Abstract

Frank Jackson was first elected Mayor of Cleveland in 2005, after serving 15 years in the City Council. As Mayor, Jackson kept the city solvent during a deep recession shortly after he took office. He has welcomed police reform, and has led a plan to transform Cleveland's public schools. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.

Interviewee

Jackson, Frank (interviewee)

Interviewer

Perry, Dee (interviewer); Hickey, Christine (participant); Donato, Mike (participant)

Project

Stokes: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future

Date

8-21-2017

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

47 minutes

Transcript

Dee Perry [00:00:05] It is Monday, August 21, 2017, and we're sitting in the Red Room at Cleveland City Hall with Mayor Frank Jackson for the conversation about the Stokes commemoration project. And thank you, Mayor Jackson, for taking the time.

Frank Jackson [00:00:21] Thank you.

Dee Perry [00:00:22] I want to start with the time in 1967 leading up to Carl Stokes election. During the campaigning phase, were you hearing things from people that you knew, overhearing them talking, or hearing things in the news about support for Carl or not support?

Frank Jackson [00:00:43] Well, in '67, I was in the Army, but it was still well known that Carl Stokes was running for mayor. And it was also well positioned in the African American community. It was more like a cause was a mission that I remember. But I went into the Army in October of '66, and so I spent all the way up to May of '69 in the Army. But whenever I would come home, you could tell that it was a mission. It was a mission.

Dee Perry [00:01:26] So.

Mike Donato [00:01:27] One second, Mayor, your tie. Would you put your tie maybe in your jacket and just kind of bring your jacket in? Thank you.

Dee Perry [00:01:35] So you were away from home then in '67 when he actually won?

Frank Jackson [00:01:40] Yeah, but I remember I came home and I must have been on leave because they had the announcement of his victory, and he came out and talked to the people. I believe we were downtown at now Renaissance Hotel. And the thing I remember most about that, I don't remember exactly what he said, but what I remember most about that was there were. There was this one man in particular who I knew was a man who was a street person, not in terms of homelessness, but in terms of just knowing the street and being around on the street. And he was crying. He was crying over the fact that Carl Stokes was elected mayor. And this would be considered a tough person, a tough street person. And he was crying over the fact that Carl Stokes was elected mayor. That I remember. I don't even remember what Carl Stokes said during his announcement that he had won, but I do remember that.

Dee Perry [00:02:55] Why do you think there was such a depth of emotion? Was it just about the fact that he was a Black mayor, or was there something else to it?

Frank Jackson [00:03:06] Well, it was the time. The time that we were living in then, you remember this was- We were still partially segregated to a great degree. And on Central, where I live, on 38th and Central, my family moved there in 1960, and I can remember it was the tail end of segregation, was still there. And if you were African American and you were moving to the city of Cleveland, Central is probably the place you'd wind up and maybe a couple other places throughout the city. But Central was the place. And I remember that this whole thing around the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Black nationalists, it was a movement, so to speak. And then Mayor Stokes rolled that movement to become mayor of the city of Cleveland, which was historical, and people looked at it that way. And people were part of this movement. They were part of the Civil Rights. It's the same thing I saw happen when President Barack Obama was elected. There were people who were jubilant about it and shared tears about it, even though I know there were probably others that were not so happy, just like they weren't happy about Carl Stokes being elected mayor. But that's the way it went. In the African American community. It was precedent setting. It was historical, and people were in that moment.

Dee Perry [00:04:57] Now, as you mentioned, you went into the service for about three years between '66 and '69 and serving in Vietnam. By the time you got out in '69, the city had changed and so had the attitude that jubilance towards Carl Stokes. Talk about what you observed when you came back home?

