Abstract

In this 2025 interview, longtime East Cleveland resident Ross Cockfield reflects on his personal history, professional journey, and decades of community involvement in East Cleveland and with the East Cleveland Public Library. He discusses his upbringing in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood and his move to East Cleveland in the early 1970s. Cockfield describes a varied career that included work in utilities and banking, two periods of entrepreneurship in the tech industry, teaching at Bryant & Stratton College, and leadership roles at a local charter school. He recounts his long association with the East Cleveland Public Library, beginning in 1989. Throughout the interview, Cockfield offers insights into community change, family migration roots, and the civic importance of the library in East Cleveland.

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Interviewee

Cockfield, Ross (interviewee)

Interviewer

Mays, Nick (interviewer)

Project

East Cleveland

Date

11-21-2025

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

142 minutes

Transcript

Nick Mays [00:00:00] My name is Dr. Nicholas Mays and today is October 21, 2025. We are here at the East Cleveland Public Library for the East Cleveland Oral History Project. I am joined by Mr. Ross Cockfield, Fiscal officer at the East Cleveland Public Library and a longtime East Cleveland resident. Mr. Cockfield’s career spans business, technology, education and civic life, and he has witnessed East Cleveland’s evolution firsthand since the 1970s.

[00:00:37] Today, we’ll explore his journey from growing up in Cleveland to his life and career in East Cleveland. Mr. Cockfield, welcome.

Ross Cockfield [00:00:48] Thank you.

Nick Mays [00:00:50] Can you start by telling us your name, age and date of birth?

Ross Cockfield [00:00:59] Ross Cockfield. Anthony. Anthony’s middle name. Ross Anthony Cockfield. Name, age 76. Date of birth […], 1949.

Nick Mays [00:01:13] Thank you, Mr. Cockfield. So I want to start. I want to begin with our conversation today with early life and education. So, Mr. Cockfield, can you tell me about your upbringing in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood and what was life like during your childhood?

Ross Cockfield [00:01:35] I grew up. I grew up on 99th and Somerset, Somerset being a street that runs east and west off of 105. So we lived. My earliest recollection, I guess, is living in that apartment building on the corner of 99th and Somerset. It was a two bedroom. I think it was a two bedroom or one bedroom. I think it was. Well, it was a one bedroom apartment, but it had a folding bed. It had a bed that kind of folded up into the wall that was in the living room. And that was where my mother and father slept. So those are my earliest recollections. My sister, who was four years younger than I, she was born there. I was born there as well. But we were there until 1958. But at the same time, I was being not transmitted. But I was being taken over to my grandmother’s house or apartment. She lived on 40th and Outhwaite. So I spent a lot of time growing up playing with friends that I had developed in the projects. And so I was kind of going back and forth between Somerset and Central. 40th and, you know, 40th. So we moved from there in 58 to a house on 115th off Superior, also in the Glenville neighborhood. And that was. I was eight years old when we moved there. And that was the house that I stayed in or lived in for the balance of my youth and adolescence. I left when I graduated from high school. That was the last time I was actually in the house because I spent four years away, came back, got married. And when I got married, we moved into East Cleveland, which was in 1972.

Nick Mays [00:04:13] Okay, can we. And we’ll get there. But can we expand on your childhood? What kind of child, a teenager were you? And then real quick, too, what was your family dynamics? How many siblings did you live with? Your parents, grandparents?

