Abstract
In this 2024 interview, Linda James discusses her early life in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood and her memories moving to Cleveland, Ohio from Kentucky in 1956. She describes the differences between Cleveland and Kentucky— particularly that Kentucky was less racially segregated than Cleveland was. James describes key memories: playing in the outdoors, going to hear music, and hearing Muhammed Ali speak. She also discusses her experience in Cleveland Metropolitan School District, her work as a nurse, and the changes she witnessed in Cleveland over time.
Interviewee
James, Linda (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
11-19-2024
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
59 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Linda James interview, 19 November 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483002.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1351
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:01] We’re recording now, I’m just gonna put that-
Linda James [00:00:02] Okay.
Ava Carubia [00:00:03] In the center of the table. And then before we begin, I just want to establish some things for the record. Today is November 19th, 2024. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here at the Thea Bowman center interviewing Ms. Linda James for the Cleveland Regional Oral History project. Thank you, Ms. James, for agreeing to be interviewed today. And then can you please state your name, your birth date, and where you were born for the record?
Linda James [00:00:31] My name is Linda Carroll James, and I was born in. Well, actually, my maiden name is Ruffin.
Ava Carubia [00:00:41] Okay.
Linda James [00:00:42] Yeah. Linda Carol Ruffin.
Ava Carubia [00:00:47] And your birthday is.
Linda James [00:00:51] […] 1949.
Ava Carubia [00:00:54] All right.
Linda James [00:00:55] Four thousand, nine hundred and forty nine.
Ava Carubia [00:00:57] That’s easy to remember.
Linda James [00:00:59] It’s a palindrome, isn’t it? Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:01:02] Yeah, it is.
Linda James [00:01:02] 4949.
Ava Carubia [00:01:05] And then where were you born?
Linda James [00:01:07] I was born in Millsborough, Kentucky. That’s not down near the Cumberland Gap.
Ava Carubia [00:01:12] Okay.
Linda James [00:01:13] And I think their main industry at that time was coal mining, because my father was a coal miner, and he actually migrated to Cleveland for a job because the mines were closing down then. So he came here and got a job at Ford Motors. So that’s how we came to be in Cleveland.
Ava Carubia [00:01:35] Okay, great. So I want to expand a little bit more on that. Can you talk more about your family? You mentioned your dad, but can you talk a little bit about your mom, if you had any siblings?
Linda James [00:01:46] I had actually 10 children in my family. My mother and father both were only children, except my father had a twin sister who died early. He had a twin sister, and my mother had no siblings. So I don’t think that they actually wanted 10 children. But, you know, birth control was not given to women. My mother went to a doctor and asked him about birth control. He told her that was for sporting women. You ever heard that term, sporting women? It’s like prostitutes and that sort of thing, you know, he said, you know, Jean, you’re a good Christian woman. You don’t need that.
Ava Carubia [00:02:31] All right, so they met. How did they meet?
Linda James [00:02:38] You know, my mother moved around because my grandmother moved around because she. My grandmother would be like a housekeeper for different people, you know, so then she would go away sometimes and leave my mother with other people, you know? So I’m thinking that it was probably somewhere in Kentucky, might have been, because my mom was born in Georgia and my father was born in Alabama. So I hear that there’s quite a few Ruffins in Alabama, because my nephew lives in Newark, Alabama, and he told me there’s quite a few Ruffins in Newark, Alabama.
Ava Carubia [00:03:24] Okay, so then how long did you live in Kentucky for?
Linda James [00:03:30] Probably five years. Because I know that I was old enough to be in first grade when I came here, so I would have probably been about six. But I was in first grade in Kentucky. And when I came here, they put me back to kindergarten because they said that Kentucky had a lower education system than Cleveland. But in our case, it actually was not true because my mother had a neighbor who was a retired elementary school teacher, so she had us come over her house every day. So actually, I was already reading, writing, and I was actually more advanced than the children here because every day we went to this lady’s house and she taught us. So, you know, I probably was reading at third, fourth grade level already then. But, you know, because of just their thinking, Kentucky, you know, state’s not a good state for education, which it’s not now, so they say. They put me back. That was their policy.
Ava Carubia [00:04:40] What else do you remember from moving up here from Kentucky?
Linda James [00:04:45] Well, now, in Kentucky, it wasn’t segregated, so in a sense, like, people lived. Like there were white people. I remember there were some gypsies and all different ethnicities, all sort of lived together. But here when I came, I didn’t see any white people. I just saw Black people. And one day I said to my mother, I said, where’s all the white people? She said, well, it’s a little different here. So that I noticed that where we lived at 83rd off Kinsman, it was predominantly all black people. And so then when we came here, I had a really, you know, like, Kentucky accent. And so we were used to always speaking to everybody, and we spoke with this thick Kentucky accent. And so kids used to make fun of us. They used to call us hillbillies, you know, so.
