kempton [00:13:37] We went to Indiana, no. So from Kinkel, we went to Indiana, and then we came back. Oh, sorry. I lived on Bridge Avenue for a little while. Oh, I forgot. See, good job. So, yeah, so we lived on Bridge Avenue, that was actually Ohio City proper. So we lived there about two years near 41st and Bridge. Yeah, I remember there was an ice cream place there, which is still there today. It’s gone through a couple different transitions, and now it’s a little trendy place. But when I was a little girl, it was called Dairy Delight, and it was, like, near, you know, right where we lived. And so that was cool. So, yeah, I lived- [laughs] Yeah, I forgot about that or skipped over two years of my life. And from Bridge Avenue then, we went to Columbus Road.

Sarah Nemeth [00:14:24] What was the West Side Market like when you went there?

Rebecca Kempton [00:14:26] It was amazing. It’s to this day, at 50 years old, when I walk into the West Side Market, when I smell the inside of the West Side Market, which to me is a good smell, it’s like I’m instantly transported to when I was like a little kid. I love it. It just feels like home or feels like a good memory. It was busy and it was cold and hot because at that point in time, they didn’t have- In the last ten years, they’ve built an enclosure on the outside to help the outside vendors, you know, like, deal with the temperature changes? But when I was a little girl that wasn’t there. And, like, in the wintertime, it was so incredibly cold. And the people would have, like, they were, like, they couldn’t move, you know, they had so much, you know, cold, I mean, you know, winter coats and everything on. And then they all had, I remember this, they all had, like, kerosene heaters, like, at the stands, you know. And I think about, like, fire codes and stuff today, like, ahh, you know, but, I mean, they would froze to death. It was cold, you know, so I remember that in the wintertime I didn’t even really like going to the outside, even though a strange way, it was warmer when you were in a shopper in the aisle, correct. Yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:15:46] Was it- Would you say there’s more vendors now than there were or-?

Rebecca Kempton [00:15:53] Yeah, the vendors- I mean, the market seems much different to me now. I mean, I still enjoy it and I like it, but it doesn’t- When I was a little girl, I liked the idea when I would see a sign that says, you know, we’ve been here for 30 years, or we’ve, you know, we’re like the original families and stuff like that. And I understand that things change, but it seems as though a lot of that history isn’t there anymore. There’s lots of vendors that come and go, and, you know, there’s been some concern that the city isn’t supporting the market in its natural state to be a market, they kind of want to use it as a tourist attraction. And I’m concerned about that because in other municipalities across the country, whenever they haven’t kept true to the real purpose of the markets, the markets haven’t survived. And it’s- It’s a gem, and there’s not that many markets like it left in the country. And so I’m- I’m at odds with some of the, you know, elected officials in my belief of how it should be managed.

Sarah Nemeth [00:16:56] That makes sense. Sometimes when you try to make something, when, when you lose the essence of something-

Rebecca Kempton [00:17:02] Yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:17:03] It seems fake.

Rebecca Kempton [00:17:04] It is. I mean, I mean, or it, you know, it could very easily turn that way. You know, it’s not- It’s a place to shop. It’s not a tourist. I mean, it let it be a tourist attraction because it is. Because it’s fabulous for what it really is. Don’t try to make it into something because it was already great. [crosstalk] It already was something. Right, exactly. Exactly.

Sarah Nemeth [00:17:25] Was there a favorite place that you always stopped at?

Rebecca Kempton [00:17:28] In the market? Yeah. There was a place where- And I really can’t remember the name, I was thinking, but we used to get, like, homemade smokies, and it was like a treat and yeah, so my dad would all, you know, whenever my mom would get them, too, but it was like, a thing to go with my dad, and if, you know, if he went to the market and we always got these smokies and, you know, sometimes we’d have them even before we came home, and it was, like, only, like, two blocks, you know? [laughs] You know. And so yeah, and I remember my- There’s a park right across the street from the market now - there had been a building there and it was torn down - and I remember my mom was involved with the city council person at that time, trying to encourage the city to, like, turn that into a park. So, you know. You know, just always been involved in something. Yeah.

