Barbara Anderson interview, 23 July 2025

Abstract

In this 2025 interview, Barbara Anderson discusses her early life growing up in a foster family on E. 151st and Bartlett in the 1950s. She describes how growing up in a foster family and in a neighborhood with many ethnicities prepared her for her organizing work later in life. She details being the first Black family to move into the Slavic Village neighborhood in the 1980s and the racism and hostility that her family experienced. She describes how losing her house due to predatory lending practices inspired her to advocate for fair housing practices, which eventually led her to the East Side Organizing Project (ESOP), where she acted as treasurer and president. Finally, she discusses her work for her own nonprofit, Another Chance of Ohio and leaves a message for future generations.

Interviewee

Anderson, Barbara (interviewee)

Interviewer

Carubia, Ava (interviewer)

Project

Union-Miles

Date

7-23-2025

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

58 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Barbara Anderson interview, 23 July 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483027.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1396

Related Resources

Southeast Side @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Ava Carubia [00:00:00] Today is July 22, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here at the Earle B. Turner Rec center in Cleveland, Ohio. Interviewing Ms. Barbara Anderson for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.

Barbara Anderson [00:00:15] Well, thank you for offering to have me here. I am excited about sharing what I know about our community with you and look forward to hearing the final product.

Ava Carubia [00:00:26] For the record. Can you please state your name and the year you were born?

Barbara Anderson [00:00:29] Oh, wow. My name is Barbara Anderson and I was born in 1947.

Ava Carubia [00:00:36] All right. Perfect. And then where were you born?

Barbara Anderson [00:00:39] Right here in Cleveland, Ohio. Matter of fact, I find that for a lot of people that’s a little bit strange because not only was I born here in Cleveland, but my parents and my grandparents born in Cleveland also.

Ava Carubia [00:00:52] Well, I just want to ask you a little bit more about that. Can you talk about how your family got to Cleveland?

Barbara Anderson [00:00:59] Sure. Actually, I’m going to have to do a little bit of a pivot. I am a foster child, and so my early memories are in foster homes. And so I don’t really know how we ended up here, but I sure am glad that we did because I was joined with a foster mother who, when I was about five years old, found us and cared for us and nurtured us and made sure that we had the best of what she had to offer.

[00:01:35] But she also taught us a lot about our own history as a Black family and what was expected of us and how we could change the world.

Ava Carubia [00:01:49] Can you talk a little bit about your early life with your foster family and just also growing up in Cleveland?

Barbara Anderson [00:01:55] Sure. I actually grew up on 151st and Bartlett. At that time it was majority Italian and Jewish, and there was a young girl by the name of Mary Ann Salerno who lived right next to me. And we were friends and we became friends. The difference was, is that I could play with Mary Ann Salerno, but Mary Ann Salerno could only play with me when I was by myself or with my siblings.

[00:02:33] She could not play with me when I was with Edna Freitag, who was Jewish. I didn’t know the difference, didn’t see the difference, but I was reminded of that very often, is that if Edna Freitag was there, Mary Ann Salerno could not come. And if Mary Ann Salerno was there, Edna Freitag could not come.

[00:02:59] And the temple was right down the street from St. Cecilia Church, where Mary Ann Salerno went to church, went to school, and she would leave early with a group of friends and go down to the Temple and wait for those children to come out, and they would fight every day. And so, again, I didn’t understand what was going on.

[00:03:30] But it was interesting because we were, at that time, the only Black family in the neighborhood. But the fight seemed to be between the Italians and the Jewish. I didn’t even know there were two different groups. But we began to play and. And learn. And I learned from both groups. I learned a cultural difference between Mary Ann Salerno and between Edna Freitag.

[00:04:02] And I was able to pivot between the two groups. That may have seemed insignificant as I was growing up, but later on, it played several different roles in my life as I moved to Slavic Village. And we were the first family in Slavic Village and first Black family in Slavic Village. I didn’t know it, although I should have, and I didn’t know it was an issue, because as far as I was concerned, East 76 and Union was just right over the bridge.

[00:04:40] You know, it was nowhere. And so I would. We moved there. And actually, a few days before we moved there, the police stopped us. As I was taking things into the home. And the police stopped me and my girlfriend and wanted to know what we were doing. And they said they had a report that we were taking in weapons, rifles, and what we were taking in were mops and brooms.

