Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Mikel Jordan, an employee at NuPoint Community Development Corporation, discusses growing up on E. 147th Street and Glendale Avenue. She describes the history of her family in Cleveland, early memories in the Lee-Harvard area, and her involvement in the early Cleveland hip-hop scene in the 1980s. Jordan also details her early explorations throughout Cleveland and the southeast side by bus, different neighborhood identities, and the effects of crack cocaine on communities. At the end of the interview, she emphasizes the importance of building community networks at the neighborhood level.
Interviewee
Jordan, Mikel (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
1-23-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
65 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Mikel Jordan interview, 23 January 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483013.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1361
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:00] Advanced equipment. But I usually start out with my little script, which is. Today is January 23rd, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia and I’m here at NuPoint Development Corporation interviewing Mikel Jordan for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today. And then for the record, can you please state your name, your birth date and where you were born?
Mikel Jordan [00:00:25] I’m Mikel Jordan. My birthday is June 9th, 1972. I was born in Cleveland at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Ava Carubia [00:00:36] So we’re just gonna start from there. Can you talk about where you grew up?
Mikel Jordan [00:00:41] In 1977, I was five years old. My mother and her husband bought a home at the northeast corner, corner of East 147th and Glendale. She’s still there.
Ava Carubia [00:00:57] Is your family from Cleveland?
Mikel Jordan [00:00:59] Yeah, completely.
Ava Carubia [00:01:00] Okay, so when was, when is the oldest member of your family? When did they get here?
Mikel Jordan [00:01:10] From, excuse me, from the sides that I know. My maternal great grandmother was the first in her bloodline here. So that had to have been right after the turn of the century, 19, maybe within the first 20 years because my grandmother was born in ’26 and she was born here.
Ava Carubia [00:01:38] And then was most of your family living in this area or were they living all across Cleveland?
Mikel Jordan [00:01:44] Honestly, Woodland-Central area. And when I was very young, like my great grandmother’s home was off Quincy, like 83rd maybe in that area. And then my mother’s parents actually started out in what is now Case Court Projects or Outhwaite. And then they moved and bought their home on Fuller off 93rd in mid-60s. One of the first Black families over there.
Ava Carubia [00:02:25] Did you hear stories about them being one of the first Black families?
Mikel Jordan [00:02:29] Oh, for sure.
Ava Carubia [00:02:30] What’d they say?
Mikel Jordan [00:02:32] Just how tumultuous it could have, it was at the beginning because, you know, nobody wanted the, the niggers moving up the way, you know, and at that time that was up the way. But how quickly it kind of transitioned because there were jobs, you know, my grandfather worked for TRW. My grandmother, until she went home to be a full time mom was like a nurse’s aide. She’s always been a baker. Like, like she actually dropped out of high school to work in a bakery at 15. So they were working-class from the time they stepped out of their parents homes and they kind of watched the neighborhood transition into that.
Ava Carubia [00:03:29] Well, I want to go back to you growing up around here. What are some of your memories being young and being in the neighborhood?
Mikel Jordan [00:03:37] I remember my first friend. I was, I guess I was allowed to go outside and play in the yard very soon after we got there and the little girl next door came over and said, “Will you play with me?” And I was like, okay. And that was what I’m 52 so 47 years ago. And our families are still close. That was the Roses. That was her grandmother. Great grandmother, I believe. And her grandmother stayed two blocks down on 144th and Glendale. So right now in my Instagram chat with me and one of the cousins still correspond. Like we still give each other the neighborhood news and. But Maria was her name, the first cousin that I became friends with. And we kind of grew up together through childhood and adolescence. Started a dance group when we were teenagers. Did a lot of exploring the southeast side via bicycle, on foot.
Ava Carubia [00:05:01] What was that like?
Mikel Jordan [00:05:04] Way better than now. Like we had real neighborhoods. So I remember the first time I called myself running away. Her grandfather saw me and immediately knew what I was doing, you know, in retrospect. And looked at me and asked me, “Where you going?” I was like, I’m running away. And he started fake crying and he tricked me like. So it was like you had a tribe, a community of people that everybody looked out for everybody’s homes and kids and you know, you didn’t go hungry. There was no such thing. Like you had. I remember 147th having a street club. I remember going to street club meetings with my mother in her Ford LTD. I remember being sent to Black-owned corner stores that were throughout the neighborhood with a note and we were able to buy cigarettes and beer because they knew who it was actually for. Now, once we became teenagers, did we learn how to use that? Yes. But like if you went to Mr. Steve’s store on the corner of 144th and Edgewood and you said, I need a Milwaukee’s Best, they knew that was for Ms. Mary, Mary Sams. Like it was that tight knit.
Ava Carubia [00:06:48] Can you talk more about the businesses that you went to?