Frank Jackson [00:05:22] Well, when I came back home, it was like future shock. I went away and then there were kids who I saw playing marbles and riding bikes. And when I came back, some of them were involved in drug activity and criminal activity. There were men and women that I knew when I went in who were, as I said, they were prominent people in terms of the street culture. And I remember seeing a couple of them who were probably this close to being homeless. And it, to me, it was really complete opposite of what I saw leaving. When I came back, there was. The riots had occurred about 66, 68, I think it was. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, I think Bobby Kennedy. So there was a lot of this mood going on. There was urban renewal. There was many ways complete abandonment of that area of the central city, the central area. Redlining was going on. So you had people. Businesses were closing, people were moving out of their homes, their homes became abandoned, got tore down, vacant lots of grass, weeds, high criminal activity. All these things that were not necessarily there when I went away. And particularly the lack of this cohesiveness where you had everybody living in the same spot, whether they were professional, business or welfare, a working person, whatever it was. And we as children, we all went to school together, no matter who our parents were. And now what was happening is there were people who could move or did want to move somewhere else. They did, but left behind the poorest of the poor in many cases. And as I said, just like when my house was my family's house was one of the few homes left in. Seemed like a sea of vacant land with high grass. And then you had. And in the midst of all that you had these large public housing estates that had 10,000 units or 1200 units, 1100 units. And I'm not talking about just one estate. I'm talking about Carver, Outhwaite, King-Kennedy over Cedar, Cedar Extension, all that's in one spot. And then I can remember when I was a young teenager and my family doctor, my father's family doctor stayed in Longwood, which was in a state, not public housing, but it was professional, people lived there. And when I got back it was a Section 8 property and it was that kind of thing. So we were no longer segregated to the extent where everybody was forced to live in the same area and people moved. And then there was the economics of redlining and the. And loss of commercial and retail ownership of business by people who lived there. Abandoned houses and demolition, vacant land, crime, all this stuff that had not existed before had not existed. If there was crime, it was. Wasn't like it was then. It was a complete difference. And then there was a lot of drugs, a lot of drug activity going on there.

Dee Perry [00:09:42] And Mayor Stokes, I'm sure wanted to tackle those things. But after the Glenville riots in 1968, you've mentioned in the past that he was struggling.

Frank Jackson [00:10:03] He had challenges. In the beginning there was this hope with non-African American people that this African American mayor would be able to deal with all of the centuries and centuries of disparity and ill will and all the negative side. They thought that I guess the election of him would solve all that. But they found that it's more than just one person. The system was still behaving the way it behaved. And as a result of that, there was some reaction to that, particularly as a result of the civil rights movement and that part of the Civil Rights movement that was more aggressive in the non violent side. And then it exploded, as you said, with the Glenville and then was it Evans, Fred Ahmed Evans situation. Was it the Afro, I forget the name.

Dee Perry [00:11:12] Afro Set.

Frank Jackson [00:11:13] Afro Set organization. And so at that point there was more of a disenchantment with Mayor Stokes as before. There was hope that he could solve all these problems. And now there became a disenchantment with him as being mayor because it was, I think, unreasonable to expect that if you let the system behave the same way it's been behaving for decades or centuries or so, that one man could come in and just because he is African American, make all that go away. It was very unrealistic to make that assumption. He worked on it. He worked on it, but it didn't take long for the general public, but non African American general public to get disillusioned by thinking they had a panacea.

Dee Perry [00:12:15] At the same time, the star of Louis Stokes was rising. He was in Congress beginning in 1969. Were you hearing things about him, reading things about?

Frank Jackson [00:12:32] No. The congressman had a different kind of personality. The mayor was more, I guess, outgoing and his approach to things. He didn't mind a good fight, all these kind of things. Whereas the congressman, he was not as outgoing, would do a good fight, but he was very methodical and professional. Professional. He was a gentleman, but he made significant impact. I can remember when he was elected, people were just as happy that he got elected as they were when Mayor Stokes was elected. And he being a congressman, he gained a lot of power and authority from that popularity he had and the support he had from what was then the 21st District. There were a couple of times he ran as a favorite son for mayor, not for mayor, for president, and as a result of that, got to vote. And so he had control of some delegates at a convention that he could leverage for different things. So he was a very shrewd man, very methodical, very shrewd, professional, very strategic in his thinking and his behavior.

Dee Perry [00:14:13] And I want to come back to that, but I wanted to fill in some of. The blanks in your story that we haven't touched on. Because once you were back home, even though you hadn't been a good student through the elementary, through high school, when you came back from the service, you had a hunger for learning.