[00:05:12] The police asked if they could search the home. And I was stubborn then. This was 1985. I was stubborn then, and I said no. They found that my girlfriend had a ticket, so they took her to jail. And I was just amazed, still not knowing it was racial. After that, my home was set on fire several times.

[00:05:44] And my children was told that they would be beat up, my girls would be raped. None of that happened. And again, I didn’t know it was racial. We managed. We went through some troubling times. Windows being broken out, mail being throwed all around where someone would do that. My sister struggled at that time with cancer.

[00:06:25] And so she was at home. And people would bang on the door, laugh, and run off, which would frighten her. It was devastating on so many different levels. One day I was walking home from school. I’m sorry. Walking home with my husband from work. And I told him I heard something. And he said, keep walking.

[00:06:54] That is the sound of a gun. He says, if I get shot, I need you to just run. Don’t turn around and look at me. Don’t try to help me. Don’t try to. I need you to just run. And at that time, we heard someone say, I’m going to get one of these coons.

[00:07:18] I didn’t know what a coon was. I had never heard that as a racial term in my whole life. So I looked at him and he said, just keep walking. Just keep walking. We did arrive at home, but after so many fires, I had actually told my children, if there was another fire, what I need you to do is I need you each to get out of the home.

[00:07:44] Because by now, my sister, who was struggling with cancer, was living with me, and so were her four children. So I had her four children, my four children. We ran through the fire drill. I need you to just leave. I don’t need you to look for each other. I want you to just leave.

[00:08:03] Well, we had a drill. And they did leave the house. And they went to the tree that I told them to stand at. But then the chatter began. Where’s Mama? And everybody came back to the house. I was furious. What did I tell you? Did I not tell you to. When you get out this house, you do not come back for anybody.

[00:08:36] Do you understand? Anybody. That includes me. I mean, I just went berserk. Because I was afraid that if they came back like that, that they could lose their lives. And so they didn’t understand it, didn’t understand why I was so angry, didn’t understand why I was so upset with them. And later on that evening, my husband said, Barbara, I don’t know if you can stop love.

[00:09:10] And it hit me. I was like. I was asking them to not show me love. I was asking them to ignore the danger that I was in. I was. And so the next morning, I apologized because I realized. I still told them, don’t come back in the house for anybody. But I wanted them to know that I understood why.

[00:09:45] And I had to challenge myself that if I had gotten out and I didn’t see one of them, would it have been possible for me not to go back? And I had to say to myself, no. I would have broke my own rule. Sorry if my voice is cracking. I’m trying to hold this together.

[00:10:15] So a second family moved in, and Mabel Gant was in that family. Mabel Gant’s illness mirrored my sister’s. She was in a wheelchair. She wasn’t that mobile. And Mabel Gant’s family, that family’s home was set on fire. Mabel Gant didn’t make it out.

Ava Carubia [00:10:46] What year was this?

Barbara Anderson [00:10:50] I think that had to be ’87 or ’88. 1987 or 1988. She didn’t make it out. And it was that night that we found out that it was racial. That night, someone made the phone call and said, just like, we got that n word out. We will get you out. And my husband and I looked at each other, and we both were like, it’s racial.

[00:11:19] Oh, my goodness. We thought maybe our children were doing something, weren’t interacting correctly with other people. Maybe they were teasing somebody. Maybe they were just doing something. But that night, we found out, no, they weren’t doing anything wrong. And so it changed, because in the past, there were times when I would say, you know what, Rob?

[00:11:49] We gotta get out of here. I’m not staying here. And Rob, my husband, would say, nah, we’re not going anywhere. And there were times when he would say, look, I’m not putting this family through this anymore. We’re leaving. And I would say, I’m not going anywhere. But that night, we looked at each other and we said, we ain’t going nowhere.

[00:12:17] And so we stayed. We weathered it. We had that one more fire that the insurance company said if we had that, they would cancel our insurance. Certainly we had that one, that other fire. We had several after that. And that’s when I became an activist. Because we had that fire, my insurance was canceled.

[00:12:46] We weren’t able to make certain bills. We could pay the house note, but we couldn’t make the repairs. It was just one thing after another. But it was during that same time now, by late 1990s, yes. Somewhere in there that we realized that a lot of people were losing their homes in Slavic Village.