Ava Carubia [00:05:53] But over time, how did you get used to the new environment?
Linda James [00:06:01] Well, you know, kids will be kids. And, like, I was always, like, an outdoor person. I liked the outdoors. I was always exploring, you know, because I had a microscope, and I go out looking for stuff to look at under the microscope and collecting bugs, you know, because I kept specimens of different, you know, bugs. And my brother and I, we were always out, you know, exploring because it was, like, areas that were wooded. And we loved that because we grew up with that from Kentucky, you know. So we weren’t allowed to really play with other children. My mother never really believed in that, and my father didn’t believe in that. So most of the time, we were confined to the house or the yard, and we could go across the street to that wooded area and play, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:06:54] What year was it when you moved here? Was it ’54 or?
Linda James [00:06:59] Oh, no, it was 56.
Ava Carubia [00:07:00] Okay. It was 56. And do you know why your parents chose this area?
Linda James [00:07:07] Because there were relatives.
Ava Carubia [00:07:09] Okay.
Linda James [00:07:09] My aunt. My Aunt Maggie lived on 126th off of Kinsman, and she was one of the founding members of her church, Mt Olive Baptist Church.
Ava Carubia [00:07:24] Okay.
Linda James [00:07:25] She was very active in her church. She used to crochet little lap blankets for people in nursing homes, and she used to give people rides to church and to the store and everything. So I think she drove a car until she was maybe around pretty close to 90.
Ava Carubia [00:07:43] Wow.
Linda James [00:07:46] So those were my father’s aunts. So those were our great aunts and uncles, because we didn’t have any aunts because our one aunt died. So, you know, we were a close family. So my dad moved up here because they were here. My uncle worked at Ford Motor Company where he got my dad a job. And then my uncle and aunt, my uncle Raymond and Aunt Hilda, they lived here. In fact, they lived in the same apartment building that we lived in, you know so.
Ava Carubia [00:08:30] So what was it like growing up around so much family, so close?
Linda James [00:08:37] I think that’s probably how most people grew up in those days, around their extended family, you know, and that. That was the whole, like, center of our universe. Like, my aunt. My Aunt Hilda didn’t have any children, so she would always press my mother for one of her children. My mother said, no, they’re not puppies. You can’t just have one of my children. So she convinced me to go and live with her for a while. So I did go stay with her for a while, and she lived on 83rd off Quincy. And in fact, I went to Quincy. Quincy Elementary School for a year.
Ava Carubia [00:09:24] And then what elementary school did you go to after that?
Linda James [00:09:27] Kinsman. Kinsman Elementary. That’s where I graduated from. And then I went to Rollins Junior High.
Ava Carubia [00:09:43] And what did your mom do?
Linda James [00:09:46] She was a housewife.
Ava Carubia [00:09:47] Okay.
Linda James [00:09:48] You know, it was a bunch of us. You know, we were the type of children that when we came home from school, we had our mother there. She cooked our meals. And so you know how children have it now. You know, they come home and their mother or father are not there. In fact, if I came home and my mother wasn’t there, I would be sitting on the steps crying because she wasn’t there. So she used to always try to get home before we got out of school, if she went anyplace, because we just would panic if she wasn’t there. You know, my mother was always home. That’s how I grew up.
Ava Carubia [00:10:30] You said that your parents didn’t like you spending time with other children. Why was that?
Linda James [00:10:36] That’s how people believed. Because their thinking was they don’t know what you do in your home. I don’t know those people, you know, I don’t know what they might expose my child to. So I don’t want them just going to other people’s houses. That’s how they thought. That’s how my father thought.
Ava Carubia [00:10:58] Then, what were your memories of the neighborhood at that time? I’m guessing it was mostly you and your siblings playing.
