Abstract

In this 2025 interview, Bernita Polk Thomas talks about her family’s move from Central to Mt. Pleasant and her life growing up in the neighborhood. She mentions racial changes, her experiences in the public schools, and extracurricular activities she participated in. Thomas Polk ends her interview by emphasizing the importance of understanding the past through history.

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Interviewee

Polk Thomas, Bernita (interviewee)

Interviewer

Carubia, Ava (interviewer)

Project

Union-Miles

Date

3-6-2025

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

69 minutes

Transcript

Ava Carubia [00:00:00] So I have my script that I’m going to read, which is Today is March 6th, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here at NewPoint Community Development Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio. Interviewing Ms. Bernita Polk Thomas for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:00:19] You’re welcome.

Ava Carubia [00:00:21] And then can you please state your name, the year you were born and where you were born for the record?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:00:26] My name is Bernita Polk Thomas. I was born…1956. My parents I was born down in the Central neighborhood, but my parents moved out here to Mount Pleasant, I want to say in 1959, just before about six months to a year before I attended Robert Fulton Elementary School on 140th and Kinsman.

Ava Carubia [00:00:56] Okay, great. I want to get started right there. Can you talk about moving to the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:01:01] I don’t know, because I was a kid. I was young. I was a baby, maybe 4 years old. It’s not much recollection I had. I know we moved from my grandmother’s house. She lived on 76th and Central. And I know that I remember as a child it was because I didn’t remember back that far, but I grew up with a lot of people, a lot of friends. And when I entered school, it was nice. It was pleasant growing back up in that day, in that time period.

Ava Carubia [00:01:44] And can you talk a little bit about your parents? Where were they from originally?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:01:49] My parents were born in Cleveland, Ohio. My mother. My mother well, I start with my dad. My dad’s name was Cecil Polk. He was, my grandparents were John, John Polk and Madie Evans Polk. My dad was born here. He was also a graduate of Central High School in 1952. And so my mom also went to Central in 1952. She lived on Keyes Avenue. And her name is Lois Barn Polk. My mom was born May 25, 1933, and my dad was born August 25, 1932, and they both went to Cleveland Public Schools.

Ava Carubia [00:02:40] So then can you talk about why they decided to move from Central to Mt. Pleasant?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:02:44] Well, because I think they wanted well, they lived with my grandparents. Well, my grandparents. And then I think they just wanted to branch out into the neighborhood. I think they were opening up the neighborhood to African Americans or Blacks back then, Negroes. And because our area had a lot of Italians in it before they moved, they decided to. And since they were also giving loans to people in the neighborhood, I think that’s why they decided to move there. Let’s see any. Let me see my. Well, go ahead. Keep asking questions.

Ava Carubia [00:03:33] Well, I was going to ask, did you have any siblings or was it just you and your parents?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:03:37] No, I have two siblings. Simone is the middle child. She’s up under me. She was born… 1959. So my mother just had her. Well, just maybe she was a little bit young. And I have younger sister, Cecilia Polk. She was born…1964.

Ava Carubia [00:04:03] Okay. And then I know you said you didn’t really remember moving, but can you talk about what the neighborhood was like when you were young?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:04:12] Neighborhood was like there were a lot of people here in the neighborhood. Well, as African Americans or Black people. There were. There were some whites in the neighborhood, a few, some. But like I said, most, most of them have moved out by then. So I think that’s why they were offering us. We had in, let’s see, the neighborhood. The main staples now in the neighborhood are the library and Key Bank. Well, it was Central national bank back then, but now it’s Key. So those things. And we had, we had two grocery stores, I want to say A&P and Fisher Foods. We had Naleshi’s here also. They were on the corner of 139th and Kinsman, which is like probably the same place that’s out in Solon now. But we were there. I could, go ahead and ask some other questions.