Mikel Jordan [00:06:52] Wow. So Mr. Steve, his son’s name was Mark. They had several stores and I’m pretty sure you can find those in news articles because they eventually got shut down for like tax evasion or something like that. But it was a big story across the news, you know, cause we can’t just put them out of business, we got to tear them down too.
Ava Carubia [00:07:20] Where were those stores?
Mikel Jordan [00:07:23] Mark’s store may have been on Lee Road, Lee and Miles, in that area. That store might actually still be there. But Mr. Steve’s store, that building is torn down. There were just so many Black owned businesses in the area. Like in walking distance. Before it was Harvard Deli that was a Lawson’s Deli. It wasn’t Black-owned, but the Gene’s next door was. Gene’s Drive-Through on the corner. Then there was where Pen Pens is now there was Ferris Barbecue. And then across catatacorner across the street at 144th and Harvard, that little building that sits outside the church right there, that used to be Oakley’s Barbecue. And the bar that’s at 142nd. That, that’s been there for a long time. That was owned by the Kenny family, subsidiary Carson. And they’ve always been involved in the community very heavily. Their mom used to live, their parents lived on Benwood. Like right down that street at the end of that street that the bar is on. If you go down that street and go straight, you would run into that house that was, that was the Kenny’s house. Everybody knew because Ms. Kenny used to babysit. Used to have an in-home daycare. So half the neighborhood, they’ve been in there for one reason or another. Plus they had a bunch of kids. So somebody was affiliated with one of them kids somewhere. Grandson. Their grandson Roy was a friend of mine. So plenty of nights we was sitting in the kitchen playing jacks on the floor or helping with the kids that was over there. 131st and Harvard. That was Speedy’s. That was a Black-owned little like restaurant because there was a building that sat out by the curb like you know where that gas station is. So there was that, that main building. But there was a building that sat out along 131st. And that was the little. It was like a little bitty restaurant. But everybody went there. I’m forgetting something else right in there. Then once you go further down 131st going north, there was Hot and Juicy barbecue at Corlett. Facing Corlett on 131st. One of my very early boyfriends used to work in there. So I got free chicken wings.
Ava Carubia [00:10:41] So you remember that.
Mikel Jordan [00:10:44] But I was, I was always the exploring kid. Anyway. So I was everywhere. And then especially once we started that little dance group like that was a very vibrant subculture– throughout the city is the teenage street dance culture. Like we had really serious groups. Like we practiced, like we was getting paid. And there were several places that hosted kiddie dance night, kiddie dance parties. And we were devout and we had competitions and them competitions had sponsors. I remember one that we were supposed to get a music video shoot and blah blah blah. And then several months later I saw one of our moves in somebody else’s music video. So I don’t know how legit those people are. But
Ava Carubia [00:11:46] Well, can you talk more about that? When did y’all start the dance group?
Mikel Jordan [00:11:54] Spring of ’88.
Ava Carubia [00:11:58] So how old were you then?
Mikel Jordan [00:12:00] 16. Not quite 16. A third friend. It was me and Maria and a third friend named Cindy. Cindy used to live directly across the street from Glendale Playground, which is on 149th. It was the three of us that started this little dance group. And Cindy came to us like, “Listen, it’s a competition at the Spectrum on blah, blah, blah, and we getting in it.” And I was like, “Okay, who we competing against?” Like, you know, like, “Do you think we dance well enough?” But apparently we did because we won.
Ava Carubia [00:12:37] Oh, wow.
Mikel Jordan [00:12:38] Yeah. And that kind of changed my social trajectory because very quickly we became known citywide. Because I was kind of the super hype one and Cindy was the meticulous one. Like, no, when we hit this move, everybody’s hands gotta go the same way. And then we were, because we kind of sat near that Shaker border we were influenced fashion wise by Shaker. So we were kind of preppy dressed, but hood dancing. So we kind of got everybody’s attention real quick.
Ava Carubia [00:13:26] So did y’all have a name?