Linda James [00:11:06] Well, there were kids. You know, kids come outside and play. You know, we just had to stay in the yard, so they’d come play with us, you know, and then you’re walking back and forth home from school, so you play with kids then. And, you know, I noticed that most of the people in the neighborhood had big families, you know. And in fact, we had a lady that lived on our street, and my father knew her and my mother knew her, and she was very politically active. So she actually got my sister and I involved in politics when we were like, tween and teens. You know, I remember when Leodis Harris ran for judge, we were out campaigning for him, you know, as I probably was, like, maybe about 11, you know, and then, like, she used to have a lot of influential Black politicians come to her home. Like, I remember once they put on a contest. This was about the time when it was the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. So she had some of the neighborhood kids write an essay on what the Emancipation Proclamation meant to them. And the winner of that contest would get, like, a $50 prize. And it was a Black judge that was there, I remember, was Judge Perry B. Jackson. And this was right in her living room. You know, he presented the prize to the child. I don’t know who won it. I don’t remember, but I remember that. And that was a neighbor doing that. And I got exposed to going to the Cleveland Orchestra by one of our neighbors, Ms. Faber. She used to go there all the time, so she would take some of the kids with her. So even though we were poor, which we didn’t know we were poor, we had people that exposed us to things that, you know, probably kids don’t get exposed to now. Like, I went to the Music Box and I saw Tina Turner, and I was as close as you are from here. You know, I remember seeing Junior Walker and the All Stars and all the different groups. We used to get a chance to go see him. I went to the Cleveland Playhouse and I saw James Brown. And, you know, as long as the people screamed and hollered, he came out and sang. We came home. I think we were there like, four hours. My mother said, “how could you be gone all this time?” I said, “Mama, every time he would come out and sing and we’d scream, he’d keep on singing.” You know, that was just fantastic. I feel sorry for kids now. They don’t see the stars like we did, you know. Yeah, I remember those. We had a lot of fun things that we got exposed to. Like, our council person was a man named Jack P. Russell. And in the summer, he would send a bus to 79th and Kinsman and pick you up. And, like, he took us to Euclid Beach. He took us to Dandy Potato Chip Factory to see how potato chips were made. We went out to Puritas Spring. That doesn’t exist anymore. Just all different kinds of things that we would get a chance to see and do, you know. And that was good, you know, in the summer, you know, like when kids were out of school. So it was a lot of good experiences.
Ava Carubia [00:14:50] What’s one of your most distinct memories as a child growing up here?
Linda James [00:15:01] Wow. I had so many.
Ava Carubia [00:15:04] Well, you can name multiple, too.
Linda James [00:15:06] Well, one thing is that I saw Muhammad Ali at a Muslim temple when I was about 13. I went to. I went to this Muslim temple on Superior because I met this boy. He was maybe about 16, so he was a Muslim. And he was talking about, you know, being a Muslim and all that. And I was starting to think about different religions. So he said, well, come and go with me to see. Go to this Muslim temple. We didn’t know that Muhammad was going to be there, and my sister went with me. So I remember we were listening to the imam speak, and all of a sudden the person in the back of the temple got up and started talking, and it was him. And, you know, we were just so excited. And I remember when we got ready to leave, he was at the door signing autographs, and he signed an autograph for us. And what struck me about him was that you didn’t hear all that braggadocio that he did on TV. He spoke very quietly, and he spoke so intelligently. Because I just thought he was an idiot when I used to see him on TV doing all that stuff, you know. And that’s when I really, you know, saw that he was deeper than that persona that I saw on television, you know, that he spoke really well. But one thing I didn’t like about that religion, the Black Muslim, is that it was like a sort of a lot of hate at that time. You know, some of the things I thought were good, but then some of the things I didn’t like, you know. But I was glad that I was there and I heard what it was about. So I was telling my teacher what had happened. So he asked me to write a book report about it. I remember that. You know, not a book report, but a report about what. What went on. So that’s something that I’ll never forget, you know, meeting Muhammad Ali and seeing a different side of him than what you saw on television, you know, that he was really an intelligent, thoughtful person.
Ava Carubia [00:17:28] Well, you talked about sort of the music scene and then also that experience, too. What was sort of the sense you got of Cleveland at the time, like, as a city? How did it feel? Did you feel excited and proud to grow up in Cleveland?
Linda James [00:17:47] Well, early on, until, like, I would see other cities, you know, like, compared to other cities, you know, I didn’t realize how small our downtown was until I went to New York, you know. And then in the 70s, Cleveland was like a national joke. When I went to Mexico, I got teased for being from Cleveland because I think the mayor’s hair had caught on fire by then. And then we had the river that caught on fire. So when I would go, like, I went to Club Med. You ever heard of Club Med? I went to Club Med in Cancun, and they said, hey, Linda from Cleveland, you burn anything down lately? You know, so it was like a national joke. But, you know, I always liked Cleveland. I really did, because I always appreciated the Cleveland Orchestra. Always. University Circle, I thought, was beautiful. I think Shaker Lakes is beautiful. And I like the fact that you could drive downtown. And it’s not like when you’re in New York or some other major cities and you’re in gridlock. Like in Chicago, you could almost walk where you’re going before you can drive sometimes. Because we would go to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I would go with my aunt to visit my cousins, and we would be on this Dan Ryan Expressway. Oh, my God. It was like. It was horrible. Horrible. You know, you could just. It was just gridlock. So in that respect, I like better what we have on that. But Lake Michigan and Wacker Drive and all those buildings, stuff, you know, where Bob Newhart walks out of. You ever watch Bob Newhart? You never heard of that, right? But anyway, it’s a scene where he’s coming out of some buildings. And we stayed there where he’s at. And so we. I know exactly where that is. But that area, it’s Michigan Avenue. That’s what it is. And it’s beautiful. A lot of stores and, you know, tall buildings. The Sears building, Sears Towers is on that. So. But my sister always says, I hate Cleveland. And I said, you know, that just sounds crazy. If you hate it so much, why are you here?