[00:13:15] And so I went looking for a group. I went to Hells Angels. I went to all kinds of groups, but I ended up at ESOP. At that time, it was Eastside Organizing Project, and they were working on a school project. I didn’t want to work on a school project. I wanted them to understand that I was having problems with housing.

[00:13:41] And you need to deal with housing. Inez Killingsworth. Listen to me. When I first walked in, everybody who was around that table looked at me like I had just dropped out of the sky. I was working in a professional job. So I came in a business suit. I had briefcase in hand.

[00:14:08] And so I think I looked like this stranger, you know, the person who shouldn’t be here. And so when I started talking about what was going on, they were looking at Inez as though, are we going to let this lady sit down? Are we going to let her be here? And Inez said, I’d like to hear more of what you’re going through.

[00:14:30] And so I started talking about my neighborhood and talking about the financial problems that I was now having. And she didn’t warm up to me immediately. But she went and started wondering why, what was happening in her neighborhood, the Slavic. I’m sorry, the Miles, Union-Miles neighborhood. Because a lot of people who were coming to the meetings were now not coming.

[00:15:00] And they weren’t coming because they were losing their homes. And once she found that out, which was like, days later, she called me and asked me to come back. And she says, if you’ll help us with the school project, we will immediately move to this, because I think there is a connection. And there was.

[00:15:24] And we started working together. She became my mentor. Had already had a fantastic mentor with Fannie Lewis, who was a council person in the Hough neighborhood. And now I had Inez. And Inez was such a go-getter. And the very first home that was given money back to was mine. We met with people.

[00:15:53] We ran upstairs because people now who knew who we were, they said, oh, here comes that crazy group and they’re going to cause havoc. Mark Seifert was the executive director. We would drop sharks on the lawns, and people didn’t really understand, but when you go to cut the grass, if you catch these little plastic sharks, they would just cut up in there, and they’d just mess up the whole lawn more.

[00:16:28] We went to go see Jamie Dimon. They locked the elevators on us so we couldn’t get up the stairs, up the elevator. So we ran upstairs and met him in his office. And there was this bank. My bank was Fairbanks, which I thought was a bank, but it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t a bank either.

[00:16:52] They had to refund to me thousands of dollars that I had paid. And along the way, I met a friend, and he’s still my friend, Mark Stefanski over at Third Federal. And I asked Mark, would you please, please, please take my loan? If you take my loan, I will pay faithfully. I won’t be behind.

[00:17:22] The only reason why I was behind now is simply because, because of the extra expense of trying to manage alone the property and everything else. I was welcomed in Slavic Village Development in ’94. And I made the commitment to them. And I said to them, we may have come over on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

[00:17:59] I will help and do whatever I can to help you save your home. And the difference was is that we didn’t bring back money to the state or the city or the county. The money that was returned went to the individual homeowners, and they were able to save their homes. And now me and my children, we were welcomed in the neighborhood and have been since.

[00:18:34] The one thing I do want to say that I kind of left out was there was this incident. But I won’t call it an incident. I’ll call it a challenge. My son was sitting on the front steps of the porch and I was standing in the window. And there was this little guy down the street, Maynard Baldwin.

[00:19:02] And he looked over and he said, hey, boy. My ears perked up looking at my son. He says, boy, do you hear me? Hey boy. And my son turned around and looked at me and I nodded for him to answer. And so my son says, yeah, what you want? And Maynard, which I never saw, was tossing a football up and down in the air, he said, you want to play football?

[00:19:44] Maynard to today is my son’s best friend. Maynard moved to Florida. They both went to East Tech. And there was days that Maynard was called an N lover and AJ, my son, was called just the N. And so when Maynard was called an N lover, my son jumped into the fight. And when AJ, my son, was called an N word, Maynard jumped into the fight.

[00:20:19] It became so regular that me and Ms. Baldwin would take turns to go get the boys and she would say, is it your turn or mine? I said, you know what, I don’t even know, but I’m already out. I’ll pick them up on my way home from school. It became that the principal of that school at that time said, you know what?

[00:20:45] We’re not sending them home anymore. We understand. We got this, we’ll handle it. And they handled it in school all the way through to graduation. But it was a interesting time that all I thought of was when he was hollering at AJ that he’s gonna say something that’s gonna really trigger me and I’m gonna have to go down here and beat this little boy.