Mikel Jordan [00:13:28] Yep, Just Us. And about two years in, we actually merged with a guys group and became a co-ed group named Just 2 Much. The big names on that dance scene though, the big group names that you’ll hear even today: Step So Steady. They were much more the 131st block area. Nappy Heads, which actually started as BOSS, B-O-S-S. And I don’t remember what the acronym stood for, but they became Nappy Heads and got bigger. Step So Steady had a sister group named Step So Steady Dolls, that was our biggest competitor. We were just a girls group. Then there was Step Off Crew in Shaker. From Step Off Crew came a lot of what you see in dance and music videos today. Because one of those members is Usher’s choreographer. Like, I mean, Cleveland really, really influenced what you see in urban dance today way more than people outside of Cleveland know. There’s actually a documentary right now, “216 Legends of the Land”. It’s a documentary about the evolution of hip hop in Cleveland from the beginning. Because I’m also friends with MC Chill, Cleveland’s first nationally recorded hip hop artist, who I recently found out is also the first nationally recorded hip hop artist that is not from New York, period. So I didn’t know he was such a big deal then. He was just Chill from, you know, on Walden. But, yeah, he’s a big deal. He was signed to Fever Records I think in ’86. He had records on the radio. He was part of one of the first hip hop radio shows here, Club Style, on WDMT FM108. Our music scene has always been crazy, like, crazy big. Our hip hop scene, period. Music, dance, graffiti. We got some of the dopest graffiti artists to ever do it. Sano was part of one of those real early crews and he influences stuff all over the world right now. He’s out in LA, I think.
Ava Carubia [00:16:22] So I’m also curious about before the 80s. What was the sense you got of, like, hip hop, I don’t know, dance. Scenes in this area or just in Cleveland in general.
Mikel Jordan [00:16:35] So, you know, hip hop was still that young people’s thing that the adults were just waiting for it to pass. Like, everybody hated it. But you had those visionaries that kind of saw through. Like, “I don’t know if this is gonna pass.” Like, you know, we. We just lost Big Chuck. I don’t know if you know who that is. So there was like this late night variety show that showed scary movies or movies in general. But they did skits in between, Big Chuck and Lil’ John. So Big Chuck just passed a couple days ago. But they used to feature hip hop dancers on their show. So that was kind of the first time I saw us dance outside of just in driveways and. But honestly, my exposure started in the 80s because I turned, what, eight in 1980. So that was me really starting to go outside.
Ava Carubia [00:17:45] And I want to go back a little bit and then I want to get back to this topic. But where did you go to elementary school?
Mikel Jordan [00:17:50] So because my mom worked full time, we went to school from my grandmother’s house, which was on Fuller. So my first elementary school hasn’t been a school in 100 years. It was called Boulevard Elementary. It sits right on Kinsman at the corner of Kingsbury, facing the park. It’s a big pink building now.
Ava Carubia [00:18:15] Yes, I know what that building is. Is it a church?
Mikel Jordan [00:18:17] Yep. Yep. So that was my elementary school from kindergarten to second grade, including in ’77, which is the last really, really big snowstorm Cleveland had. Like, it lasted so long and it was so cold for so long, the school was closed to the degree that we had to stay in school until July of that year. And I remember, like, because back then schools didn’t have air conditioning. It was just hot all the time. I remember. And I’ll see if I can find it. The snowstorm was such a big deal that the reporters would be out just interviewing People coming and going. And me, my sister and my grandmother were pictured in the Cleveland Press. That was the newspaper at the time, during that, that blizzard, snowstorm time, because there was like two and a half, three feet of snow. It was like. The pictures are surreal. And we spent a lot of. My, my sister and I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house because my mother worked all the time.
Ava Carubia [00:19:37] So what did your mother do?
Mikel Jordan [00:19:40] She worked for Ohio Bell, which was the phone company at that time. I learned a lot because of that too. It’s transitioned in name so many times. AT&T. Ameritech. Something else in there. There was another name and then it went back to AT&T. At one time they were kind of all housed under the My Bell umbrella. So it was like Ohio, Michigan, a couple other states. She banked at the Cleveland Trust and the building that she worked at was 700 Prospect. I’ll never forget that. And there was a restaurant down there, Coney’s. I got my first Polish boy. You know, Polish Boys are a big thing here if you didn’t know, yeah. I was strung out from that day. I did not know until I was very grown that Polish Boys and corn beef is very regional here. Like, you can’t really get it outside of here. And if you do, it’s because somebody from here has kind of taken the tradition to where they settled. Yeah, there’s. There’s a lot of my memories are wrapped around food. cause, you know, Cleveland has a very. For one, diverse ethnic population. You know, it’s very segregated, but very diverse. And if you had any exposure at all, you got exposed to a lot of different great foods, you know, pierogies. And being in that 93rd area, we were really close to Slavic Village, so we got a lot of that. And with my grandfather working in a factory, he worked with a lot of Polish people, Jews. So we were exposed to different styles of cooking real early. And it made me probably more adventurous when it came to going around the city to, you know, I want to experience it all.
Ava Carubia [00:22:07] Can you talk more about that? Like, where would you go explore?