Ava Carubia [00:20:15] So then have you stayed here your whole life or did you move around at all?
Linda James [00:20:20] Well, I’ve stayed here my whole life, but I’ve been places and stayed there for a while. Like, I was in Florida a couple years ago, and I stayed there for a couple of months. I was down in New Port Richey, staying with my girlfriend’s daughter. And then we went on a cruise to, you know, in the Bahamas. And I spent maybe a couple months once in. It’s an island that has two countries on it. I can’t think of the name of it now it’s in the Caribbean. But I’ve spent time in other places, but never, like, years and years away, you know. But, you know, but I’ve always lived here in Cleveland.
Ava Carubia [00:21:07] So you went to Kinsman Elementary, Rollins Junior High. Can you talk a little bit about what your education was like in school growing up?
Linda James [00:21:21] Well, you know, people always talk about, you know, the Cleveland Public Schools. The Cleveland Public Schools. Well, I graduated from, because I dropped out of school, because I was a teenage pregnancy. But I went to Tri-C. I have got my associate degree, and I went to Cleveland State. I almost finished my B.A. but I didn’t. But I probably could have finished it in maybe a couple courses. But I actually, in my career, I never really felt a need for it. And I always think about the economics of it. Why am I spending all this money for something that’s not gonna get me more money? You know, I’m already. I’m already like, I have a job in management, and I manage people that have masters and bachelor’s degrees. So why do I need that? I don’t need it. I think that Cleveland Public Schools, I don’t know what they’re like now, but I think I got a pretty good education. I think it’s the person there. And plus is your home and how the people around you value education. Like my parents, neither one of them had high school diplomas, but they valued education. And it was like, always instilled in us that, you know, it’s not when you go to college, if you go to college. It’s you are going to college. And my father always talked about it, the benefits of more education, and my mother. And we had books at home and we read at home. We went to the library and we talked about things. And, you know, I always knew about politics and how government worked. But a lot of people, they don’t grow up like that. I think that people leave education to the school. I think it starts in the home. That’s where it starts. Because I would look at some of my son’s things, and I wrote the teacher a note, I said, why are you accepting this? I said, if a kid gave me a paper like this, I would throw it in the garbage. It’s dirty, it’s balled up. I wouldn’t even try to bother read it or grade it, because he can do better. If you accept this from him, you’re saying that that’s acceptable. Don’t do that. And as boring as it was, I used to go up to the school sometime and just audit his classes. And he used to tell, “Mom, please don’t do that. You putting too much pressure on me. I hate it.” But I used to do it. And I have to say that some teachers, they just pass kids along just to get rid of them, you know? And that’s a sad thing, because I think that when I was growing up, I think teachers were more invested in children learning. They really were. And I think some of the disrespect that teachers experience in school is because of the disrespect they have toward their students. And if there’s such a thing as being hyperactive. When I was young in school, I think I had some kind of hyperactive because my teacher used to. He saw that, and he used to tell me to sit right here in the front of the class, and I want you to write down everything I say because you’re my secretary. And when you see me drifting off and daydreaming, he would refocus me, and he did it in a loving, kind way. And I think that sometimes teachers in schools today are not loving and kind, and they’re disrespectful in their tone and how they approach young people. And that permeates the whole room. Because I used to work in a unit where they had kids that had behavior problems. And I used to, when people would come on my unit, they would say, oh, how do you get them to do the right thing? It’s because they know I have the expectation that they’re going to do the right thing. We lead off with the positive and not the negative. And I think that’s probably some of the things that I see people do wrong in schools. Of course I don’t, I haven’t been in one lately to see how people are. But the last time I went, it was not, was not a good thing.
Ava Carubia [00:26:00] Yeah. So you had, it seems a good time at the schools that you went to. You had a good experience. Can you talk a little bit about your life after school? What was that like after you dropped out, you said?
Linda James [00:26:19] Well, I went back to night school and finished, you know, and then I went to John, John Adams LPN School. I became an LPN and while I was working as an LPN, I went to Tri-C and got my RN. Yeah. So I came out and I worked at Woman’s Hospital. It’s a hospital that was founded by female doctors because they couldn’t get privileges at University Hospital. They used excuses. They didn’t have any toilet facilities for them. So Myra K. Merrick started Woman’s Hospital. So that was. And I went there from Metro through the agency. I worked for an agency called Staff Builders. So the head nurse that was there, that’s what they called them then. She said, “You know Linda,” she said, “I’m getting ready to leave and I want you to have my job.” So I got that job. So I was in management. So I worked there for a number of years of management.