Ava Carubia [00:05:27] Well, you’re also able to just keep talking if you want. But I know that you mentioned that there were some racial changes going on in the neighborhood. Can you speak more to that?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:05:37] Well, it wasn’t more so our neighborhood. I mean, we had some racial. Well, as far as the whites leaving the neighborhood, going out, you know, further or whatever, but there wasn’t too many racial tensions that I can remember as far as when the Hough riots began in, I want to say, ’69, we were here. Hough was, I say, 15 minutes away. We saw what they, what was happening over there to them. And as a child, I only imagined that, you know, they would hopefully it wouldn’t come out this way as a child, but I still believe that we were all a part of the history back then as African Americans. Even though I lived across town and they lived, they lived close to probably to Cleveland Clinic. I, as far as, like the movement back in civil rights, we didn’t experience, we experienced it some. We talked about it in school a little bit. But basically my parents taught me, you know, as a young person that all people are created equal. I did listen to March on Washington, although I was a young girl back in ’63. And everybody should be equal. It’s not everybody or everybody is created equal. And being an older person now, I can understand that a whole lot better. A whole lot better. There’s still a lot of tension now as it was back in between ’63 and ’70. Like I said, I didn’t experience that because we were in a different place. And Watts, they had a-Hough Riots, Detroit riots, Watts. And you look at it where people were burning down houses. You had the. You had the Black Panthers in ’69. And as a child growing up in that. Not in that particular environment, I did learn a lot that, you know, meaning that we should overcome. I, you know, it’s. I guess it hurt me a little bit to see all that happening. And then when Dr. King. Well, Malcolm X, when I was able to understand that Dr. King and also President Kennedy were killed at that. Well, in that particular time period between ’66 and ’69 and Robert Kennedy, I think that hurt me a lot when Dr. King, you know, because he was trying to change the world and he was trying to change people. Change people said we all need to look at each other as just human beings and not separate, but equal. And I think when I saw that in school, being a young person, seeing it in school, it did bring a tear to my eye because, you know, because he had been a leader for us for very many years and people couldn’t. People. A lot of people didn’t see that. A lot of folks didn’t see that. And he was trying to help correct the wrong that was being done to us. And going back to that time, it was just a real hurtful time. Hurtful. Robert Kennedy got shot. That didn’t. Which didn’t make any sense, but it changed history. It really changed history. I think up until this point, it’s a real big change in history. It’s like now we’re going back to that. Not even progressing anywhere. We’re going back to all of that. And it’s sad. It’s very sad. Very angry and very sad. But go ahead.

Ava Carubia [00:10:39] Well, I forget, where did you go to elementary school again?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:10:42] Robert Fulton. It was on 140th between Byron and Bell.

Ava Carubia [00:10:50] Can you talk a little bit more about going to elementary school there?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:10:54] Sure. Going to elementary school there. I had a lot of friends. Everybody knew each other. Everybody knew every. My mom was in the PTA out there, and I didn’t get away with much. I wasn’t that type of girl anyway. But I went up there to learn. I went up there to learn all about myself. I even won a sports night, no I didn’t win. I got an honorable mention in the Sportsman show when they had them here in the city. But school was. I was in the choir school. I tried to get into the orchestra. Said my lips was too big. I wanted to play flute because I knew I could probably get into the band or the orchestra. Nah. So my mother taught us. We went to take piano lessons down at Higbee’s, which was on the. Down where the casino is sitting at now. So we went and took piano lessons for many years. Probably between the ages. I’m gonna say the ages between 10 and 18. So. But because I wanted to play some kind of instrument that would put me. I think that was a real good thing. They used to check us once a month for. Well, like lice. We had ringworm and stuff like that. So that we. We check once every month or one. No, once every three months. We sang. I. I love to sing. I actually, I’m in the choir at church, my church now, which is in the neighborhood. And I sang in the glee club and the choir when I was in elementary school. And I sang in the choir when I was out here in Hamilton. It was fun. I enjoyed it. I had a lot of friends. There was another big change in life also. My grandfather passed away. I felt. I just felt hurt, scared, you know, just hurt and stuff like that. Also, I went. When I went to school, they also. They separated the kids between the regular kids and what they call now, gifted. Then that is considered, you know, you were either major work or an enrichment. They separated the kids at school. So that kind of threw me for a loop because I went home and told my mom, I said, why my cousin was going to Rickoff. And at that time, the Rickoff was one of the schools. One of the. It wasn’t major work. Major work school was in Gracemount, which was out in Lee-Harvard, Richmond School was Rickoff. And that was on 140. Well, same place where it is now. But it was. It didn’t look like that. They. I felt like. And I think some of my friends felt like, why wasn’t we chosen to go to Rickoff? Because most of my classmates, I think they were pretty smart. We were pretty, all pretty smart kids. And we couldn’t understand one guy that goes to my church now. But I’ve known him since kindergarten. He said the teacher told him that his mouth was too big. You know, he always ran his mouth off the time and he couldn’t believe that. And I went home, told my mother how come they didn’t pick me. So what she did about. When I was in sixth grade, she had me tested. So by the time I got up to Kennedy, I was in enrichment. That was probably the biggest change for me, for the neighborhood, because they had us. It sectioned us off, which I don’t think they should have.