Frank Jackson [00:14:44] I didn't get that at first. As you mentioned, when I was going from kindergarten to 12th grade, I was not a very good student. I failed so many times, particularly, particularly third grade, for whatever reason. And so I was. When I graduated, I was 19 and a half. And within a couple of months, three or four months, I was 20 years old and in the Army. And so when I came Back in 69, I did what I did. I went back to working. I ran around a while, did all these kind of things, ran around the streets, did all kind of stuff. And eventually, however, I decided that I wanted to learn something. And I'm about 27, 28 years old, and I went to Community College, the Metro Campus, which is right down the street from where I live. And I didn't know anything about registration or enrollment. I didn't know any of that. Kind of terminology. I can remember going onto the campus and I saw somebody and I said, where do I sign up? And they pointed me to a building. I went in there and I did everything they told me. They gave me some tests, and I wound up having to take all these remedial classes for reading and writing and that kind of stuff. But I knew how to read and write, but not to the point I could pass any college course. But during these remedial courses, I learned how to structure a paper, I knew where to put a period, what was a real paragraph, all these kind of things. And then I was reading the books. And even though the books were in English and I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, it was a different kind of English to me. I didn't understand the words. I didn't understand any of it. So I had to learn how to translate the concepts that was in the textbook into what I understood. And when I was able to do that, I realized I really noticed stuff. I learned it from just life, from experience. Now, 1 and 1 is 2. Chemistry formula is what it is. So you have to remember that, right? But these other courses, I learned how to interpret the book from that form of English into the English I understood. And I was able to get through community college. And then I went to Cleveland State. Bachelor's, Master's, and eventually a law degree. But I didn't start until I was about 12, 27 or 28. But it was not to get a degree. I really wanted to learn something, and I just wanted to learn. And I went to this place where they said you could learn something. That's where I went. But it wasn't to get a degree. I really didn't have a concept of degrees and things, but eventually I got them. I learned how to do that, too.

Dee Perry [00:18:11] And along the way, you also learned ways to be of service to the community. And in that regard, you had a mentor, I think, in Lonnie Burton?

Frank Jackson [00:18:29] No, he wasn't a mentor. He was a friend. A friend. He was a friend. I got introduced to politics by him simply because he lived a few doors down from me, and we were teenagers together. He was a friend, and he was running for this office and he needed some help, and I helped him. Running for counsel for counsel for Cleveland City Council against Charlie Carr. And Charlie Carr was a powerhouse back then. He was a powerhouse back then. He was chairman of finance, I believe it was, when African American man probably could not have been the council president. So if you weren't going to be the council president being chairman of finance was the next best thing. But he ran against Charlie Carr and he won. He won.

Dee Perry [00:19:22] And I wanted to ask, before we go on, how did he do that? What was the strategy? What did you see?

Frank Jackson [00:19:28] Well, Lonnie was- He was, like I say, he was born and raised in a community and he had went off to college. While he was off to college, his family moved out into the. One of those families who moved during that period of time out into the, I guess, like, Miles area. Miles Harvard area. Well, Lonnie, when he came back from college, he went back to the home that he was born and raised in, down on 30 ether central. And he just began to do things. You have to remember, too, this is when civil rights and a whole different kind of thing around community building and true black power and empowerment, all these things were going on. It was a mindset, and Lonnie was part of that. And so he ran for council. His strategy was he just knocked on every door. And what had happened was then Councilman Charlie Carr, even though a very powerful man in government, didn't really live in Central anymore. He lived, I think it was on a farm somewhere. And he may have had a residence in Central, but he spent his time not in Central. And as time went on, what was a solid community because it was segregated and functioned economically, socially and politically that way, as it got dispersed and as those negative indicators I mentioned to you around unemployment and crime and abandonment and all these things became prominent. A loss of retail and commercial space and lack of ownership of business, all these things were occurring. Gradually, the mood changed. And here come this young man. Charlie is. Mr. Carr was older by then. And here comes this young man who was born and raised in the community and knocking on every door. And I remember I used to. I was walking around with him, and there were people who knew Charlie Carr, Mr. Carr. But they said, well, look, we want some young blood. And they knew Lonnie also from being in the community.

Dee Perry [00:22:04] And he was a forceful personality, too.

Frank Jackson [00:22:08] Oh, yeah, he had his ways. Right, right. He had his ways. And there were certain. He really a very gentle, nice person until he ran up against this thing that he viewed was the oppressor of the people and the community that he represented. Then he became another. He was a forced to be reckoned with. When he was in that mode, he was forced to be reckoned with and people understood it. But to the average person on the street, whether you were a criminal or a senior or a working person, it was a totally different person, totally different person.

Dee Perry [00:22:59] So as you were watching this political process with Lonnie unfold, did you feel any stirrings yourself?