Mikel Jordan [00:22:11] Everywhere I could. So my, my grandmother was a little more strict than my mother, honestly. And she didn’t feel like 15 was old enough for me to be outside. And so I had to get clever with where I was supposed to be so that I could be somewhere else. But as soon as I learned how to catch a bus, that’s how I learned my way around town. I knew the 10 would take me across 93rd, the 14 would take me up and down Kinsman, the 15 up and down Harvard. So those were my first routes because I had to learn how to catch the bus from my grandmother’s to my, to home and vice versa. Like, if any of that needed to happen during the day while my mama was at work. And then so I just started especially, like, once we started dancing and whatnot. Like, oh, well, there’s a festival going on the other side of town. How do we get over there? And there wasn’t no Internet. You had to get a bus schedule. And sometimes you had to call and find out what bus took you over there, and then you go get the paper bus schedule. And so that’s. I learned the main buses that traveled the main streets. So I understood the grid of how the streets worked. And then I just started filling in the blanks. Like, I would find somebody that live on a certain part of town. Especially, like when we were young, me and Cindy, we did a lot of exploring because her dad lived in East Cleveland. So if we went over Cindy’s dad’s house, we were like, kind of cut loose from Euclid to St. Clair. So, yeah, eat spots. That’s spots that we could party and spots that we could eat. So, like, I’m gonna give you the outskirts of how far we was going at like 13, 14 years old. Bosak Donuts at Noble and Euclid. Because skating was, USA has been there for a long time. And they had skating on Sunday nights, and there was Southgate Skates for Friday nights. So those were anchor spots where you could get all the teenagers from all over the city. And then Tower City opened when I was in the 12th grade, I believe. Like, it was always the Terminal Tower. But then when they transitioned it to Tower City, you got teenagers from all over because everybody had a bus line and went downtown. Downtown was a really popular spot to travel to because you had 4th Street from Euclid to Prospect. It was a major shopping alley. Record Rendezvous was down there, I believe. I think it was Record Rendezvous. And you know, that’s a, that’s a hot spot on the Saturday. Especially when hip hop records start coming out to be sold. Like, everybody trying to be where that happens. I even got a couple friends that had record debuts either there or at Randall Mall. Randall Mall was another spot of convergence. Randall Mall and Severance Mall. Anybody you looking for on a Saturday, you can find them at Randall Mall, usually in the game room. And there were two game rooms. I think the big one was downstairs, main entrance. And the little one was upstairs, main entrance. That might be mixed up, but I held the high score on Centipede for so long. And then along came TLC and took my score down. TLC became a bit of a Cleveland celebrity. The Rapmedian. You can look him up. And he was just a guy that started freestyle rapping. Him and Suave, the Pink Gangsta, and they just kind of branched off into their own careers, honestly as local celebs. Suave, more of a all around hip hop God. And he still is a big presence in the hip hop community here. TLC, he became kind of a hip hop comedian and did a lot of shows and actually lost his sight because of diabetes. And I don’t think it hurt his career at all. Like, if anything, it may have helped a little bit because he was able to bring some light to another issue.
Ava Carubia [00:27:42] I want to go back to the dance group. Where did you go to high school?
Mikel Jordan [00:27:47] John Marshall.
Ava Carubia [00:27:49] Okay. Was the dance group connected to the high school or was it just something that?
Mikel Jordan [00:27:52] It was much more neighborhood. So I am a victim of busing. My class, starting from third grade. So I only went to Boulevard to second grade because they started busing us in third grade. So I went to elementary school on the west side for third grade. Then fourth, fifth and sixth, I was back over here at Paul Revere, which is 109th and Sandusky. And then I went to Whitney Young for junior high because it was the only major work junior high and I was in major work honors the whole from second grade all the way up. Well, they kind of kicked me out 10th grade because I started being bad. While at Whitney Young, I transitioned from going to school from my grandmother’s to my home address because I was old enough to be at home before and after school. So that put me, no longer in John Adams district, but in Kennedy/Marshall district. How they split up who went to Kennedy and who, who went to Marshall, I have no idea because the guy directly across the street went to Kennedy and we went to Marshall.
Ava Carubia [00:29:17] So you were bused. What was your feelings about busing? What was like the general feeling about busing in the community?
Mikel Jordan [00:29:26] So it was a different time. We did not really get the news of how our parents felt about stuff like that. Like we were just kids. You’re seen and not heard. Go. So it was what we got to do to go to school. We got to get on the bus. And Marshall was a 40 minute bus ride from over here. And it’s just what we did every day. And with our house being on that corner, that’s a more than average traveled street. Our corner was always where the bus stop was. Always. Now a couple of times my mother had to kind of clown the school because they had assigned us to a different bus, even though there was a bus stop on our corner. But I’ve never understood the workings of CMSD or Cleveland Public Schools or whatever they were at the time.
Ava Carubia [00:30:28] You said that the dance group, it was more neighborhood specific. And you talked about Shaker being kind of preppy. What were all the different neighborhood identities?