[00:21:15] But all he wanted was to make friends. He just wanted to play football. And that’s how it started. And that is one of my favorite memories. I can practically throw away everything else. That and the friendship that I now have with Mark Stefanski. I actually now sit as one of the board of directors on Third Federal’s savings and loans board.

[00:21:51] And I had to explain to him, I’m not going to be doing the math. I’m not going to be able to add it up. I’m not going to know the difference between how and where the finances will go. But I will do my community development piece. I will make sure that the communities connected to Third Federal and that Third Federal remains committed and connected to the community because that’s how it started with your parents, and that’s how it should be.

[00:22:28] And so we formed that partnership and we moved on. So it has worked out. It has worked out. And a lot of that. Now I sit as the board chair for Greater Cleveland Reinvestment Coalition, which is a group of housing advocates. We have 18 different housing advocates. The city joins us, the county joins us.

[00:22:56] I sit on their advisory board subcommittee for the county talking about housing and how to connect housing with people and how to make sure that people are getting fair housing and treated fairly. Now, I know that was just one question.

Ava Carubia [00:23:16] Well, I have some other questions that were sparked by your talking. First of all, you said that you were- [recording pauses] So I’m continuing now with the questions I had. You talked about how you didn’t realize it was a racial thing when you were experiencing these acts of violence or discrimination in Slavic Village. But you also said that you were one of the first Black families or Black people in the area you grew up in.

[00:23:51] What was that experience like?

Barbara Anderson [00:23:55] So we’re talking back to 151st and Bartlett? You know, it was. You were aware, or I was aware after a certain period of time that I was different, that our family was different, Mostly aware because of the structural change. There was a roundabout put up. And my parents, because, keep in mind, now we’re talking back in the 50s, children were kind of kept out of the loop.

[00:24:29] Grown people business. They took. They handled things in whispers and quietly. And so because my mother, foster mother, was the head of a street club, and people would come over, sometimes we would overhear. You know, the whole reason why they’re doing that, putting that roundup out there, is they’re trying to separate the two cultures.

[00:25:00] They’re trying to keep the Black people and the white people apart from each other. So we would hear those whispers, but I don’t know if we really understood it as being a racial thing. I don’t know if I really understood it then. Just like I didn’t understand Edna Freitag and Mary Ann Salerno.

[00:25:21] I don’t think I really understood that the boundaries were going up to prevent the movement, the free movement between the two communities. Until I got over to Slavic Village and realized how much distance there was. Keep in mind that if you come across 79th Street, you can come all the way across 79th Street until you hit the bridge.

[00:25:55] The street does not waver. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t change. But on the Slavic Village side, it’s 78th Street. And so you wonder, wait a minute. So then I started. The train tracks make the difference. You live on the other side of the tracks. So they wanted that separation from Garden Valley being on 79th Street.

[00:26:23] Garden Valley comes all the way across 79th Street. They didn’t want the connection. So that area, once you cross that, that little train track area is 78th. I also realized that when I went to the very first street club meeting in Slavic Village because there was a pamphlet put on our door. I never attended another one because we never got another invitation.

[00:26:56] My concern when I went to the street club meeting is how long is this going to take to fix the bridge that comes across Union? Because once you get to 90, not 93rd, about 89th, the bridge, no repair was ever done. I didn’t realize until later that the only person that was really crossing the bridge going east was me.

[00:27:28] So they didn’t care about the bridge being fixed, or I should say Black people. They didn’t care about the bridge being fixed because all of their travels was either south or west. And so while my complaints were never being addressed and I was wondering why, I never realized it was racial. So you sometimes don’t.

[00:27:51] see it until later. And that’s what it was for us. I just thought, the city’s running out of money. City doesn’t care about us. We’re going to put the hammer down, all of us together, we’ll get that bridge fixed. Well, nobody wanted the bridge fixed but me. And that was a hard lesson to learn.

[00:28:15] So it’s that undercover racism that had been blocked for so long and that we didn’t see. And that was the same way with Bartlett because it was undercover. It was very quietly done, strategically done and politically done. And that’s how that reigned.

Ava Carubia [00:28:40] Well, I want to talk a little bit more about that period of your life as well. What were you like as a kid or as a young person?