Frank Jackson [00:23:10] No, I had no ambition. The only reason I was involved is because my friend was the councilman. He was running for council. He won. He was the councilman. And every once in a while, he needs some help. During the camp, that's how I learned about campaigns. Passing out literature, hanging signs, knocking on doors and things like that. I- Even as I got in, I remember I was. I think I was in a master's program. And Lonnie was running for counseling. And I had these two courses. Both of them were pretty. Not the most exciting course. One was statistical analysis, and the other was computer programming. And that's back when a computer was, like, big as a copy machine. And they had these cards with holes in them. You had to stack them, program and put them in there, right? And they did basic computer stuff. And so I combined those two classes to try to do a projection of the election. And so I started doing that. I used the election as a project for the two classes to get a grade. And it was those kind of things. So I had no inkling or ambition to be a councilman, none whatsoever.

Dee Perry [00:24:34] Until.

Frank Jackson [00:24:35] Well, until Lonnie died in office. We picked his successor, and I just went about my business. By then, I had graduated from. I think I had my law degree by then, or I was in law school. I was just going about my business, and so were other people. But things began to go in a direction that we didn't like. And we began to put together a coalition of people to talk about what we believe were the priorities of the community and the way things should be. And even then, I didn't have desire to run for counsel. I had none whatsoever. But it got down to a point that we had to pick somebody. And I was refusing to be the person until such time that it was either we did it or didn't do it. And a friend of mine, David Donaldson, him and Lonnie were the best of friends. And David and I got to be very good friends, best friends. After Lonnie passed away. And he convinced me to run. So I ran.

Dee Perry [00:25:55] And it strikes me that there's a parallel with Congressman Lou Stokes there. Because he had often said he didn't want to be the congressman that was going to be Carl's spot. But because Carl was otherwise occupied when the slot opened up, he-

Frank Jackson [00:26:15] But he was a very strategic man, the congressman was very strategic. And he was very astute at politics and the art of using the seat of power and authority. Politics. I don't know for sure because he never said to me. But I imagine, as you mentioned, the seat came open. There was an opportunity. The person who he wanted to support his brother was now, could not do it at that time, so he did it himself. I imagine that's what happened. Even though he never told me that.

Dee Perry [00:26:59] And I have heard him say that, and I think he wrote it in his book. To A Gentleman From Ohio.

Frank Jackson [00:27:08] And he was a gentleman, too.

Dee Perry [00:27:10] Yeah.

Frank Jackson [00:27:10] Yeah, he was.

Dee Perry [00:27:12] And I mentioned that because I wanted to touch on an encounter that you two had, you and Louis Stokes had, before you ran for counsel, when you were working with the Longwood Estates.

Frank Jackson [00:27:25] Yeah, again, remember I said we were advocates back then, and I had no ambition to be an elected official. And there was Longwood Estates. Remember I said my father's family doctor used to live there. So now here it is. It's subsidized property in horrible condition. Money's being poured into the place, but the people no better off. HUD pouring money. People know better. Matter of fact, it's worse off. I mean, it was bad. And that's when Lonnie got shot. If you remember, Councilman Burton got shot. And as we. As it unfolded, the people who wound up hiring, the person who wound up shooting him was tied into this corruption over there at Longwood. They were tied into that. And eventually one, a couple of people got convicted of shooting him. Well, later on, Lonnie passed away in office, and the property was still in bad shape. Not just it, but all of the public housing estates. It was pretty bad. Pretty bad. And so Congressman Stokes had his parade and his Labor Day festival up at Luke Easter Park every year, and it was a big event. Dick Gregory, who passed away, would be there every year. If you were somebody and you wanted the support of Congressman Stokes and the African American community in the 21st district, you had to be at the parade, you had to be at the festival, and he would allow for people to speak and all that. So it was the who's who of politics and power were there. So we decided. Well, really, David Donaldson and the rest of us, we said, okay, fine. Decided we was going to march on his parade and his picnic and demonstrate. And the congressman, oh, he was so upset. He was so upset that how dare you do that? Right? And so I can still picture David and the congressman nose to nose, just fussing and fighting. And the police was going to put us in jail, but he said no. He said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to do. He said, I'm coming down there and I'm going to see what you're talking about, and it better be so. And he stormed away. So he wound up calling us. And we. I picked him up on 30th and Central. I had an old car picked him up. Me and David picked him up. And people were stopping their cars in the street, leaving their doors open, said, Congressman Stokes. Congressman Stokes. And they were leaving the doors open and their cars running, and they were running up to him as he was getting in the car. And then when we finally got him up on 40th, which is now community college, and we were walking him through public housing and stuff, he was like the Pied Piper. All of a sudden you look behind, you had 100 people just walking, walking down the street, and people would stop their cars, park, and join into the procession, you know, and people were coming out their houses and stuff. And so we did all that. And then we went into Longwood and had a public meeting. And he listened to the people. And after he listened to the people and he saw the condition that they lived in, he said two things to me. He said. He said, I've been to South Africa, and this is worse than Apartheid. And he said, you'll never have to worry about it again. And he was man of his word. He was man of his word. And then I think the next year or so, I ran for counsel. I wound up winning, and I worked with him, Mayor White and Claire Freeman, who was the new director of CMHA, and Congressman Stokes was the chairman of the subcommittee on appropriation for HUD. And he controlled monies that went into NASA, public housing, block grant, all this kind of stuff, and just tens of millions of dollars, when you add it up, well over hundreds of millions of dollars came into Cleveland to renovate and to better the condition of living in public and subsidized housing. NASA became one of the leading here in Cleveland, one of the leading NASA programs. And they had African American heads of NASA and things like that. So he understood fully the power and influence of the system seat. And he was very strategic and very thoughtful, but he was always a gentleman. He was always a gentleman.