Mikel Jordan [00:30:38] Okay, so that’s harder. I was Harvard, which I didn’t really know I was Harvard until high school because I didn’t go to school from up there you know. But once I started spending my summers outside up there, like, I knew that I wanted to be affiliated with Harvard because they was into more, like. And not necessarily in a good way, but you know, the idea of gangs kind of hit the streets and you know, kids gonna emulate whatever is put before them. So we were kind of a gang, but most, mostly we were just the neighborhood kids that cliqued up. I remember one of the so called gangs even had dance routines. Like they used to have dance rehearsals. Like, it was the funniest thing, like looking back, like, we didn’t even know how to be tough. But so then even, even a Harvard clique. There were, there were different cliques inside of that. So there was like the hustlers that was selling dope real early and young and getting a bunch of money, like grown people money. And then there were the, like the funny dudes. Like, you hear people talk about ranking or playing the dozens, but when I tell you I came up with the best of them. I could make anybody cry because it was, it was like a sport. Like it. One, one year it got to the point we started doing illustrations. Like we were literally doing caricatures of each other telling jokes. Then you had the dressers. So like in my neighborhood, that was more a mixture of preppy and I don’t even know what you would call it. Like there were a lot of Levi hard cuts, you know, but ironed real crispy, you know. Chuck Taylor’s, that was, that was. They were big for a minute. But then you got into like the, the hip hop attire too. Like the Adidas shelltoes and the Adidas jog suits and stuff like that. And you know, there were different trends through different times. But like Shaker was definitely more the, the preppy kids because that’s how they were required to come to school. And then you had more of the Down The Way look, like the Timberlands and sweats and grungier look. But that grungy look didn’t really take off until after we were adults. Like, I remember everybody’s clothes were oversized. Everybody, like girls, guys, everybody. Through our preppy phase, I remember there was a Disney store in Tower City and the trend was button downs and ties, really hard pressed jeans or slacks, Sebago. They were like a loafer. Well, an oxford loafer, moccasin type deal. Penny loafers. Like that preppy look, but tretorns, K-Swiss. So it was like almost like a grungy twist on preppy.
Ava Carubia [00:34:36] And what years would you say these styles startes taking off?
Mikel Jordan [00:34:40] ’88, ’87, ’88. But then like everything was so influenced by music though. Like I remember 9th, 10th grade, literally going to school in catsuits because Salt-N-Pepahad come out with that, with the video with the catsuits and the big leather jackets. Like we literally wore that to a dance so we could battle somebody. And them catsuits came from Rave at Randall Mall.
Ava Carubia [00:35:19] So what was the Cleveland hip hop scene like compared to other cities? How would you describe Cleveland being different?
Mikel Jordan [00:35:34] I don’t really know as far as compared to other cities because I didn’t have a lot of exposure to other cities as a teenager. But it was definitely regional and super vibrant. Like for us to be kids and didn’t have no money, we found a way to express ourselves, to gather, to dance, to dress. Airbrushing became a really big thing because, you know, the cats that could tag, well, graffiti, learned that, oh well, if I get an airbrush instead of a spray can, I can put this shit on clothes. And that started happening. And my cousin actually was one of the premier airbrushers in town. And we found that out because I got pregnant in ’91. I had my daughter in ’92. For my baby shower, my little cousin with his brand new airbrush got in my mama’s front yard and did all our t-shirts. And that just took off as a trend. Like within a year, he was working at Randall Mall airbrushing T shirts. And now he’s a music producer. He has a clothing line, all kind of stuff. Just there were so many powerful things that came out of the artistic scene here.
Ava Carubia [00:37:06] So you did the dance group until what year?
Mikel Jordan [00:37:09] Till I got pregnant. Well, almost till I had that child. Because I remember my last performance, I was like six months pregnant.
Ava Carubia [00:37:16] Oh my God.
Mikel Jordan [00:37:17] Yeah. They was trying to make me go sit down. And I was like, why? Because I was out here literally like with a, a Levi. It wasn’t called a Levi, they had a different line but I had on a jean jumper so I had to look like Humpty Dumpty. Just really literally shaped like an egg with a with a jean jumper on. But that’s what we had. That was our outfit, so. And it was something I could actually get in because I was kind of big. And that’s kind of what took me from the dancing because I was actually looking to do dance on another level. Like at the time, Todd, the one that I told you is Usher’s choreographer, he was dancing for Gerald Levert and their group. Levert, that had to have been ’91ish. And I remember auditioning for them with Mark Gordon and nothing ever came of that. But like, I’m not a regret holding person, but that is my one what if in life, if I didn’t have a kid and I had stuck with that dancing, where would I have gone?Because I was really renowned on the dance scene. And I had the potential to be really good and like just seeing where some of the local dancers here have gone. And then of course, had a kid. So now I want to go play house. Really naive. And that’s kind of where I transitioned. I want to go in and be with my baby daddy and we gonna have a family. And that lasted about six months.