Sarah Nemeth [00:18:16] I didn’t know that there used to be a building there.

Rebecca Kempton [00:18:18] Right. It’s so easy when you, when it’s gone and then you see something else to have a memory. I don’t remember the building there, but it was open space. [crosstalk] You know, it wasn’t like-

Sarah Nemeth [00:18:28] It wasn’t always into a purpose.

Rebecca Kempton [00:18:30] Into a- Yeah, right.

Sarah Nemeth [00:18:31] Okay. So you’re kind of in Ohio City on Columbus, but not really. Maybe they’ll claim you.

Rebecca Kempton [00:18:39] Yeah! Yeah! [laughs]

Sarah Nemeth [00:18:43] And at that point, where do you move to?

Rebecca Kempton [00:18:45] So. Wow. So my parents had separated for a while, and I lived- I lived in Parma for just a little while, but just for a little, like, less than three or four months. And then I moved to Denison. Yeah. So I lived at Denison near 55th and, I don’t know, 58th in Denison, I think, in a little small apartment there. And I worked at a factory that was called New Era Products and they made- They made lights for tool manufacturers, like snap-on tools and [inaudible] tools, those kind of things. They made drop lights for mechanics. And it was a super low-paying job, and it was probably one of the- It was extremely fun. It was a great place to work in the sense that it was just crazy. You know, the- It was very low. It was minimum wage, you know, so whatever that was. And we just had a lot of- There were some people that had worked there a long time, and then there were a lot of young people, like, around my age, which was about 21, 22 at the time. And the production manager knew that nobody was getting paid, so he tried to make it, like, a really fun environment, you know, like, you know, tried to keep it upbeat. People had radios, and they played. You know, it was a neat place. It had been there for a long time, so I worked there for a while and-

Sarah Nemeth [00:20:20] Did you work on the line?

Rebecca Kempton [00:20:21] Yeah, I actually ran some machines that put plugs- Well, I did a- In that place, you kind of learned everything. But the primary job that I had was a job where you- So when you have anything that has an electric plug to it, at some point, you take a wire and you have to put that metal blade on it. So I ran a machine that put the metal blade on it. Yeah. And then once there’s two metal blades, you put it into another machine that pours the hot melted plastic around it to form the plug.

Sarah Nemeth [00:20:47] Interesting.

Rebecca Kempton [00:20:48] I know. Who knew? [laughs]

Sarah Nemeth [00:20:50] You don’t think about these things.

Rebecca Kempton [00:20:51] Right. It just exists. How did it make- Yeah, exactly. So I worked there, and then I worked for a few- Oh, I think I skipped something. So I did live someplace else. Do you want me to go backwards?

Sarah Nemeth [00:21:07] Yeah, definitely. I wanted to go back to the busing thing where you-

Rebecca Kempton [00:21:10] Oh, okay. So, yeah, I know it’s gonna be out of order. I lived on Chatham. I lived at 38th and Chatham after I lived in Parma for a little while. Okay, so I went there. So everything else is in line. Yeah. Sorry. [laughs] Like, oh, I don’t even know my own life. And I rented an apartment there from my best friend’s father. They owned a duplex, and I lived upstairs over top of them, and it felt like almost kind of like home because I had, you know, been there so many times as a child because, you know, was their house. So I lived there. And, yeah, I- It was a great place. And then, you know, I don’t know, life goes on, you know, they moved, and then I ended up moving back with my mom for a while, and she lived off Denison in another place and, you know, go on. So you wanted to go backwards before I go to-

Sarah Nemeth [00:22:03] Oh, yeah, I wanted to go backwards to busing. So from what you observed, you actually didn’t have to bus-

Rebecca Kempton [00:22:11] No.