Ross Cockfield [00:04:32] Yeah. I was blessed. Blessed by the fact that my mother and father stayed together. I lived in what I consider what turned out to be a stable household. I had two younger sisters. One was four years younger than me, and my baby sister was nine years younger than me. I went to elementary school from when I was on Somerset, went to Miles Standish Elementary School, which I think has been subsequently changed to Michael R White [Elementary], if I’m not mistaken. And it might have another name by now, I don’t know. But I went to kindergarten. That’s where I started elementary school. And again was there until the eighth grade. They put me in. At the time, they put me in something called an enrichment program. So I had the benefit of being exposed to French. You know, got a little newspaper clipping at home that shows me and one of my classmates doing some French lesson at Miles Standish. But anyway, so anyway, I went from Miles Standish. When we moved to 115th street off of Superior, I had to change schools. So I went from Miles Standish to Hazeldell [Elementary], which was near. I think it was on 123rd off of St. Clair. And they put me in what they called this major work program. So from there, came out of elementary school, I believe, in 1960, and went from there to Collinwood, where I spent seven years, six years. I was there from seventh grade through the 12th grade in this major work program that the school district had set up. So I was blessed. I think I was blessed to have received an exceptional. What I consider to be an exceptional junior high and high school education. There were racial problems that came along with that. Collinwood. Being in a neighborhood at that time which was predominantly Italian, I guess. Italian, Slovenian, Eastern European neighborhood. So, you know, you had black children that were being bussed from Glenville, some coming from parts off of St. Clair. I was coming from off Superior. So we were being bussed, essentially being bussed into the Collingwood area. And during that time, you know, there was a lot of. I don’t want to call it. There was civil rights, civil rights struggles, issues that were coming to the forefront. And we wound up being kind of in the middle of that. I don’t want to call it turmoil, but it was turmoil. So I was involved in a lot of that racial back and forth all the way through junior high and high school.

Nick Mays [00:08:39] In what way?

Ross Cockfield [00:08:40] Fights. Fights. Shoving, pushing, you know, just. Just a lot of, you know, a lot of distraction, really, you know, but, you know, primarily fights.

Nick Mays [00:08:57] So do you remember being called derogatory words and, like, the “N” word.

Ross Cockfeild [00:09:02] Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. And I have to honestly say that, you know, in spite of the. In spite of the quality of the education, I received a social education, which I think might have been even more important to me at that time, because, you know, coming up in the neighborhood, you know, you just didn’t have that going on.

[00:09:26] You know, you were just one of the. One of the children running up and down the street. So being exposed. Being exposed to other ethnicities or other ethnic groups at an early age under those conditions obviously had an effect on my outlook on things. So. Yeah. So.

Nick Mays [00:09:53] Did your parents help you navigate or kind of try to teach you how to handle being called the N word and other derogatory words? And how did. If you can recall, how did your parents try to counter that or your loved ones?

Ross Cockfield [00:10:25] My father, maybe to kind of better answer your question; my father came up from the South. He and my mother were part of this great migration of black folks leaving the south for all kinds of reasons. You know, lynchings, jobs, you name it. You know, obviously they. So they moved north. My father was raised by his mother, and his father had left. Had left the family. So he was raised by his mother, and she had his sister and a younger brother. So she was raising three children. And his father. I mean, his grandfather. My father’s father. I mean, my father’s grandfather was with them as well. So they moved from Florida. They moved from Florida to Jersey. And so it was his grandfather, his mother and two siblings. And so they were in Jersey. But my point is that his grandfather leaned very heavily on him about education. Okay? So education to him was the end all, be all, meaning that with an education, with a good education, proper education, sky’s the limit. You’re not constrained by these problems that, you know, racial problems, let’s say. You’re not constrained by racial problems necessarily. So that was what. That was how he dealt with it with me. He said, get a good education and you can cut all this loose. You know, you don’t need to rely on them, anything, blah, blah, blah, you know, so it was. It was a. It was. Education was his solution. My mother, on the other hand, took a different approach, only to the extent that there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of effort to desegregate the schools in the south in the early 60s. So there were, and I wish I could be more specific, but there was something called Freedom Schools that had been started up by Northern, Northern organizations in order to combat racial discrimination in education. When there were problems, my mother would say, hey, you know, let’s take him out of here, put him over here, and at least I know he’s safe. Okay? So there were. There were instances where. And I don’t know if it was as a result of a particular instance or whatever, and I remember being pulled out of. Not being pulled out of, but I remember my mother saying, okay, well, you’re not going to go there. You’re going to go over here and we’re going to try to continue your education on the side with this Freedom School. Okay? And at the time, the school was being held at Cory Methodist Church on 105. So I can’t recall. I can’t recall being there for any great length of time. But let me just say that her response to the problems was to extract me from that situation and put me over here where something where she felt things were safer. My father’s answer to the problem was get the education and you can do anything you want. You know, you have to put up with this, unfortunately, but get it anyway. Did that answer your question?

Nick Mays [00:14:37] Absolutely. And thank you. Can you introduce us to your parents, their names and what brought them to the North?