Barbara Anderson [00:28:47] You know, I. I wanted long white people hair. My hair just wasn’t. It wasn’t. It wasn’t, you know, so when I would look at Mary Ann Salerno and although Edna had curly hair, I wanted that kind of hair. I think I was afraid to be me. I think that came during the Black and Proud movement that came in my teens.

[00:29:19] But as a 6 and 7 year old child, 8, 9, I just wanted to have friends. I wanted to be a kid, but I wanted to be a kid that had friends and that was liked and that could run everywhere. They could ride their bikes because we could ride bikes. We could go wherever.

[00:29:42] Just had to be back by the time the street lights came on. And I tell people all the time that the biggest gang, the gang that most kids were most afraid of and I was terrified of, was that gang of parents. Oh, my God. When they teamed up, oh, Lord, I. I mean, eyes were everywhere.

[00:30:06] People knew who you were. Anybody could tell you, what are you doing? Get yourself back home. And you got back home. I remember my mother sent me to the store, which is right on. I lived on 151st. Store on 149th. Ms. Beulah lady upstairs looked down and saw me and said, what are you doing?

[00:30:33] I said, I’m going to the store. Who sent you to? Mama. Get yourself in there and get your stuff and get on back home. And I was flying. I was like, can I. The bread and some milk. Thank you. I’m out. You know, that gang was vicious. I don’t know about the Mafia, but I know those parents could have taken them on if they wanted to.

[00:31:06] So, yeah, I just wanted to be a kid. And I got a chance to do that up until I got about to be an adult, until I was about 19 or 20 years old. And then I was thrown in and I realized that, no, being a kid was a pretty good thing. But you’re grown now, Barbara, and you got grown folks problems, and you’re going to have to learn how to deal with them.

[00:31:35] And so that’s what I did. I learned how to deal with them. But being a kid gave me the basis for that because I knew what enjoyable life looked like. I knew what it looked like.

Ava Carubia [00:31:49] And then where did you go to elementary school and junior high?

Barbara Anderson [00:31:52] A.J. Rickoff and Alexander Hamilton, and then went on to JFK. I graduated, however, from Glenville, because my father found us when I was in the 11th grade and we went to go live with him, me, my brother, and my sister. And so, because we were living now on St. Clair, an area I never, ever heard of because we never went past Euclid.

[00:32:20] Euclid had all the theaters on it. So we went to Euclid, went to the show, and then went back south. We didn’t go north, so I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know Superior, I didn’t know St. Clair, I didn’t know Cedar, Quincy, all of those were all foreign to me. But when I got grown and I’m like, oh, wow, this is pretty good territory over here.

[00:32:44] And Euclid was booming, and Winston Willis was the king of Euclid, and then Cleveland Clinic came and took most of his enterprise away. But during that time, he was king. He had all kinds. He had the shows. He had so much going on for him. And he’s still alive and still fighting the Cleveland Clinic business.

Ava Carubia [00:33:18] While you’re bringing up that, can you also talk about just the other memories you have of maybe businesses in Cleveland or places you would go?

Barbara Anderson [00:33:26] Oh, yeah. If you really wanted to shop and you got classy, you went downtown and shopped at IJ Fox, got yourself some either leather. Because my mother had already told me that when I wanted a leather coat because everybody had leather coats, I was a teenager, I thought everybody had a leather coat.

[00:33:55] And she let me know that no, we would be wearing these cloth coats. But as soon as I got in to be an adult, got a good job, I could go and buy my own leather coat. And so one of the first purchases I made working from Ohio Bell at that time was to go to IJ Fox.

[00:34:15] And I got me a red leather coat. I had made it, right? So it’s just in interesting, those stores, Lynn Clothing was there. We would go down to W.T. grant, the five and dime stores, and we would get that hot dog and something to drink. That was a treat. May Companies, Halle’s, Higbee’s, everything downtown.

[00:34:45] That’s where you went when you got to being an adult, because now you were grown for real, because you were in the grown people stores. But as a child, it was just having an opportunity to go and share those Christmas Christmases at. Was that Halle’s or Higbee’s? That was Higbee’s. Okay. At any rate, it was downtown at the major store and they had lights up and you just felt so good.

[00:35:20] And you put on your black patent leather shoes. Except for when I got a pair of white patent leather shoes. And you put on your dresses and mama got all dressed up and she put the little hat on your head and off you were to downtown Cleveland. And you were having the time of your life. Oh, The Forum!