Sarah Nemeth [00:22:11] Because you went to private.

Rebecca Kempton [00:22:12] Right.

Sarah Nemeth [00:22:12] But what you observed, I mean, did some of your friends have to bus?

Rebecca Kempton [00:22:17] Yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible. A lot of it had to do with fear. Part of it was racism. Part of it is because the public schools wasn’t organized. People were afraid. I mean, and not afraid. I don’t know that somebody was afraid to go to school with somebody who was Black, but they were afraid to go so far away from home because lots of people’s families didn’t have cars. This neighborhood has always been and still is today, generally, the Near West Side, lots of, I mean, if you look outside there’s lots of cars, but a lot of people don’t drive. And especially then, people were afraid for their kids to be so far from home. The schools didn’t- You know, it was forced to segregation. You know, it’s so different now. But then, so there was anger and there was frustration. And if anything little happened that maybe if it was in your neighborhood school, your mom or your dad would say, suck it up. If it happened there, the fear was so great, you know, people didn’t go to school, and lots of people were not, were not, were not-

Sarah Nemeth [00:23:25] Excuse me.

Rebecca Kempton [00:23:30] Were not- Didn’t graduate. And I think if you would look, that is the year that the graduation rate started declining. And a lot of it was out of fear or something did happen, you know, that was legitimate. And the schools didn’t know how to address it because instead of people addressing things like this, and even unfortunately, I think it happens still now, today, it was like, well, just be politically correct, or let’s just pretend like it really wasn’t that bad. And it’s like, if it was bad, we have to face it. It doesn’t matter if you’re purple with green polka dots, it doesn’t matter your color but you can’t have this violence, you know? And they didn’t want to address it because they wanted to pretend that, you know, it’s okay. We’re doing a good job. You know, it’s working. And it wasn’t working because if you start looking at the, at the graduation rates, you know, I think. Cause most of the people that I was in 7th or 8th grade with or 6th grade, but my friends, most of them didn’t graduate. My close friends or they went back and got GEDs. So, I mean, I have an attitude about it. Cause I feel that it really, you know, affected me in a way because, I mean, I was going to two different schools ’cause my parents, you know, like, one wasn’t, ended up not being accredited, and it was just- But just my friends and, like, my neighborhood, like, what did it say them, you know? So, yeah, it has nothing to do with anybody getting a full education, but nobody likes being forced. Right? And it doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s just the idea that it’s forced, you know, so, I mean, it’s better now, I think, as far as, you know, open enrollment - I think in Cleveland now you can pretty much go anywhere - and, you know, all schools should have the same opportunity. It’s nothing to do in my mind about the books or the teachers. It’s just, you know, people don’t like to be forced, you know? Yeah. In anything.

Sarah Nemeth [00:25:31] Especially something like that can be frightening to everyone.

Rebecca Kempton [00:25:33] Right, exactly.

Sarah Nemeth [00:25:36] At that- Were there any violent things that happened to your friends?

Rebecca Kempton [00:25:42] So, I mean, yeah, I had- Okay, so. So don’t forget, they first, they did it with the seniors. So, you know, the seniors started and there was some violence, like those first years, and I don’t know much of that ’cause, I mean, I would have been, like- It would have been the first junior high class. So I remember- And that’s made it scarier for parents with younger kids, you know, like myself, and then- But they said, whoever they are, that they expected more problems out of the junior high students, maybe because they’re not as mature, but yet, you know, they’re being ramped up from their parents or their peers and different things. And I think that did happen. But, yeah, I had friends that were female girlfriends that were attacked at school. I had one that was almost raped. A friend, very good. She quit school. She told her mom, I think she was in the 8th grade, and she’s like, you can’t make me go back. She wouldn’t go back. I was horrible. She ended up going back. But, I mean, it was bad. And she was terrified. She was just absolutely terrified. And, you know, I think in 1980 versus 2017, like, children are more exposed to things, so certain things that would scare somebody who was, you know, a child then or a young teenager then compared to what might scare somebody now is different. But it was true fear, right?