Ava Carubia [00:27:44] When did you start working there and when did you end?
Linda James [00:27:49] I started working there in ’74 and I left there in ’82.
Ava Carubia [00:27:59] And where was that located?
Linda James [00:28:02] It was on Chester, between Chester and Euclid. The building is torn down now. It was called Woman’s Hospital. A lot of people think that it was just a hospital for women, but it’s not. It was founded by women, women doctors. So what happened was that, you know, Cleveland Clinic had this evil plan to take, take over all the hospitals and that one fell, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:28:38] And then after you worked there, where did you work afterwards?
Linda James [00:28:44] Let’s see. Well, I worked at Mount Sinai on staff and I also worked at Cleveland Clinic part time and I worked at Menorah Park is a long term care facility. I worked there. And after I left Menorah Park, I went to another long term care facility and administration called Pedone. And then after I left for Pedone, I just strictly did agency, you know, just all around, everywhere.
Ava Carubia [00:29:35] And then what was your personal life like during that time you were working? What were you doing in your free time? Where were you living?
Linda James [00:29:46] Well, I used to live, I lived in Shaker. I lived, moved from Cleveland to Shaker Heights. And I lived there for probably, let’s see, maybe ’72.
Ava Carubia [00:30:03] You moved there in ’72?
Linda James [00:30:05] Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:30:05] Okay.
Linda James [00:30:06] And then until ’87. And then my sister and mother bought a house on Manor, where I live at now. Now. So I moved upstairs over them and I’ve been living there ever since.
Ava Carubia [00:30:22] Okay, so you moved from your original childhood home to Shaker Heights or?
Linda James [00:30:28] No.
Ava Carubia [00:30:29] Okay.
Linda James [00:30:29] No, I moved from my original childhood home to 116th.
Ava Carubia [00:30:35] Okay.
Linda James [00:30:36] That’s between Harvard and, I would say Union, maybe. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:30:44] And then from there to Shaker.
Linda James [00:30:47] Yeah, to Shaker. Uhhuh. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:30:50] So it seems like you’ve lived in this area for a long time. Can you talk about the impact that this area had on your life?
Linda James [00:31:04] You know, I think that it’s like it used to be a really nice place to live, but I was trying to figure out what happened. But then I guess it’s a multifaceted thing, like maybe crack, loss of jobs where people didn’t have to, you know, skilled, you know, non-skilled. Like you had Jones and Laughlin Steel, you had Republic Steel. People could graduate from high school and get a job that would immediately put them in a, you know, like an upper-working class family. You know, you didn’t have to get a college degree to have a good life. And all of that went away and. And I think the crime went up, you know, so people that were upwardly mobile just started to crash maybe. And I was trying to think what. You know, like, I remember when I moved down back into Cleveland in ’87, it’s like a culture shock as far as how it had deteriorated You know, some of the surrounding areas that were really nice areas, you know, all the abandoned homes, like, probably started in the 90s, you know, because you didn’t, you didn’t live here. So you don’t. Yeah, because this area used to be really beautiful, really clean. You know, like this was a Catholic church and this whole, whole area was just beautiful. Like when my sister. My sister was 8 years old, she’s 79 now, she came up from Kentucky to stay with my Aunt Maggie. I mean, there was. You didn’t see litter on the streets. And, you know, Black people wanted better. You know, they kept their homes up, they kept their cars up, they went to church. You know, they wanted their children to be something, to do something. And it seemed like all of a sudden it changed. I don’t know what happened. You know, people are doing worse now than they were doing when, when I was a kid. They really are. And they are less educated and they don’t know things. They don’t know, know the history, they don’t know the struggle. I mean, I talk to young people that talk about not voting. Like what? I mean when I was. You didn’t even, you didn’t even. It was like automatic. You were gonna vote at 18 when you could vote. It’s just unheard of because we turned on the TV and we saw, you know, our people being, you know, shot with water holes trying to vote. You know, what happened to John Lewis on the Edwin Pettus Bridge. We saw that, we heard stories about what happened to people down south. Like my sister Jackie talked about when she went down south, having grown up, up here, and how my aunt was trying to tell her to behave, you know. Like she got something stuck in the machine, like candy bar or something. She wanted to kick the machine. No, no, you can’t do that, you know. And you know, it’s just, they don’t know, you know. And it’s just like to me it’s like nobody is ashamed of anything. Like the music is just to disgusting. You know, they just say and do anything and it just didn’t happen like that when I was a kid. You know, you didn’t swear around adults, you know, you didn’t use the N word like they do now. I mean that’s, it’s disgusting. And I wouldn’t have to say anything if I were an older adult during my time. I would just look at that person and they would know, no, I don’t do that. You know, but they, it’s not that like that now. You know, some people are still like that, but not, not enough.