Ross Cockfield [00:14:50] Well, my father. My father’s first name was Henry. Mother first name was Fanny, Maiden name was Cotton. C O T T O N. And she came, was raised in Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Had four siblings. I think she was the second to the last child. My father had, sister and brother. His father left, moved to Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, started a second family, and there were 11 children that came out of that relationship. So growing up, I had cousins, step cousins, if you want to call them that. But I had cousins that lived in Beaver Falls. I mean, I had a whole. I had more cousins than I could shake a stick at that lived in Beaver Falls. So growing up, they would send me to Beaver Falls. You know, I’d spend weeks over there during the summer, and I would spend two days with this cousin and another two days with that one and another over here. And so. I really got a sense of family and community and shared love. I mean, just. I mean, I couldn’t. It was impactful. It was very impactful.

Nick Mays [00:16:48] So your mom came from Louisiana, your dad from Florida. Did your mom come directly to Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [00:16:59] Yeah, yeah, her brother. Her brother had left. Had left Louisiana. He had left. Let me see. She went to Southern [University]. She graduated from Southern. He had left Baton Rouge and wound up going to Hampton. He went to Hampton Institute and met his wife, and then they moved to Cleveland. So when she left Baton Rouge, she came north and stayed with him. So it was during the time that she was staying with her brother, her older brother, that she met my father. And they obviously, you know, had a relationship. And I’m the product.

Nick Mays [00:17:59] Were you an athlete? You know, did you ride your bike with your friends? What did you do for fun?

Ross Cockfield [00:18:07] Oh, man. When we moved on 115th again, I was 8 years old, and there were children everywhere. They were just. They were everywhere. I mean, everywhere. You know, so we played. I mean, we lived. Actually, we lived down the street from Rozelle. No, Rosedale Elementary School. And so they had a schoolyard. So it was basketball, relay races, track. I mean, kick the can. You know, it just. You name it, we. We did it. Jumping off the garages and I mean, you know, it. You name it, we. We had a great time.

Nick Mays [00:19:11] Sounds like fun.

Ross Cockfield [00:19:12] Oh, man. It was. It was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. I mean, just. Just. Yeah, it was. It was unbelievable. And. And just. Just for whatever it’s worth: The thing that maybe set me apart, if you will, is the fact that because I was going to Hazeldale, I didn’t go to the local elementary school. So I didn’t have a lot of the. Maybe, if you want to call it regular experiences with other children, because we weren’t going to the same [school]. I wasn’t going to the neighborhood school. I was going to another school. And, you know it. I had two sets of friends, I guess, is what it amounted to. I had people. I had friends that I grew up with, then I had friends I went to school with. So I had to navigate that. Those friendships, if you will.

Nick Mays [00:20:24] How did your parents. Experiences, values, shape the way–If it did shape how you see community work, education as an adult?

Ross Cockfield [00:20:45] My father was very strict. He was very strict. And like I said, his thing was education. You know, he didn’t play with that, you know, so it took me a long time. And when I say a long time, I was in my adulthood before I really understood where he was coming from. I didn’t. I’ve never had a real problem. I don’t want to say educationally, but you know, I pick up things pretty fast, you know, so getting a C was no trouble. You know, I could. I could breeze through. I could breeze through a class and get a C or B. And obviously his thing was if you can do that, then you can get an A, you know, so his focus, I guess, you know, his focus was always on excellence, which I really couldn’t appreciate because I just never felt that there was a great need. You know, I didn’t feel there was any great. You know, I’m eating. You know, I’m eating three squares. You know, we got a car. We got a. I don’t want to say a raggedy car, but we got a car. Get around. I got friends. What I need to. You know, what I need to bust my butt on, you know, why do I need to bust my butt educationally? So with that being said, I developed a love for pool. So. When I could, that’s where I stayed. I, you know, kind of. By the time I could get into the pool rooms, I’ll say maybe 15, 16, I could play pretty good too, you know, so that was what I aspired to be. I wanted to be a pool player.

Nick Mays [00:23:02] Spend some time at the pool Hall.