Ava Carubia [00:15:16] In what grade did they start doing that?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:15:18] I want to say about fourth or fifth grade, because I can remember about fourth or fifth grade. And I came home and told my mom how come? Well, how come my cousin was able to go but I wasn’t? And I think that split did a lot of things to me. I didn’t like that I didn’t like they were splitting us up because of. Because of. Not academics, because of. What’s the word I want to use? Because other kids, adult, other kids, were smarter than some of them. And I think we all were pretty well intelligent back then. The ones, the kids that I hung around, I think we all were pretty intelligent. So I think they should have left those kids in the school that I was in and not switch everybody around because I think it gave them a. It was like a sense of, why am I not as intelligent or smart when I thought everybody in my class, well, most of the people in my class was smart or either a little bit gifted, you know, so that’s a big thing that was with me when I. It happened somewhere between. Yeah. Fourth and sixth grade.

Ava Carubia [00:16:43] And then. Where’d you go to junior high?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:16:46] Hamilton. Everybody from this area, except for when they built Jamison, not in this area. Down Kinsman over to Shaker Square, down Kinsman to 130th, down Union, on the other side of Kinsman, from Kinsman to Bartlett and going all the way up into Shaker and Union. I’m going to say to Union. Union to. At Union. That’s the stop line. Because I think a lot of other kids went to Audubon and some of the other schools and. Oh, dear. I went to Hamilton and went to Hamilton, and then they had also had major work and enrichment there. So a lot of kids. I met some other people. A lot of kids that stay down a little further from 116th all the way up to the border of Kenne-. Well, border of Shaker and all the way over to Garfield Heights border. I think some of them went to Hamilton. So, I mean, my junior high school years were really good. You know, first different relationships. You know, it was. It was. It was different. I was taking. I was. I was taking. Let’s see, algebra in the eighth grade, I was taking. Oh, I want to say. No, I think that was. I knew I was taking algebra in the eighth grade and ninth grade and I. We started taking French in seventh, eighth grade. So I knew I was, you know, just. And it was great. Everybody had lunch. Everybody was in something in school. It was just a great time to be in school. It was. It was. I enjoyed going to school. I really enjoyed going to school. Different friends seeing, you know, different people. It was just great. I enjoyed it. Like I said, I was in the choir in junior high school and participated. Parents were coming up to see you at the end of the year singing or doing concerts and stuff like that. I really enjoyed it. I was still taking piano lessons at that time. No, that happened in high school. Still taking piano lessons at that time. So that, I mean, my situation was kind of like, well-rounded. Actually now, on my street, now. My cousins lived across the street from me. She’s my cousin there in the picture. They lived across the street from me. So we had a really good time and good times going back to the neighborhood. We really had good times. We would. Sometimes we would. This is things we did in the neighborhood. We would go behind people’s houses and played jungle or whatever. And you would hear the neighbors say, what are you doing back here? I’m gonna come and get you out. You know, that kind of in between people’s property lines, through the, you know, behind the garages. We did that. We played. We played kickball on the street sometimes we rode a bike basically everywhere. We also rode down by. What they call. Well, over there by Shaker Heights High School and elementary school. That’s the place they call bicycle jungle. So everybody usually rode all the way over there. But, you know, you weren’t supposed to. But, you know, your parents didn’t know. So, hey, we went there anyway. So one of my friends on the street, he got into an accident. We had one place called Suicide Hill. We would go down Suicide Hill.

Ava Carubia [00:21:17] Where was that?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:21:18] That was over in the Shaker Lakes. Somewhere over in Shaker Lakes. And he hurt himself real bad. He lost one of his kidneys. And then we got scolded for that one. I had my friends come over. I had. I ain’t gonna say boyfriends, but yeah, I had a couple of friends come over. We would sit and talk on the porch. And then what my mom would do, like the Friday night, we would have to. We would have to clean up the house from the attic to the basement. Always that Friday night. So she was like, well, you got to do whatever you wanted to do on Saturday. So I said, well okay. So there wasn’t much we could do about that. What else?

Ava Carubia [00:22:20] Do you have, what’s your most positive memory from being a kid in the neighborhood?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:22:27] A lot of friends. We connected with the people on our street. A lot of friends on the street. My cousins, you know, I think that was probably one of the best times. My mom and dad were also involved in the street club. They were always involved with the neighborhoods and stuff. And like I said, the best time for me is just being involved with a lot of my friends on the street and, you know, people in the neighborhood and people that went to my school. I think that was the best time. I think it was just the best time of being a kid in the school that, you know, that’s all I can say about that. I’ll think of some other things.