Ava Carubia [00:35:37] I want to go back to something you said earlier about being involved in politics from a young age, because you kind of just spoke to that now. How else did you get politically involved when you were younger and then also just throughout your lifetime?
Linda James [00:35:56] Just like when Carl Stokes was running for mayor, you know. When Obama, you know, I door knocked, I canvassed, you know, I did the phone bank. I did it for Hillary, you know, when they’d have the Thanksgiving Day parade with the Democratic Party, you know, we would always be involved in that, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:36:20] And was that a family involvement? You said we.
Linda James [00:36:23] My sister, my sisters. Yeah, like my one sister in law, she was like radical in the 60s. She used to get arrested, she would do sit ins and all of that stuff, marches and all that. You know, I used to go over there and listen to the Black Panthers and to the Black nationalists and all that. I just wanted to hear what they thought about stuff, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:36:50] Where were they mostly holding events, the Black Panthers and the more radicals?
Linda James [00:36:56] The Black Panthers were over on Hough, Chester, Euclid, like that. And I used to go over there and talk to them, listen to them.
Ava Carubia [00:37:08] What kind of events would they hold?
Linda James [00:37:12] It would be, you know, almost like a. Like a party. Like, they would have fundraisers. Like, maybe they’d have a fish fry or gumbo or something like that. And people would just gather, you know, and they would talk, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:37:28] Do you think the political organizing, sort of the nature of it, changed?
Linda James [00:37:38] Yeah. And one thing, you know, like, people talk about integration, but I think that to a degree, it hurt Black people. Because when I was growing up, your teachers, your lawyers, we all lived in this community of Black people. Just like I had access to Ms. Johnson, after people could move to suburbs, you had, like, a brain drain. Some of the more intelligent people moved to the suburbs. And then you had a lot of Black men marrying white women. And, I mean, that was like. It didn’t help. It destabilized the Black family. Like, you had the people that had money and intelligence help trying to help the people that had less, instead of running to Shaker, Cleveland Heights. Like, my one older sister, she moved to Cleveland Heights in the 70s. She lived over there. And the other, Jackie, she lived in Shaker. My niece was born there. So she moved there in ’65. She moved to Shaker Heights in ’65. So probably some of those people that was just gonna, like, run the street clubs and try to bring up the young people, they moved. They moved into white neighborhoods. But when they moved into those white neighborhoods, they weren’t really part of that neighborhood. They were just living there. So all that got broken. It’s hard for me to explain that. It’s just like, our doctor was a Black physician, and he would come to our house, and he’d be there, like, a couple hours. We’d fix him something to eat. You know, he’d look at all the kids. But somebody said, “What?” I said, “yeah, he come to the house.” But all of that was lost. All of that was lost in this, I think maybe like the late 60s, early 70s. And not to mention in the 80s when crack hit, it just devastated the east side over there, St. Clair and Superior and all. And Superior was beautiful then. I mean, just beautiful. I remember my oldest brother, he got an apartment over there, and he came home, he was so excited. He, oh, my God, my house. It’s just so beautiful over here. And we went and it was. All the houses were kept up his apartment was nice. The whole area was nice. And it just went, you know, it just went to hell. Same way East Cleveland. East Cleveland used to be beautiful. Just gorgeous. And it looks like somebody dropped a bomb in there. When I canvassed over there when Hillary was running for president, I couldn’t believe it. And somebody said, you got to be out of your mind. You walking around in East Cleveland, knocking on doors. You know how dangerous that was? But I didn’t think about that because I’ve never been afraid of anything. I would go to Mexico and drive, and somebody said, you could. I didn’t think about it, but, yeah, I was over there canvassing for her, and they said that was real dangerous. But luckily nothing happened. But it’s terrible over there. I mean, absolutely terrible. And East Cleveland used to be beautiful. When my girlfriend, when she got an apartment over on Bryn Mawr, she had one of those old apartments with all the beautiful wood crown molding. It was just gorgeous. Hardwood floors. And they were long apartments, you know, and just. I think they ended up tearing the building down that she lived in. It’s terrible. I mean, it was a beautiful place. You didn’t see litter all flying everywhere. But now you could go over there and film a horror movie. It’s a whole street with abandoned buildings. It’s just terrible. Have you ever been over there? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
Ava Carubia [00:42:22 Yeah. Yeah.
Linda James[00:42:26] So I don’t know. Cleveland used to be a beautiful city, and I probably won’t live long enough to see the resurgence because it’s gonna take years to get this place back.