Dee Perry [00:32:51] Unless you interrupted his parade, apparently.

Frank Jackson [00:32:53] Oh, unless you- Well, you know, he come from Central. Now, everybody, everybody who was somebody at that time came out of Central. The congressman and the mayor stayed in public housing. When we were walking the congressman around public housing, he went to this lady who he knew when he was a child who was living in the same unit, and she's an elderly lady and he went there and visited her. So they all come out of Central. Even though they were professional people and things like that, they come out of Central so they knew how to deal with what they had to deal with.

Dee Perry [00:33:35] When you did get into Council, you were representing Ward 5, which was-

Frank Jackson [00:33:44] Central. Central, Lower Fairfax, Garden Valley, Kinsman, Garden Valley area.

Dee Perry [00:33:52] And what did you see as the most important thing? What was your mission as? As a councilman?

Frank Jackson [00:34:01] Well, remember now, I had worked with Lonnie when he was a councilman and he began along with a man named Preston Terry, who was his right hand man. His right hand man. They began new housing, developed the first new housing development in Cleveland in decades. Because by then there used to be a house on every lot. Now it's torn down. We, the city owned over half of it. And Lonnie began to promote the building and the development of new home construction in Central. Now we still didn't have the retail component. And then we worked with. When I got to be a councilman in 90 whatever, Taft Humanities came in. And then we continued that new housing thing, construction with home ownership zone. So hundreds of homes built in the central area because of the vacant land and availability of land. And it was inexpensive. A lot $500, $1,000 or $500 or $1,000, stuff like that. And then we- A lot of renovation with the congressman of public housing. Retail was the most challenging at that time. All the. Except for a few places, all the retail was gone and there were no more grocery stores or barbershop or beautician shops or five and tens or drug stores. All those things we had, we had nightclubs, club hotels, movie theaters. All that was gone. And even today, that's the most challenging part because all that infrastructure was torn out and demolished. Just built on it. Just kept building and building and building. And safety was always a concern. Crack cocaine by that time was very prominent. And same with the prostitution that went along with it and the kind of other criminal activity associated with that. So it was- You had to deal with safety. Safety also. But all of it was about rebuilding the community. This is the same approach I take as mayor to rebuild the city. It was about rebuilding the community.

Dee Perry [00:36:40] And I see that we're coming up on a certain time, so I want to jump over some things because I want to get a sense from you of legacy, what you hope yours is, what you see and how you may have been building on that based on what Carl Stokes and what Louis Stokes had done.