Ross Cockfield [00:23:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was pretty good. I was pretty good. So that was my aspiration. And at the time, Paul Newman movie the Hustler, one of my favorites, you know; so that’s what I wanted, to be, a pool player. I couldn’t. I mean, to kind of come back to your question about athletics. I could run. I mean, I was pretty fast. I never played any organized sports, but I was athletic, you know. I was athletic enough to. I could hit a ball, make a basket, run. You know, I could do all those things, but never, never got engaged in that, in organized sports.

Nick Mays [00:24:01] So you. You attended both Hampton and Howard Universities during your formative period in your life. What was your experience like and how did it influence your sense of purpose and identity? So we’ll begin with experience.

Ross Cockfield [00:24:28] When I graduated. When I graduated from high school, the only thing that I felt that I could do well was mechanical drawing. Okay? So when I graduated, I had no sense of. Again, Poole was my life. I mean, that was really what I wanted to do. And so when I graduated from high school, I had no direction. I had no sense of what I wanted to be. When I grew up, my father, he went to work every day. He worked in some unemployment office. So there was no. He wasn’t a professional. If you want to call it that. I mean, so he wasn’t a lawyer. He didn’t. You know, he put his shirt and tie on and he went to work in an office, which I didn’t really appreciate. I mean, he was a hell of a breadwinner, you know, very, very dedicated to his family. But in terms of a career, in terms of what I wanted to eventually be, you know, be. I had no. I had no feel for anything. So when it came time for me to graduate or when I graduated, it was, you know, the question is, well, what are you going to do?

[00:26:02] Well, I applied to Ohio State. I applied to Ohio University. I applied to George Washington University, which I think is in St. Louis. And the guidance counselor at the Collingwood didn’t. I mean, there was no, you know, there was no real feel. You didn’t get a real feel from her about, well, you know, these are the kinds of things you excelled in, and these are the universities and schools that can best fit. That best fit your strengths. Well, that didn’t really come across. So I applied to OU [Ohio University[. I think they rejected me. I applied to Ohio State, and they told me I needed to come down for some remedial classes. You know, like I said, I was a C student. You know, I came. I came out of high school with a C average. And so anyway, my godfather, who was. He happened to be a close friend of my father’s. He said, well, why don’t you, you know, why don’t you ask. Why don’t you have him apply to Hampton? And I had said, Hampton? Okay, what’s that? I had no. Again, there was no. There was no strong. There was no strong sense of HBCU, even though my mother had graduated from Southern. My father, as I found out later, my father had attended one year at Livingston College, which I think is in South Carolina. Livingston, South Carolina or North Carolina, I don’t know, but it’s one of those Carolinas. So he attended one year there, but had to leave to come support. Help. Support his family. So there was just no. I didn’t get the strong HBCU vibe in the house. It was always just education, but not centered on African American excellence, college, whatever. So anyway, my godfather said, well, why don’t you. Why don’t you have him apply to Hampton? And I did. I was accepted. And since I had no feel for the HBCU environment, I conceived of Hampton being like an Ohio State because that was my exposure to college was on a tv, you know, flags and marching band. You know, that it was. It was. I was. I was all wrong. Okay? So when I got to Hampton, I said, well, I see these guys, you know, I’m down there now with the whole East Coast. It was the whole east coast vibe, you know. So I’m there with guys from dc, Raleigh, Durham, Philly, New York. I said, this is different. This was really different, you know? So it was. I had gone there and had gone to major in architecture because, as I said, mechanical drawing was really the thing that I was strongest in. And so I went there, majored in architecture. At the time. At the time, their program hadn’t been accredited. So. And let me also say that all my boys, all the guys I went to high school with, they all had applied to Howard and got accepted. So there was a large contingent of. There was a large contingent of guys that I knew from Cleveland that were at Howard. Just up 95, they were all at Howard. And here I was at Hampton, more or less by myself. Okay? So my first year, my freshman year, which is my first year, I got kind of acclimated to what was going on. It was. You know, when I look back on it, I should have stayed, but I didn’t. So after my first year, after my first year of college, I transferred from Hampton to Howard. And I did so in the summer of 68, which was the year between my freshman and sophomore year. In the summer of 68, I met my future wife. And it just so happened that she and I had graduated at the same time from high school, but it just so happened that she had applied to Howard and was accepted. So I wound up. I wound up being trans. I wound up transferring from Hampton to Howard. She was coming into Howard as a freshman, so I was coming in as a sophomore, she was a freshman, and we hooked up, and we hooked up at Howard. I fell in love, spent three years at Howard, watched my GPA nose dive, and I left after three years at Howard.