Ava Carubia [00:42:38] Yeah. And you said when you moved back from Shaker Heights, was that the first time you really were aware of that? Or when did you start kind of noticing this decline?
Linda James [00:42:58] I think that’s probably when I just really, really, really. Because people kept talking about it, and I guess I didn’t really go around to those places and see it. And then my brother was telling me about Superior and St. Clair, and I just didn’t ever make it over that way. And then I just went over there and I saw it, and then I saw. So it was probably around about in the 80s, it started go down really bad.
Ava Carubia [00:43:24] Are there things that despite this decline or this change that have remained the same in the neighborhood?
Linda James [00:43:37] And, you know, that’s the thing. All the people that you, you knew, like having a sense of community in the neighborhoods. A lot of those people have died recently. People that owned their homes and lived in the neighborhood all the time. I was trying to think of what really has remained the same. And I. I don’t know, it’s. It’s a few people that live on our street that we know from a long time ago, you know, but there’s so many changes. And I think a part of the problem there too, is that they’re allowing too many group homes because these are damaged people that are moved and these people are destructive and they do a lot of stealing and it’s not good. I was telling our council lady that, you know, that they need to limit the amount of group homes that they allow. And a lot of these people that run the group home, they get these people in there and they push them out in the street every day. They don’t want them to stay in there. They push them out and these people go in stores and steal and cause problems and they do a lot of vandalism. I can’t really think of anything in my neighborhood that is the same. And it’s sad, really.
Ava Carubia [00:45:12] Yeah. How do all these changes make you feel?
Linda James [00:45:15] A little sad, you know, but I’m hopeful that they’ll, you know, get better because I do see them renovating some of the houses, you know, so, you know. And I was devastated when Trump won. You know, it just. Oh, my God, I couldn’t even talk for a couple of days. I didn’t even want to talk about it. I never really wanted anybody dead or thought of somebody that I would like to see shot until he won. But I would actually, you know, if I was strong, I’d probably be looking for those Black Panthers to get him.
Ava Carubia [00:45:59] I have a couple more questions, and one is going way back, but I remember that you said that you and your brother like to explore the wooded area around here. Can you just kind of paint that picture for me? What exactly it felt like to explore all that nature and what areas you liked to go the most?
Linda James [00:46:19] Well, you know, like down by the railroad tracks, it was like overgrown areas and, you know, believe it or not, we would be looking for snakes. Good we never found them because I don’t think we really knew the difference between the poison and non poisonous snakes. But it was just the adventure, you know, like our imagination, you know, like, like you know, being pirates or explorers, you know, making up games, you know, like that, you know, pretend like we were Lewis and Clark, you know, discovering, you know, in different areas, you know. You know, we’d be climbing up trees and my brother would be walking on tall buildings. Like it was some big arches over the Kinsman Bridge, big concrete arches. And he would be up on those arches, walking on there. He could have been killed. You know, I. I was. I knew not to do that. And the mayor of Cleveland, used to be Mayor Frank Jackson, was his best friend. And they used to be up on those arches, climbing up on those arches. And I would just be sitting there like, oh, my God, please don’t let anything happen to them. I was not going. But we’d just be up in the tallest tree that we can get up and just doing that kind of stuff, you know, throwing rocks and stuff. You know, we’d have a good time. Yeah, but, you know, I didn’t know about Shaker Lakes when I was a kid, though. Like, that area there. Because just like, there’s certain areas that, like, Black people didn’t go into. You know, just like, even coming up here when I was younger, you couldn’t come up to this area without white kids chasing you and throwing rocks at you, because this was still an all-white area, and there was a lot of ethnicities around here. It was like Eastern Europeans that lived around in this area. And this area was very clean, and the houses were very well kept up. And I think, like, Black people started moving over here. Like, I would, I want to say about ’62 or ’63, over in this area.
Ava Carubia [00:49:00] And what do you mean by this area? Like, when does it start?
Linda James [00:49:03] Like, where we are now. Union. Around in here.
Ava Carubia [00:49:05] Okay.
Linda James [00:49:06] On 131st Street. Like Lenacrave and Soika. Those streets, those were all Eastern European people and Italian people, because, in fact, the house that we moved into on 116th, they had sold the house. And for a whole year, it was an Italian family that lived downstairs. And the people that bought it didn’t move in right away. The Italians lived down there for a year. And I lived upstairs on the second floor with my husband. So, you know, it was still, like, predominantly white, this area. And gradually, Black people started to move in and they started to move out.
Ava Carubia [00:49:53] But you said there were areas that Black people didn’t go. So that’s why you didn’t go to Shaker Lakes? Is that what you were about to say?