Sarah Nemeth [00:27:06] Right, it’s fear. [crosstalk] It’s fear. You can’t justify it either way, but it always changes.

Rebecca Kempton [00:27:11] And then there was a problem with the busing itself, because then there wasn’t enough buses, or the buses wasn’t right, and then they decided to make it where the teenagers, or, you know, the junior high and the high school, not the elementary, could take RTA. So then there were all these kids on the buses, and then, you know, people were working, and then kids were not behaving properly on the buses, and they were rude. And then the buses, the RTA wasn’t prepared, or they didn’t want to actually add additional buses. So the buses would be like sardines, you know, like it was standing room only for a long time, not standing room only from, you know, 25th to downtown. I mean, halfway the route, and it was just uncomfortable. People didn’t like it. So, I mean, there was just lots of tension because of it. So then other people that didn’t have any skin in the game, like their kids weren’t being bossed, or they didn’t live in Cleveland, then they had attitudes about it, too, because now they were being affected when they were on the buses and stuff. So life. [laughs]

Sarah Nemeth [00:28:13] Yeah, very interesting time. At that point, was this predominantly White and Hispanic?

Rebecca Kempton [00:28:23] Yes. It was still my neighborhood. I mean, I would, let’s say when I was in 6th grade, somebody else asked me this, and this is the reason I know. I mean, like, a long time ago, it just stuck in my mind. My 6th grade class at Orchard Elementary had two African American students. That’s it. Everybody else was either Hispanic or White, so. And I never really did understand the disproportionate, because I know that when, like, some of, like, my one friend too, like, a lot of her classes at the school that she went to, she was the only White student there. So I’m like, well, where are all the other- Where are all the other White students going? Or Hispanics, where are they? Like, so I don’t know if it’s because disproportionately White parents had racial problems or whatever the problems were, and they didn’t enroll their kids, or they unenrolled them and sent them- There were lots of fly by night schools that popped up to try to take advantage of the situation. And they really, I think they like fear mongers, you know, like, oh, you’re gonna be safe here. But I never personally understood that if you were going to take all these kids from over here and these kids were predominantly White, and you were going to move all these kids from over here and they were predominantly Black, why, when you got over to Glenville, you would have classes that only had two White students. I still never figured that out. [laughs] I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying I could never- Like, even to this minute, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like, I don’t know. What did you do with them? Put them all in the basement? I mean, I don’t know.

Sarah Nemeth [00:29:56] Where did they go?

Rebecca Kempton [00:29:58] Where did they go? You know, so whatever.

Sarah Nemeth [00:30:04] Did, after the- Well, as busing’s happening, all of this is going on, did a lot of African American families come to the west side at that point instead of just-

Rebecca Kempton [00:30:15] Yeah, yeah, I would say that was the beginning, because just like, anybody who wasn’t, they didn’t want their kids bused over here either. So I. A lot of them thought that, I think because not every child was bused. I think it was like a percentage, you know, like, some were and some weren’t. It wasn’t- And so if they lived on the- I think the thought was if they had. If they were African American and they lived on the west side, they had a better chance of their child going to the community school. So I don’t know if that’s the exact science of it, but I think that was the thought process, and sometimes it worked. So I would say that was maybe the beginning of when more African American families moved in. But, I mean, I think certain communities were, you know, like, harder to, I would imagine, like, Ohio City was, was harder to accept them because the prices even back then were pretty high. There was a lot of historic homes and a lot of, you know, like, people trying to really control who lived there and who didn’t. In Tremont at that time, before Tremont was the Tremont that we know today, Tremont was really a rough place to be, and so there was, you know, housing projects there. And I would say the majority of the people that lived in those projects at the time were probably African American or really, really uneducated, you know, Appalachians that were just here and just didn’t, you know, didn’t maybe just c

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