Ava Carubia [00:39:17] Were you, did you raise your daughter in this area?
Mikel Jordan [00:39:21] Yep. So originally, I moved to the projects. Cause you know, I ain’t have no work experience, blah blah, blah. So I moved down there when she was six months. We moved out when she was two. Moved to a house next door to my grandmother because she owned it at the time. She, very soon after I moved in, sold it. So I wound up moving back Up The Way. I went back to my mom’s for a few months, went and got a job. So then I moved back to this neighborhood. Now, I moved around this neighborhood a lot because I was very financially unstable, you know. So I lived on Marston. From Marston I went to Southview. From Southview I went to 143rd off Harvard. From there I went to Edgewood, about five doors down from where Steve’s store used to be. From Edgewood, I went to 147th off Kinsman. From there, I went to 147th and Benwood. And I was there from ’02 to ’08. And then I tried to move to Atlanta and that didn’t work either.
Ava Carubia [00:40:42] Right.
Mikel Jordan [00:40:44] I was back here in several months. But yeah, I spent pretty much most of my adult life in this neighborhood, like as a. As the head of household.
Ava Carubia [00:40:58] Well, I have a question because I think this is language that people from this area know, but not necessarily, like, widespread. Can you explain, like, where’s Down The Way? Where’s Up The Way?
Mikel Jordan [00:41:08] Okay, so Down The Way is pretty much the region where you find most of the projects in Cleveland. So DTW, when you hear that, it’s usually somebody from Outhwaite, Longwood, King Kennedy. And then Up The Way, depending on your vantage point, can start as low as 93rd and go all the way up to the borders where the suburbs are. But like the regions of Harvard, I don’t think anybody really claims below 116th at Harvard. Like, I’ve never heard anybody say I’m from down Harvard. But so when you hear people talk about the bottom of Harvard, they generally talking like 131st to about 155th. Up Harvard is 160th on up to Warrensville. So, like, there were even in the, on that gang scene, Harvard homeboys, ghetto boys. Those were lower Harvard. NOTY. Harvard Heights Knights was that upper Harvard. What other terminology have you heard as far as neighborhoods?
Ava Carubia [00:42:37] I feel like Down The Way, Up The Way, that’s mostly what I’ve heard. I can’t think of anything right now.
Mikel Jordan [00:42:41] So Up The Way in general would probably be above 116th.
Ava Carubia [00:42:46] Okay.
Mikel Jordan [00:42:48] Well, okay. And by above, I mean east of.
Ava Carubia [00:42:53] So you moved around a lot after your daughter was born. How had the neighborhood changed? Or how was it changing?
Mikel Jordan [00:43:00] Crack! Crack. Like, while I was a teenager, that’s when crack really hit and it dismantled our families, communities. Like that whole neighborhood atmosphere that I talked about, that was gone by the time I was an adult. Gone. Like, you had so many transient people, you had so many crackheads that were viewed just as that, like, no longer the members of the community that they had been because the stigma that the media put on crack permeated people’s perception, like, to the point like, this used to be your neighbor, and now because they get high and they lost their job and losing their house, you treating them like a thing. And I kind of fell into that category too, because my mother’s husband was a junkie. So, you know, coming up as a, a minor up under that, like, you. You definitely develop a different view about it. And so crackheads were like this mythical monster type deal, but not mythical, because it’s right there. And you just kind of develop this hatred for the category and they just all fit in that category. And the thing that kind of changed that, in my perception, was the Sowell murders, because I understood that that man got away with the murders. And because of who he targeted. He targeted women that he knew were looked at as disposable, that people wouldn’t come looking for. That, you know, in general, if a crackhead runs up to your car naked, talking about somebody trying to kill me, you gonna pull off because you don’t know what she, she on. But that was really just a woman being victimized. And it made me start looking at the lives that they had before they got strung out. And going back to how many of the people that I grew up smoking weed with, drinking underage, that had become crackheads. And how many of the people that took on selling crack that was getting life sentences.
Ava Carubia [00:45:46] Yeah.
Mikel Jordan [00:45:47] So you got teenagers that selling drugs to take care of their siblings because they parents strung out and gone, that wind up going to prison forever. Their parents go to prison forever for being strung out and what’s left of this property? Because even if the parents don’t go to prison now, they strung out, but they in this property. So then if they are able to hold on to it, all of their crackhead friends coming over there too. So now it’s a crack house. And in order to keep shit turned on. Lights, gas, whatever, they let one of these dope boys come sit up in here and pay for, pay to keep stuff on. But they don’t have nothing. And they’re converging in these areas, in these neighborhoods and just wreaking havoc. Not to mention the police are robbing the dope boys. Like they’re not just arresting them very often. All that stuff you see in movies, that wasn’t made up. Like they really running these young boys down because they know, what you gonna do about it? They stealing they dope, stealing they money. So you have this culture of people, of the hard working people that didn’t get caught up in the drugs, that everything around him is the enemy. The dope boys are the enemy, the crackheads are the enemy, the police are the enemy. But you still got to call the police when something happened because what else can you do? And it’s just, like, it just made everything so segmented and ugly.