Nick Mays [00:32:02] So for clarification, did you graduate from Howard?

Ross Cockfield [00:32:07] No. No, I didn’t. But. But the experience. The experience of being in D.C. and of being hot, being at Howard was invaluable.

Nick Mays [00:32:21] Speak to that.

Ross Cockfield [00:32:24] Although Hampton was an HBCU, when I got to Howard, Howard was the Mecca, so to speak. And there were. There were professors that had come through. They were teaching classes that. I mean, they were. They were at the vanguard. They were at the vanguard of, if you want to call it Afrocentric education, you know; and at the same time, because I had transferred in in the fall of 68, Washington was coming off of the rebellions in the streets on the heels of King being assassinated earlier that year. So I was at Hampton when King was assassinated. There were, you know, there was all kinds of civil disturbance in D.C. on the heels of his assassination. And so when I came. When I came into Hampton, when I came into D.C. in September of 68, there was the aftermath of that, all of that. I don’t want to call it rioting, but all of that civil disturbance. So the Howard experience was unbelievable. It was unbelievable because I really became aware of my sociology, if you will, if you want to call it that. My Africanness was introduced to me. And so it was. Those are three years that I just really turned me around. And in a positive way, I think. In a positive way.

Nick Mays [00:34:41] Is it fair to say you developed like a consciousness or a black consciousness [inaudible]?

Ross Cockfield [00:34:48] Oh, most certainly. Most certainly.

Nick Mays [00:34:50] Were you able to. How did that manifest in those years that you were at Howard?

Ross Cockfield [00:34:58] Well, not so much. Well, yeah, the Black Panther Party was active on campus. I never joined the Black Panther Party. We though, had in Cleveland. Carl Stokes had been elected as mayor in 67, I believe. And I think. Well, we took. I was involved with students that went up to Newark. We took a bus trip up to Newark, New Jersey, to assist. I think the brother’s name was Ken Gibson. I think Gibson was running for mayor at the time. So we went there to assist in his campaign. Amiri Baraka was there. Leroy Jones, he was there. I mean, the consciousness was just kind of off the chart. So we were. I was involved in. I became interested in the politics of African liberation, Black liberation, community control, community involvement. What does that look like? What is my role? It was. I mean, it was. It was a heavy dose of black consciousness at the time. Did I answer the question?

Nick Mays [00:36:40] Absolutely, yeah. Thank you. I don’t know if you spoke to him. Were you a part of any black Students alliance or any groups?

Ross Cockfield [00:36:51] Well, no. Kwame Ture, Stokely Carmichael was kind of in and out of the university. You know, he had been there maybe a year. Year or two before, before I got there. But at any rate, I was introduced to Kwanzaa while I was in D.C. and when I came back to Cleveland, I became a member and organizer for the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP). So that was in 72. 70. 71. Yeah, 71. So when I came back to Cleveland, I was active. I was active in trying to build the organization, the AAPRP. And so I’d say that that consciousness that I was introduced to or that I became. I don’t want to say became a part of, but that consciousness that was awakened in me, I’ll say that manifested after I got back to Cleveland because I was one of the organizers here in Cleveland to try to bring awareness to the local community.

Nick Mays [00:38:56] Okay, so moving on and pivoting. Can you share what brought you back to Cleveland in 1972, and what was the transition like after leaving Howard and moving back to Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [00:39:14] Okay, well, I came back. Actually. I came back in 71. My GPA had dropped from, say, a B plus when I left Hampton to a 1 something when I left Howard. So. I. Anyway, I had kind of lost my focus on academics. So I left Howard in 71, came back, got a job. I worked with the Illuminating company in 71. My future wife stayed in D.C. for one more year, and she left in 72. And then we were married in August of 72. And, yeah, we were married in August of 72.

Nick Mays [00:40:29] And, you know, kind of figuring out life, you know, where you’re working, where you’re living at the time.