Ava Carubia [00:23:21] And then going on to high school, what was that like?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:23:25] That was different then. You met other people from everywhere else. So I knew a lot of people in high school, I think. I knew a lot. Our graduating class was really big for Kennedy. We graduated somewhere between 7 and 800 back in the day in 1974. Plus, you have people that graduated, back then, you had them graduate in January and in August because they had some score, they had enough credits to get out earlier. But, yeah, I had a boyfriend back then. I enjoyed going. Like I said, I enjoyed going to school. I wasn’t able to get in the choir like I wanted to in school, in junior high and elementary school because my schedule didn’t allow it. I didn’t like that. And in my 12th year, I was supposed to have taken physics, calculus, English, and probably a few other classes. And I told them, no, I’m gonna have my. My classes were going to be easy. And so I took a dynamic living and also took Black history. I have, the years before, I’d taken American history, world history and Black history.

Ava Carubia [00:25:02] Was Black history something offered at a lot of schools in CMSD, do you know?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:25:07] I don’t think they offer any history in school now.

Ava Carubia [00:25:11] But at that time, do you know.

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:25:13] At that time, I think, yeah, it was kind of like an elective. And it was something I wanted to take for people that were in honors courses or whatever. They took black literature, but I was able to take Black history. And we got. Our textbook was called Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett Jr. And he was the editor of Ebony Magazine back then. And it has some really good. The book was really good. I mean, I learned about everything I could about Black history. Which helps me now because I’m a travel. I do motorcoach travel, I do bus travel. So once a year when I do that, I go to different states and I learn. I learn about the history. I just came back from Philadelphia, so I learned about what happened before D.C. until they had a constitution and they moved to D.C. learned about the Founding Fathers and Thomas Jefferson, George Washington. It gives me a different perspective when I go and do that, because when I go to Maryland or Virginia, they give their stories about who did the history, who was in history back then. Biggest person to me right now that I can think of is Harriet Tubman, because she brought a lot of slaves up from the south to the north into Maine and going into Canada. So every step. And they have what they call Harriet Tubman Byway that you take from like Virginia all the way up to Maine. And it gives me a different perspective because I did take Black history back in the day. So when I come home and I can say, well, this is what I’ve seen over time and how different things were coming up and going to the different African American museums. I went to the one in D.C. which showed a whole lot of stuff. So it makes me want to just learn more. Want to learn more about my history and others, because I’m also interested in learning about Native Americans or just called indigenous, you know, because they had a lot to do with this, our history. So I’m just not only with Black history, Native American, Latinos, because they have a lot. Learned a lot about things in Texas. So. But let me get back to. I’m giving you a lot of information.

Ava Carubia [00:28:27] No, that’s great. That’s what these interviews are for. But from elementary school into high school, do you think that the neighborhood, the area, had changed at all between those years?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:28:37] You know what? It changed a little. To me, it changed. It didn’t. Hadn’t changed that much until maybe after I got out of high school. Then I think when drugs came into our neighborhoods here, that was one. And that was right after the riots. Then also when gas prices went up.

Ava Carubia [00:29:12] And when was that?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:29:14] Probably around the time I graduated, ’75, when they had the oil crisis. I think things got a little bit different. It was a little bit different financially. The most big thing to me back then was when they put drugs into our neighborhood. And that was right after The Movement. Just. Yeah, just probably right after The Movement, I saw a change in that, which made things a little bit more. A little bit different. With cocaine, heroin, people, you know, people speedballing, or either it was mostly marijuana, cocaine, heroin. I think that as far as the neighborhood, neighborhood changed. Some of the grocery stores might have moved out. We did get a Save More up there, which was a big thing for us. They were owned. They were owned by the people who own Zagara’s. On Lee Road, you know, before that changed over to Dave’s. Tops was still in the neighborhood. Fisher Fazio was still in the neighborhood. We had a lot of. We had a lot of between. Between Mt. Pleasant and Lee-Harvard there were a lot of grocery stores. We had a Pick-N-Pay, which changed to Tops and all that back, you know, back in the day. Lee-Harvard also had one, like I said, Heinen’s, which was actually up in Shaker. We didn’t go there that far, but I know my parents went up on Chagrin and Lee to go to Pick-N-Pay a lot. And like I said, they tore that down and then they opened Save More. Because I used to shop, do my shopping and Save More. I didn’t have. I didn’t have a car back then. And I was married, but I didn’t have a car. So sometimes I take my little shopping cart and walk up and do grocery shopping and come back. They had fresh meat, they had fresh produce, everything else, like I said. And they had a McDonald’s also in our neighborhood where Family Dollar used to be. And that was owned by a Black person. So I think things would. I think things were doing better, doing pretty good. I stayed in my grandfather’s house. I was married that time. My grandfather had passed away in this way, I want to say 90, ’93.