Ava Carubia [00:47:33] And when would you say that started happening?
Mikel Jordan [00:47:38] ’87ish. We didn’t really start seeing how ugly it was till maybe ’90, ’91. The first time that an unarmed Black man in my personal acquaintance, was murdered in the street. Everett Dismuke. Corner of Lee and Miles, there was a convenient, little convenience store up there and the, the residents up at Lee-Miles, they had a new, like, development up there and they were just really tired of the drug trafficking up there. And they were out there picketing, you know, like, we gonna take our neighborhood back from these dope boys and blah, blah, blah. So the police shot him face down on the concrete, handcuffed, shot him in his back. And, you know, at the time, all they had to do was say, “He reached for my gun.”And that’s what they did. They, they wrote him off as, you know, we killed him in self defense. It was the residents that were out there picketing against the dope boys that said, no, bullshit. They murdered that young man because it took for them to watch him die, to understand that even though he’s doing something that you abhor, that you, that is poisoning your community, he still belonged to you. And it just kind of started waking people up to the corruption of the police department in this city. But the damage, like, it had already been done. And has anything still been done to fix it? Very, very little. So it worked on so many levels. So many levels, like, and to this day, you got people with felony convictions, no matter where they fell into. You know, what was it called? The forfeiture laws. You ever seen them? At one point, you could have your property seized for $20 worth of dope being found on your property. You’re. You could have your entire property seized. Mind you, dope boys, in order to not get robbed by the police, what they’ll do while they out on the block, they’ll have they dope somewhere and not have it on they person. So if the police storm the block and they run and they pull up on this dope in your yard, “I can seize your property. You never had anything to do with this.” And it just, it ravaged us like, because then once they seized the home, they didn’t do nothing with them. And then so on top of that, to compound that, you have the nursing home thing. If you own a property and you die in the care of a nursing home, even if you just got there this morning, if you die in their care, they step in as a fiscal agent for Medicare and they seize your property supposedly to offset your Medicare expenses, but they don’t sell the property. They don’t know anything about real estate. So a lot of these abandoned homes that were abandoned were because of that. Because the owner, the proper owner, died in the care of a nursing home because all their family was strung out, you know. Wasn’t nobody taking care of them. Wasn’t nobody taking care of bills. So the house gets seized and it’ll just sit there. And sometimes that leads to it being a crack house because a lot of these crackheads had good jobs back in the day. Worked for the light company or the gas company and know how to turn shit back on they self. So just the properties around here, that’s what has happened to a lot of the homes around here. Either drugs or the medical system. And it’s crazy, like, to go up and down streets where I can name seven, eight, nine playmates that stayed on this block. And the street is just snaggletooth, like, missing over half the homes. Because then what? Once you tear down the house, the city can’t afford to upkeep all of this land. So then it’s just overgrown. So in the place of people, what used to be taxpayers and people going to work and beautifying the area, you got overgrown areas full of skunks, possums, raccoons, groundhogs, deer. And like, I just don’t understand what. Yeah, I kind of do. But what is expected of the people that’s left? And I honestly wish you could have seen it like, the way it was.
Ava Carubia [00:53:19] I do too.
Mikel Jordan [00:53:2] Because it was really dope. Like, I saw a meme on social media that was just a picture of a pile of bikes at the end of a driveway. And it said, this is how we knew where all our friends were growing up. And it was just that, because wasn’t no cell phones, didn’t nobody know where your kids were. Like, and we were outside. Like, we went outside. “I did brush my teeth, I did eat something, I did wash my face!” From that time in the morning till street lights came on. You heard that before? So that’s a cultural thing, I guess. But you be in this yard by the time the street lights come on. And my mother’s instruction was be in hollering distance. But my mama had a really big mouth, so we were able to go all the way to the playground because even if we didn’t hear somebody be like, “Kayla, Nikki, your mama calling you!”
Ava Carubia [00:54:16] You talked about the changes in the neighborhood, but how did that, like, hip hop dance scene that you were a part of change? You said you stopped getting involved, but how did it change in the city as a whole?