Ross Cockfield [00:40:37] Yeah, we had, you know, we moved into East Cleveland. Well, we had moved into the apartment. We were living on Elberon in a row house. It was the last row house from the corner on Elberon. And we moved in there in the summer of 72, and then we were married in August of 72. And it was coming from D.C. coming from D.C. and coming out of that experience at Howard, we found that we thought. She and I, my wife and I thought that we had found the perfect place to move into and raise a family by coming to East Cleveland. East Cleveland, at the time, It was transitioning, if it hadn’t completely transitioned, but it was transitioning from, say, a predominantly white community to African American community. And we felt that we were moving into the kind of neighborhood or into the kind of community that. That fit all of our dreams and aspirations, being that there was one other city in the country, which I believe was East St. Louis, that had the racial makeup similar to East Cleveland. So we felt that we were spouting community control and black folks managing, managing our destinies and, you know, all of that. So we were very excited about moving into East Cleveland and into East Cleveland and being part of that growth, that growth and development.

Nick Mays [00:43:01] Yeah, you answered it.

Ross Cockfield [00:43:04] That was kind of the beginning.

Nick Mays [00:43:06] So just for clarification, when you. When you moved, when you left Howard, you did. You did you move to Cleveland before transitioning to East Cleveland in 1982?

Ross Cockfield [00:43:19] Yes, I did. I stayed, actually. I stayed with my mother. My mother and father. One year when I left. When I left D.C. I came back to Cleveland, stayed with them. Stayed with them for a year. I was working at the Illuminating Company, and. And then my wife. My future wife came or. She left D.C. in 72, and. And then we were married in the summer of 72.

Nick Mays [00:43:50] So according to our previous conversation, you worked at the Ohio Bell as well?

Ross Cockfield [00:43:57] Yeah, I worked. Yeah, that was. See, I started working with them, I think it was in 72, shortly after I got married. Yeah.

Nick Mays [00:44:06] Central National Bank?

Ross Cockfield [00:44:08] That was in 79, I believe. No, 70. 77. I think it was in 77. Yeah. Yeah, 77. I left Ohio, Bill, and went to Central National Bank as a internal auditor.

Nick Mays [00:44:31] How did you get into the auditing?

Ross Cockfield [00:44:36] I was an accounting major at Howard.

Nick Mays [00:44:38] Oh, I see.

Ross Cockfield [00:44:41] Yeah, that was my major.

Nick Mays [00:44:42] So you changed majors?

Ross Cockfield [00:44:43] Yeah, yeah, actually, I changed it a few times. I. I went from architecture at Hampton, Political Science at Howard. That was my first switch. Then my second switch was from political science to Accounting.

Nick Mays [00:44:58] You know what? Really quick. And this is. I just thought about this question. How does HBCUs like Hampton or Howard inform or attempt or try to give students the history of the universities and. And how it. How it emerged or is there. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not. From an outsider looking in, I’m thinking that. That a part of the curriculum is to really talk about the history of HBCUs and the significance and the importance of. I don’t know if you can recall, but do they do that there?

Ross Cockfield [00:45:53] No, not to me. I mean, I didn’t get that. Didn’t feel that it was. More than anything. And I have to honestly say that it had. The fact that I was not only at an HBCU, but I was in. I was at an HBCU in Washington, D.C. in northwest Washington, D.C. which at the time was. I mean, it was. I can’t. I mean, there’s nothing in Cleveland that just kind of. Mirrors that better. That vibe that. That East Coast D.C. 1965, 6, 7. Just. I mean, it was. It was hot. It was popping. I mean, it was. And. And like I said, the. The fact that I was at Howard. Because you could go. I mean, the. The Howard sits right in the middle of Northwest Washington, and it was surrounded by. It was surrounded by. I want to say ghetto. If you want to call It. That. I mean, it was in the ghetto. I mean, it was in.

Nick Mays [00:47:22] It was urban center.

Ross Cockfield [00:47:23] It was urban. Yeah, it was real urban. I mean, you could step. You step a block away from, you know, you stepped. You step up a block away from the university, and you right there in D.C. you know, and when I say you right there in dc, you get mugged, jumped on, you know, get your stuff stolen. You know, you were. You had to. You had to live that. You know, you were home.

Nick Mays [00:48:01] So you immersed yourself.