[00:35:41] Oh, my goodness, how can I forget The Forum ? It was a cafeteria style restaurant and you could go in there and you could select whatever you wanted. You could have meatloaf if you wanted to, or baked chicken or fried chicken, but you got a chance to select it. And that was. I didn’t know at the time that was a cheap meal, but it was a good meal.

[00:36:06] And I felt big. I felt big.

Ava Carubia [00:36:13] What year did you graduate high school?

Barbara Anderson [00:36:15] 1966.

Ava Carubia [00:36:17] And then after high school, what happened?

Barbara Anderson [00:36:20] After high school, I got married real, I graduated in December. That’s because they had two graduations during that time. One was during June and the other one was in December. I got married in March of ’67 and my husband was in the service at that time. And so I started working at Ohio Bell. It was as a long distance operator.

[00:36:49] I did cordboard. We were still doing cordboard at that time. And it was a great 10 years. I left there and went to Louisiana, stayed in Louisiana, me and my children. I got a divorce in ’76, so I went to Louisiana in ’77. I had four children now and I enjoyed Louisiana. But my foster mother got sick and I couldn’t handle being in Louisiana while she was sick in Cleveland.

[00:37:34] So we did come back to Cleveland and I went right back. I transferred from Louisiana, Ohio Bell, well South Central Bell, back to Cleveland, Ohio Bell.

Ava Carubia [00:37:46] And what year did you move back here?

Barbara Anderson [00:37:50] I hate when you ask years. I think it was ’79 that we actually officially moved back. And so that was good. And I got a chance to be here with my foster mother before she took her wings and went to heaven. So that was good for me. It felt natural and my children adjusted quickly.

[00:38:20] After we moved back here, I wondered, you know, what am I going to do? I have four children, how am I going to navigate all of this? And on my way to Ohio Bell, a bus went by and it was City Mission. And I looked up and all of these children was laughing and talking and I tried to remember the number.

[00:38:42] City Mission da da da da da. I’m going to call them. I’m going to call them and see what they do. And I got back and I called them and my children quickly joined that group with Mr. Banfield and they enjoyed. My son even now still contributes money to the City Mission because he felt like they just did so much good for him and that was a good thing.

[00:39:14] I also had an opportunity with ESOP to, I won’t call it an interview, but to talk with Obama when he was running the first time. And I don’t know how I ended up with him, but I did and I was glad I did. And it was through a group, NPR, NPA, National People’s Action.

[00:39:42] And I remember going and they take you through a series of questions and how you’re supposed to answer and all that kind of good stuff. And Mark said to him, she’s never going to do what you said. And I was insulted by that comment. I said, what do you mean? I know how to take instructions if that’s how you want me to do it.

[00:40:07] I’ll do that. And they went through Hillary, they went through and. So now it’s time for Obama. And I really wanted to do what they said, but I couldn’t. So I got down there and I started talking about the number of children who are living in cars because they don’t have a home.

[00:40:35] And I said that their bathroom is any local bathroom that they can go to. And I started talking about that their food is anywhere that they can get food because they’re living in the car. And I said something. Some things are not right. And then there’s a thing or two. There’s a thing that isn’t right.

[00:41:06] But predatory lending, and he said it with me, ain’t right. And that became the focus. And I started thinking about the years both before Mama Crockett, the years that were spent in foster care that was not good, and how painful that was for me. And how when I got to Mama Crockett and I told her that I had a sister, and nobody believed me.

[00:41:41] And even Child and Family Services said, no, she doesn’t have a sister. It’s just her and her brother. And I kept insisting that I had a sister. And Mama Crockett found my sister. And I remember how I got home, and she said, I have a surprise for you. I hadn’t seen Janie since she was like 8 months old.

[00:42:13] Well, now she’s like 7. And I kept thinking, what could this surprise be? And Mama opened up the door and she said, I don’t remember. But she said, you found my sister. And she said it took her back. Because she’s thinking, you haven’t seen her since she was six months old. She’s standing in front of you.

[00:42:39] She’s seven. Now, how do you know that that’s your sister? But she was. And I believe that that divine connection was made because my sister, at 35, could not live with cancer anymore. And so she went to heaven. But I got to see her, I got to care for her. I got to take.