Frank Jackson [00:37:11] Well, I don't think about my legacy, because I think when I get in that mode, I'll be in the retirement mode. So I'm not yet ready for that. So I'm not thinking about legacy for me. I will say, if it were not for men like Carl and Louis Stokes, I would never be mayor, or someone like me would never be mayor. And I'm pretty sure they would say the same thing when they were elected to their position. But for some other people and the Civil Rights Movement and all those things that were going on there, they would have never had that opportunity. But it's a legacy of not only being the first African American mayor of a major city, but also, I think, the first African American congressperson, if I'm not mistaken, from the state of Ohio. What they've done and what they did in terms of investing their time and energy and resources into the African American community, allowing for people like me to go to law school to do all those other things, for Black-owned and -operated businesses to grow and prosper, all those kinds of things would never have happened without them. And Cleveland is well positioned and even though we still have our challenges, is well positioned because of the work that people. Because when you become mayor, as you look on the wall and you see all these mayors, every one of them, including me, have inherited good things and we've inherited bad things, and then we've done our own thing. You try to make sure you don't ruin the good things. Try to take the opportunity of converting challenging bad thing into a better opportunity to do good with it, and then it gives you the ability to start your own initiative. Every one of these mayors in here have been part of that cycle. As you hand a city over in one way or another, whether it's you know who your successor is or you get beat, it doesn't matter. You're handing something over. And for the mayor and for the congressman, we would not be here today if it were not for the work that they've done. And although what I'm able to do, people laid the groundwork for, and they're a major part of that. I told the congressman I knew the congressman better than I knew the mayor. The mayor as a, as I said, I was real young. I was in the military most of his time. He served as mayor. I met him a few times when I became a prosecutor and he was on the bench. I met him but never really interacted much with the congressman. It was a little different. I had more interaction with him and got to know him better. And I remember telling him that as a congressman, I was. When the Civil Rights movement was going on, I was in the midst of it, but I wasn't part of it. I was in the midst of it because it was going on all around me. And whether it was the riots, whether it was the policies coming out of the government that wasn't good for us, whether it was the demonstrations, whether it was the opening up of opportunities for economic development and public education and how all this stuff was going on, and I remember saying to him that even though I didn't participate because I was young and my life was going this way rather than that way, and I was in the military, I said, what I do now is what I heard y' all talking about. The policies that I work on, the implementation of strategic plans is all around executing on what I heard them talk about, because they were in a time where, as I mentioned by Mayor Stokes, when people just thought the election of a African American mayor was the panacea of the world. But they didn't want to change the infrastructure that allowed for true empowerment, whether economic, social, or political. They didn't want to change that infrastructure where the system now is at a different spot. And even though it's still challenging, it's at a different spot now. And what I do in regards to the policies that I set execution on those policies, the strategic nature of the way I do it, is all based on what I heard people like Mayor Stokes and Congressman Stokes and all the other people of that era talked about Cleveland. I think the Stokes brothers, I believe you could probably say, is the only people who you can name an era after is the Stokes era. I don't know anyone else that you can talk about. They may talk about the reform era of Tom L. Johnson, or they can talk about whatever the comeback city of Mayor Voinovitch, you know, and. And all of that. But if you want to talk. I think I know the Stokes brothers. I don't know anybody else who could name an era of a city after. And that's something. That is something.

Dee Perry [00:43:25] I have one final question because I want to look to the future, and in your future is an unprecedented fourth run for mayor. And in part because, as you stated, If I run, it's because I don't see someone who can, who's ready to take the reins. 

Frank Jackson [00:43:49] That's part of it.

Dee Perry [00:43:51] So, what do potential successors need to be doing now? What do young people need to be doing now?

Frank Jackson [00:43:59] You know, what the young people need to do is two things. First, know that they're not entitled to anything, and then secondly, don't play the game until you know the game. And if they follow those two pieces of advice, they will then put the work in. They'll put the work in and develop the relationships and the trust and confidence of the public and of the corporate community and of others so that we can move together as one city. But if you believe because you got an education and degree that all of a sudden you're entitled to something and you haven't put the work in and you don't even have the practical experience of making just one good, honest mistake, it's not going to work. And so you have to know the game before you play it. I always use the analogy. If you wind up in the Olympics, you obviously got talent. If you a heavyweight fighter and you win the gold medal, you obviously have talent. But if you think you're going to leave there and fight the heavyweight champion of the world, you're going to get creamed. You got to put the work in. You got to learn your trade, learn what that is. Now, that being said, there are some qualified people in the city of Cleveland who could be mayor. Cleveland has a bright future, but it's not guaranteed. We've done a lot of things to get us to this point during my administration, and others have done the same thing in prior administration, but it's not guaranteed in turning over what you care about to that level of inexperience or naivety is a big mistake. So if we're going to be a great city, then we're going to have to get to the next level. And it's been a lot of work up to this point, and it's even a heavier lift going forward. And that means that you can't be naive about this. Again, no entitlement and don't play the game before you know it. Learn your trait, and what you'll find is young people have the energy and imagination that you really need in today's world, but we can't be fooled, are so naive to believe that these theories and concepts and these academic things are the solution to our problem. They're not. They're good to know because they become tools for you to be able to set policy, develop strategic plans. But the actual implementation and actually enforcement of change will come from work. Just hard work.

Dee Perry [00:47:12] Mayor Jackson, thank you for the hard work that you continue to do. We appreciate it.

Frank Jackson [00:47:17] Oh, thank you. Very good.

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