Linda James [00:50:01] Right. Because for one thing, a lot of people didn’t have cars. Like, my dad had a car, but he shared it with my aunt and uncle. And remember, it was ten of us, so we lived on 83rd off Kinsman. So Shaker Lakes is quite a distance from there. And I just didn’t know about it because we just didn’t go there, you know, But Woodhill Park, we used to come up here to Woodhill Park. Now, the Black people would come up here to Woodhill Park in the summer, and the white people came in the winter because they ice skated. So, you know, it never was a problem, I don’t think. You know, because we’re talking about in the 60s. So we come up here to swim in the summer, and it wasn’t a problem. But I think if you stayed around it, later on, it would be a problem. You know, kids would chase you, throw stuff. And I remember, like, when my brother and I were young, I would dress up like a boy, and we’d come up here to shovel snow because if I was dressed like a girl, they wouldn’t hire me because they said, that little girl can’t shovel snow. So we come up here to 93rd. Ramona Boulevard was beautiful. It was like lawyers and doctors that lived on Ramona Boulevard. And we’d come up here from 83rd. We’d walk up here with our snow shovels and shovel snow to earn money. Because we were always looking for some way to earn money when we were kids. So we might have been like my brother probably was, maybe about ten, and I was about eight. Yeah. And we come up here and shovel snow. And it was all white people up here. No Black people lived up here. In fact, the mayor used to live. Mayor Perk used to live on East Boulevard right up before you get to 116th. That’s where he lived at. So I. You know, this, this is hard to believe, but I don’t know, like an area that’s like. You ever been over on West Boulevard? How west? It was like West Boulevard, but only better. That’s how East Boulevard used to be. You know, they call it MLK now, but I mean, these homes were beautiful over here. And it was like that for years and years. And all of a sudden, it just like what happened? You know. Because I knew people that lived on East Boulevard, and I’d been to their homes, and they were beautiful homes. You know, they were just as nice as the homes in Shaker and other places. But all of a sudden, and I’m thinking, well, some of those people probably worked at the automobile places and lost their jobs, or maybe they got on drugs, you know, and they let their property go down or they died and left it to their kids, and their kids didn’t keep it up. You know, that kind of thing. It was just. You know, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of complex reasons why Cleveland is like it is now, but a big part of it is because of the jobs, you know, the decent paying jobs. Just, you know, because I remember my husband worked for J and L Steel when he got out of high school. And what made him go back to school and go to college is when I went, because he was in competition, you know, so he eventually became the chief inspector of housing for the City of Cleveland, but he only got. He had an associate degree, but it turns out he was very smart, you know, especially with mathematics. But if I hadn’t gone to college, he would not have gone, you know, so in a way, it was good that I did, you know. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:54:25] Well, we’re starting to close off the interview, but do you have a message that you’d like to leave for future generations?
Linda James [00:54:35] Um, I just wish that people would just not only, you know, they would look at everything as a big picture. Like, I wish the parents would take the responsibility for educating their own children, that Black people, the only way they’re going to do anything is to stay politically active, to vote. You know, they need to learn about, you know, other people, other cultures, and not just be focused on superficial things, you know, like their family. They need to focus on family, you know, trying to uplift their family and their children in their neighborhood, you know. Go back to teaching the old lessons about citizenship, you know. Care about the environment, care about animals, care about other people, you know. Care about other people’s suffering, not just their own selfishness. Because I did. I just feel really sad when I hear about people that, you know, don’t even care about any of that. They don’t think it’s important. I know, the Jehovah’s Witnesses came. I told them, I said, I can’t talk to you. And they said, well, I said, because you don’t vote, I can’t. You know, I respect a lot of things that you say, but that I don’t respect. So, no, I’m not going to go to any of those things or listen to any of that stuff because to me, you’re part of the problem because you’re not part of the solution. So that’s what I would say.
Ava Carubia [00:56:25] All right, thank you. And is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you’d like to add?
Linda James [00:56:32] No, I can’t think of anything right now, But I wish that everything wasn’t defined in the whole world according to race, that people could get along, you know. That it would just be one race, human race, not all this other stuff that divides people like religion and skin color. Those are major problems in the world: not respecting each other. People’s cultures and differences. And I think that it’s important to learn about other cultures and different, you know, in order to respect them, learn about, you know. So. You can’t just be an isolationist like Trump was talking about America first. Human beings first. We all live on the one planet. It’s not like you can move to the moon if you screw up this planet. Come on, now. All this global warming is not real. That’s just so ignorant. I can’t believe that he’s the president, and I just try to understand why. What. What is the thinking? He’s done everything that people teach their children not to do, and he’s the president, and it’s just so sad. I don’t know.
Ava Carubia [00:58:07] Well, I really appreciate you coming out here today, and I’m going to end the recording now.
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