Ava Carubia [00:32:31] And how old were you when you got married or what year?

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:32:35] 32. I was 32 years old and I got married. I want to. Oh, I got married February 12th of ’83. Yeah. And I was actually married to a city, City, City of Cleveland Water Department employee. And I was working. Actually, I worked for Pick-N-Pay until they had. Until 86. And in 1986, they closed the. They had two warehouses back then. They had a health and beauty aids warehouse where I was pulling health and beauty aids. Like they work at Amazon, only they have. They have a tablet and. And I’m not gonna answer this.

Ava Carubia [00:33:29] That’s okay.

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:33:34] Ooh, I got. Hello (recording pauses). Which one is that? Second, I’m going to say that’s the third largest Amish population in the country other than Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Holmes county, which is in about hours away our way here in Ohio. However, let me go back. What’s that question again?

Ava Carubia [00:34:05] Well, I asked you how the neighborhood had changed between elementary and high school. And then you were saying it changed after you graduated.

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:34:12] It changed. It changed. Like I said, it changed a lot. The only mainstays I know, I was getting ready to tell you, was the bank and the library. We didn’t lose the bank. The bank just, the bank is still where it is now. Right there on the corner of 140th and Kinsman. And the library was right next to that. Everything else kind of changed around it. We had a drugstore, which was Saks, which was. The owner was white. And his wife was Carl Stokes’ ex-wife back in the day. That’s the first African American mayor in the city. We had actually, we had our people. We had Jim Brown living in the neighborhood. I want to say the Stokes brothers lived near or in the neighborhood, but we definitely had Jim Brown live in the neighborhood. He was his kids, his mom. Wait a minute. His wife was in the PTA with my mom back in the day. Other changes might have been. Let me see. Schools, except for Robert Fulton schools are basically where they are. Except for Hamilton. Hamilton’s no longer there. So we always keep a page going for. What do you call it? For, in Facebook so we could get together. And Kennedy, we got our own page so we can get together for different reunions and different picnics and stuff like that. All-school picnic. But I think, yeah, the biggest change was the drugs. And drugs became more prevalent in the neighborhood. I think people started getting laid off of their jobs because they had really good jobs. Steel mill, auto industry. Because they went up on the price of gas also. And then I graduated the fir-But skipping all over the place like I’ve been doing last half an hour. The biggest other thing is we went on a family vacation. We had already been going on family vacations to Cedar Point every year since probably 19. 1968. 60. No, probably ’67. We were all going to Cedar Point. So my mother got always would get our room at then because they got a whole lot of hotels now up at the Hotel Breakers. And I guess it was wondering how did Black people, you know, she was just saying, how did we get to stay in a hotel back then? And it was mostly whites staying in a hotel. And my dad would drive up in his ’69 Lincoln. I guess they wonder how we got to stay in the Hotel Breakers. My mother would save every penny she had. So we could go stay about two, three days and come on back home. Our biggest trip, family trip was to me was after I got out of high school and that was ’75. We went to Disneyland.

Ava Carubia [00:37:48] Wow.