[00:43:08] make a promise to her that I would take care of her four kids and all of that. ESOP, my sister, foster care, the racial imbalance, the predatory lending, all of that made me who I was. All of that made me sensitive to all the things that other people were going through. And I said, if ever I’m able to give things away for free, because I did not have that opportunity, people sent me to the Goodwill, and they sent me to- multiplying that by 8 and 10, I still couldn’t afford it.

[00:44:01] I said, but all of that prepared me for this moment, for Another Chance of Ohio, and I’m able to do it. And even though sometimes I get cursed out and I’m told you’re not doing enough and you’re not giving enough, I know I’m doing it for the right reasons. And I still can still offer people things for free.

[00:44:31] So I, yeah, life. I’m not going to even try to share some of it with you. But it was troubling in the beginning. But my foster mother, Mama Crockett made a difference there. Inez made a difference. Fannie Lewis made a difference. Mark Stefanski made a difference. And I still can see that trouble don’t last always and good does happen, and it makes a difference.

[00:45:02] And I say, I didn’t come to the church until I was in my 40s. I’m not one of those baby born Christians. But it was the right time for me and the right things happened at the right time. And I’m thankful for that.

Ava Carubia [00:45:22] Well, I want to ask you more about your nonprofit. When did you start it?

Barbara Anderson [00:45:28] It’s interesting because like I said, people were sending me to the Goodwill to this and that. And I was just driving down the street one day and I saw this table. Somebody had set it out for trash. And I was like, oh, wow, I like this table. And I took it and I took it home.

[00:45:50] And then I would find other pieces. And eventually my home was filled. It was beautiful. And people would come in and say, oh, your home is beautiful. Where did you get this? Or where’d you get that? And I would tell them how I found it and that I brought it home and I painted it or I did this or I did that.

[00:46:11] And that’s what they were. So the kids now everybody had their own dresser and drawer. Everybody had their own. They had what they needed. The nightstands and were next to the beds, and everybody had a bed. And I was pleased. And they said, well, if you ever see something like that for me, would you get it?

[00:46:32] And I said, yeah. And I started getting it for other people. And they would come and they would pick it up out my basement. But soon we outgrew the basement. So then I said, well, you know what? I’m going to take it to my church. We’ll do it at the church. But we outgrew the church.

[00:46:50] So then I needed a building. But the Land Bank, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Land Bank was available and they gave me a building and it had to be repaired and all of this kind of stuff. But they gave me the building, and we made it work. And now I need a bigger building, so I gotta go back.

[00:47:10] But we made it work, and people started coming to get the things because it filled the building, and now the building is overflowed, and I need a bigger building. But that’s how the nonprofit started was with my promise, if ever I’m able to give things away for free, I will, because I don’t have the money to go to the Goodwill.

[00:47:36] I don’t have the money to go. No, I can’t even go to the consignery and get things on discount. No, I don’t have it. And I learned that there were other people who didn’t have it either, and they needed it. So it started with small, and it started with children out of foster care that needed stuff.

[00:48:00] And it also started with kids that were getting ready to go to college that needed stuff. And it blossomed from there because then it went to pregnant women. And now it’s just anyone with a need. If we have it, you can have it freely accepted, freely given.

Ava Carubia [00:48:21] And how many years have you been running for?

Barbara Anderson [00:48:24] Oh, my gosh, 35 years. Actually, it’s more than 35, but at a minimum, 35 outside of the. Outside of my home. So it’s been a while, but it’s been good. It’s been good. And now my children, they all chip in and help my son, he chips in financially. Friday, we’ll be doing Christmas in July, July 25th.

[00:48:54] So we’ll be doing Christmas in July. And my son has bought hot dogs. We didn’t do this with the hot dogs last year, so we’ll see how this goes this year. But he’s providing hot dogs, chips, and juice for those who come by. And looks like the rainy weather might not allow us to do it outside.

[00:49:15] And if not, we’ll have to find another way of doing it. But we’re going to do it, even if we have to do it between raindrops. We gave away over 100 bikes at the end of when school was out. When school let out, we had our bikeathon. And so we. We did that and Father’s Day, we did the fathers with shaving cream and lotions and all this.

[00:49:40] They could get suits and all that. Mother’s Day. Of course we did Mothers. So May, June, and July are busy months. And then it’ll be back to school and we’ll be doing our winter giveaway for coats and stuff. So that’s how it started. Started with my need, my friend said pain to passion to pleasure is how she phrased it.