Mikel Jordan [00:54:27] So most of the people that were dancing, you know, were also becoming adults. So now we got responsibilities. You either gotta go to work or find a way to make this dancing work for you. And, you know, ain’t enough room for everybody to dance. So those select few that were the combination of good enough at it and in the right place at the right time were able to make careers out of it. Other people just kind of transitioned into going to college or, you know, and here. Let me just start with my home base. I became a hairstylist. It was kind of always what I did, though. Like I kind of was doing hair in high school. Like my first haircut was on my sister when that, that Salt-N-Pepa haircut with everything short over the. With one long side. And I’ll get you some pictures too.
Ava Carubia [00:55:26] Yeah.
Mikel Jordan [00:55:26] To help illustrate all of this. Maria went to the service. She became a marine. Cindy became a crackhead. She’s clean now. She actually just out of the. This is so odd. I haven’t heard from her in years and got this text message maybe two days.
Ava Carubia [00:56:07] Oh my God, y’all are so young. You’re cute.
Mikel Jordan [00:56:15] And we were so bout it. Like that one caught me off guard. I’ve never seen this picture. Yeah, but she. She just lost her dad, so, you know, she was going through it.
Ava Carubia [00:56:44] I started recording again. But I guess my next question is like, all that momentum from that scene, what did it move into? Was there a new scene that started up after everyone got older?
Mikel Jordan [00:56:58] Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s just that it branches in so many directions. But some of the things that it fed. Late mid to late 90s, there was a very, very strong spoken word movement here. So a lot of the rappers, a lot of the people that was into the verbal side of music, moved into poetry. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Silver B. He was a super phenomenal dude in this city. He was an older dude that understood the power behind the hip hop scene here and he harnessed it. He developed a lot of talent here as far as artists, dancers. He facilitated a lot of events and whatnot. He was always at the festivals. Glenville, Lee-Harvard, all of the festivals. Radio station. He got a lot of people on the radio. And he actually had a program called Straight Talk in East Cleveland. It was kind of a diversionary program for people that got kicked out of Shaw. I can’t think offhand of anybody of that magnitude on this side of town. But there were just a lot of different movements that did kind of grow from that. Like 71 North is a current group that does a lot of line dance songs. You heard of the Cleveland Shuffle? Mucci, Big Mucci was one of the people that was in one of those groups when it was hot, when it was big. And I jokingly call him the dude that just never stopped stepping and made a career out of it. And they tour the world now. So line dance movement kind of came from hip hop, Cleveland, hip hop scene. Cause you know, line dancing is everywhere now. The skate subculture is still very much alive. It’s usually older people and younger people. Like you don’t really get in between. You get people 50 and over because we had a really strong scene. And then there’s like a 20 something, a younger 20s that are kind of revitalizing that scene. But I hate, I hate seeing that subculture diminish because it was, that’s always been dope because it always crossed over with the DJ scene. Now there is another area that was heavily influenced by that whole scene. Our DJ culture here is dope. Like Nerve DJs last year celebrated their 20 year reunion as well as celebrating 50 years of hip hop. And they did their event down at the Rock Hall and it was huge. And that’s where they premiered the documentary. So like, you got DJ Crews. Nerve DJs is now a worldwide organization and it’s not just about playing records at shows anymore. Like they have seminars about how to run business and tech stuff and they have a whole three day symposium here annually. So that’s one of the biggest ways that, you know, the, the dancing kind of exploded out into other career paths. And I’ve always been a DJ groupie. Like, you can catch me in the booth right now. Scratchmaster L. Leon that I went to Boulevard with. DJ El Dog, Ellery, Mastermind. DJ Mastermind is a. Our families have grown up together for three generations. So to me, he, I’m here. There’s baby pictures of me and him together because our parents went to school together.
Ava Carubia [01:02:15] Well, just because we have limited time, I’m gonna end with the final question I always ask everyone. And then you can also add anything that we didn’t touch on. But the question I always end on is, what’s one message you’d like to leave for future generations?
Mikel Jordan [01:02:33] Learn how to build within your home, around your home, within your neighborhood, because your family extends beyond your doorway. We are in a time that it is more crucial than probably any other time in my life that we learn how to depend on each other again. So bring back community gardening, locally owned businesses, shared economics. Figure out how to work together and make things work without needing from any higher form of government or anything else.
Ava Carubia [01:03:23] And then that’s my final question. But is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you want to talk about?
Mikel Jordan [01:03:35] I hope that you’re getting some insight about some of the business owners, the historic business owners around here that have been the glue that held this together when everything else was falling apart. And the ways that they have sheltered people from the outside menaces and helped raise the people inside. You know, when people were coming up without parents because of whatever drug epidemic or whatever other influences. The people that kept that old neighborhood energy alive. And I wish I was better with examples, but trust me, I’ll send them to you.
Ava Carubia [01:04:33] Well, I really appreciate it. I appreciate you coming out today. I’m going to end the recording right now.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