Bernita Polk Thomas [00:37:51] We went to Disneyland. We didn’t stay in Disneyland. We stayed outside. We stayed in one of them hotel -otels. Mother hated that because she hated. She hated that because we wasn’t. It wasn’t like we was inside the hotel. It was like one of those hotel motel, Holiday Inns. So. And a lizard or something came up in there. She was. But, I mean, my sisters were a little bit younger than me. I was about 19. So we traveled. I got to see Disneyland. I wanted a set of ears, but I thought I was too old for that, so. But I enjoyed that. We went to Anaheim. We went to Knott’s Berry Farm back then. And then we stayed, I guess about a week and came home. That was a big. And I missed one thing about school. My cousin’s class was talking about going to Africa one year. And they sat around, they talked about it so much in social studies class that they decided to go to Africa. And they went to Africa. And also they had chaperones, but also went with the guy from Channel 25 from WVIC. So that was. And then that next year my other cousin and I went to Mexico. We went to. Well, they have Cancun and Cozumel and all that. We went to the western side, which had Mexico City, Taxco, Acapulco. Acapulco is where the entertainment people used to go back in the day. Like Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and all them. We took a boat trip. Took a boat trip. We saw somebody jump off of a cliff, you know, dive off of a cliff. It was funny. We got to see Mexico City. Is so much different from the Aztecs. Had a lot to do with the. With the ruins. Looked like ruins in Egypt, only they’re more colorful. They had on a thing where you could see the calendars and all that. The seasons changed. It was totally different going back to. It was Mexico back in that day. I bought me a big sombrero, wore that home. I bought my mother a nice purse. I did buy a couple of jewelry. Taxco was the place to get silver jewelry back then. So I know I bought a piece of jewelry made, I think. But it was. I took a picture of my cousin when she was seasick. But I enjoyed myself. We learned a lot about traveling away from home and away from parents. One day it was my cousin and I, and some boys from our group was there and we were in one room. Well, they was knocking on the door, knocking on the wall. We went to knocking on the wall. And then they came over here to see who it was. And it was us. So that was. That was kind of. That was a little bit hilarious. I think one of the guys also got a c-cos when somebody handed him a c-cos. And he came back and told one of the staff moms, what is this? And they knew it was some kind of drug, so they took it away from him. But, I mean, it was fun. We had a good time. We all had a good time. It wasn’t no kids not minding the chaperones and stuff like that, but we did that. And also Channel 25 went on with this trip with us. It was fun. That had to be. Must have been ’70 or ’71. 1970 or 71, we did it. That was another. That was the first time I had ever traveled on a plane. First time from here to Houston, I think, and Houston and Mexico City. That was the first time I went. The second time we went on a family trip from. I think. And I’m thinking we might have had a direct flight from Cleveland to Los Angeles. But that was different. That was totally. It was. It was different. It was really different. You know, just. I don’t know. My parents were. They always wanted to go somewhere. As we got older, my mom and dad would go places, kind of like by themselves. They would go to Vegas. They had friends that they, you know, went with to go to Vegas. And most of the times, if we were. And my mom and dad would do that. See, my aunt lived across the street, and there was neighbors around that always watched. So we didn’t have no parties or nothing in the house. Well, we also had a dog, so we didn’t do all crazy stuff because my aunt was across the street. But I don’t know. It was just. I don’t know. I thought when we learned, we had. And I should have went back, we had chores we had to do. These kids don’t have chores, nowadays. When you come home, you put on your other clothes and you started to straighten up, clean. No, you did your homework, then you kind of straightened up and cleaned up until that big cleaning on Friday nights. We had to go from the attic to the basement and clean. And we did. We did that. We. If you had kitchen duty, that meant you had to clean up the kitchen every night after you. After you ate. So that meant you had to sweep the floor, wash dishes a certain type of way, because we have a dishwasher, had to wash dishes a certain type of way and wipe off the stove, do whatever. And then you got to do your homework. And then after that was bedtime so they didn’t have no time to mess around. My mother went to work right after my youngest sister hit about five years old, she went to work and she worked at the Cleveland Board of Education as a librarian first, and then she started being a secretary at one of the schools for the Cleveland Board of Education. Also. Between that time period, my mom also went back and got her degree in elementary education, and they wanted to put her on the west side, but she wasn’t liking that. So she became a secretary in schools for a Board of Education, and she also went back to school. She was going to Central State, but she married my dad, and then she finished, she was going back to Cleveland. She went to Cleveland State to finish her schooling, and she graduated from Cleveland State University in ’81, the same time my sister graduated from Baldwin Wallace in 1981. So I think we all were. I mean, we were all pretty good kids. I don’t. It wasn’t. I mean, I had a little stuff going on with my parents, but I don’t know. I think I was a. Me and my sisters were pretty. Pretty decent kids. We knew we had to be responsible. We knew we had things we had to do, and we just did it. And just like I said about my Girl Scout troop, that was one thing. I enjoyed meeting all the new girls who went to a. Oh, we went to a camp. It was called Camp Villika, but now it’s the Lake Farm Metro Parks. We used to go out there at least once or twice a year. First time we went, we went in the cabin. Our cabin was nice. But when we went over to. I’m gonna say when we went over to the cabin for that the white girls were in it was like, how come we didn’t get this one? Nice little living room wit

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