[00:50:09] And I think that’s pretty. Pretty accurate.

Ava Carubia [00:50:14] Well, I just have a couple more questions for you, and then there will be time for you to add anything. I didn’t talk about. One of the things is I want to talk more about ESOP. When you first started getting involved with that, how many other people were working with you?

Barbara Anderson [00:50:30] You know, Inez, Mark. Mark was the executive director. Inez was the queen bee. She knew exactly what to do. She knew what needed to be done. And she and Mark were a huge. A great team. And for many years, Mark worked without. He had the title executive director, but he wasn’t making any money.

[00:50:59] But he enjoyed doing what he was doing. And so once we got into predatory lending, it became such a big deal. And so that’s how that started. It was just three, then five, then seven, then nine. It grew over time based on need. And it really grew when there was a radio station, and I can’t remember the name of it that came, and they were doing a story, and Inez mentioned that we were having a meeting at Union-Miles.

[00:51:42] And I was looking at her because, no, we weren’t. And she made it like, so that meeting is scheduled for. And I’m looking at her like, okay, this is interesting. And so that meeting, we were there. It was overflowing. We had people from out of state. We even had a lady there who was a banker who was being tricked out of her home, who had fallen into predatory lending.

[00:52:21] There were so many people there. If the fire marshal had been there, they would have made us leave. And it was then that I realized, hey, we’re not in this battle alone. There’s a lot of us here, and we can make a difference. But it was that radio station that. Because I used the word Fairbanks, because Inez asked me, and the person who was actually sitting, who was coordinating the message and everything, he looked like this, and he mouthed- my mother.

[00:52:56] His mother had one of those loans with Fairbanks, and he even showed up and his mother. And that’s where we took. And that’s why Fairbanks became the first hit. And that’s who we worked on first. And then we went with Jamie Dimon and Chase and all of the others. But it became productive.

[00:53:20] It was. We were one of the few organizers in the city, and Inez led that charge. And it. And it worked well. And, no, I didn’t know anything about a meeting, but I was sitting there thinking, okay, we’re going to get five people in here, and people just kept coming and coming and coming, and it was a beautiful start to what we needed to do.

[00:53:45] Yeah.

Ava Carubia [00:53:46] Thank you. My next question is, how do you think being from Cleveland has impacted you as a person?

Barbara Anderson [00:53:55] Being from Cleveland? Well, I think it’s been a learning experience. I think it has taught me, because there’s so many different cultural changes in Cleveland, that you can be on the east side and be totally different between the east side in one area and the east side in the other. And it changes so quickly, and you may not know that.

[00:54:26] So learning how to be in the moment where you are, wherever you are, that’s where you have to understand the culture there. I even learned it even more when I was talking to the Asian population. To the Asian population down on Payne. For me, that’s in the north side of town. That’s St.

[00:54:55] Clair-Superior. But that’s a whole different area. And how you speak and what you say and your body language, it all means something different. And I remember telling someone else, even in the. In my culture, loud could mean we’re excited. Loud means we’re passionate. Loud could mean a whole lot of things. It doesn’t mean that we’re angry, doesn’t mean that we’re mad.

[00:55:29] It could mean any number of other things. But I learned from being with other cultures that to them, loud meant, oh, you’re mad about something. No, I could be happy. I mean. I mean, there’s so many different things that I can be when I’m loud. But it’s interesting how different cultures project themselves.

[00:55:59] And so living in Cleveland has taught me a lot about different cultures. And again, how to be in that moment. Understanding what it means, means a lot different.

Ava Carubia [00:56:15] And then my final question for you is something I ask everyone at the end of these interviews, which is, what is a message you’d like to leave for future generations?

Barbara Anderson [00:56:24] If I were going to leave a message to future generations, I would adopt one from my younger self. And from my younger self, I would have just said, enjoy life. It’s not as long as you think it is, and you need to enjoy it. Accept the challenges. Grow, but enjoy.

Ava Carubia [00:56:59] Well, thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add that I didn’t ask you about?

Barbara Anderson [00:57:04] What in the world could I add? I think I’ve said so much, and I hope that it means something.

Ava Carubia [00:57:16] Well, I want to thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Barbara Anderson [00:57:19] Sure. Thank you for having me.

Ava Carubia [00:57:22] Of course.

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