Ross Cockfield [00:48:02] It was so weird because you were coming. I mean, I came from what I thought was a ghetto. You know, I grew up. I grew up around black folks. I spent a lot of time in pool rooms, you know, so it was not like. I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I wasn’t unfamiliar with this life, but when I got to D.C. I’m right there in it, you know. You were not. I mean, you’re in it. You’re right there. You’re right there. Hampton was somewhat. In the country, you know, Hampton was kind of off the beaten path, very pristine, you know, idyllic. It was beautiful, you know, right there. Right there by the water. It was. I mean, it was beautiful, you know, and as I look back on. You know, look back on my life, I say sometimes I should have stayed there, because it was. I mean, it was. It was beautiful campus. And I go from there to this ghetto in the middle of the ghetto, Howard University. And that dynamic. That dynamic being the student and the. We used to call them block boys, you know, but you had a student and the block boy, and the student was a block boy. But now you’re. Now you’re coming at the situation from a different mindset. You know, I’m not on the block like I used to be. Now I’m a student on somebody else’s block. So it. I’m trying to come back to your question.

Nick Mays [00:50:14] My question just was really about the…

Ross Cockfeild [00:50:19] Oh, oh, oh, Howard. No, it didn’t. I didn’t get. I didn’t get. There were people there. There were quite a few people there that. Whose mother and father. Father lawyer, mother, doctor, you know, professional black professionals who had attended Howard when. When Howard was one of the elite, you know, it was. It was elite. But somewhere. I’d say. I’d probably say somewhere during the 60s, as. As with most. Most colleges, you had working class. You had working class families. Not necessarily you had the children of working class families coming into the HBCU environment. Whereas before you had the children of the professionals who Pretty much attended the universities. So there was that class. So there was that group. There was that group of children or students that had professional parents. They saw the HBCU experience somewhat differently, okay? They were part of a tradition, okay? And in my case, even though my father had attended Livingston and my mother had gone to Southern, I didn’t have that same mindset when I got there. So I’m. I’m thinking, you know, I’m. Like I said, that’s interesting. I wanted to play. I wanted to be a pool player. So I had no feel of that black college experience. And so when I got there, I was seeing. I was seeing Howard differently. I was seeing it as just more of an extension of the ghetto that I had come from. Okay? And the fact that there was such heavy. There were heavyweight instructors there, professors. I mean, they would have concerts. We had concerts, man. Stevie Wonder, he’d show up, he’d finish his concert, he’d be off in the bar. We’d walk into the bar, he’s playing. I mean, it was just the dynamics between the university and the neighborhood. The surrounding area was. I mean, they were just feeding off each other, and so it was electric. So the university piece was there. But it was so much more than that. I mean, it was the culture. It was the culture and the neighborhood feeding back, you know, that dynamism between the school in the neighborhood. So.

Nick Mays [00:53:36] Wow.

Ross Cockfield [00:53:37] Because, I mean, we. I spent one year. My first year there, I was in the dorm, and then we moved off campus, and we moved. We moved about four. Three or four blocks away from. We moved off of 16th Street. No, 14th Street. Seventh. Yeah, we moved off of 14th street, upper 14th Street. And so me and a lot of my buddies, about five or six of us, you know, we rented a row house and we got high, lived life. Yeah. I’m just saying. So. So not only. Not only was I enjoying myself with my friends, you know, now I have to get up in the morning and walk four or five blocks to the university, to the school, to attend class, and, you know, and I’m. I’m in love, So.

Nick Mays [00:54:50] Well, yeah, I just. That question just kind of. Just from the perspective of, you know, teaching African American history. And, you know, during the Reconstruction era, in the class and the rise of [inaudible].

Ross Cockfield [00:55:09] But it was not. It was. It was. It was not even the classes. I mean. It wasn’t so much the classes. It was so much as. It was the content of the. The course content. The course content was. I was Living, you know, I’m kind of living the course content, you know, by virtue of the fact that you’re in Northwest Washington and there’s so much history in there. And then you had these professors that it was. It was just. It was electric. It was electric.

Nick Mays [00:55:51] So before I went back to Howard, we were talking about your career initially coming in, coming back to Cleveland and moving to East Cleveland in 1972. In the 1980s, you founded one of your first Internet companies. And this is well before the tech technology boom. I’m thinking, what inspired you to move in that space so early?

Ross Cockfield [00:56:32] When I. Okay, let me take you back to Central National Bank. I was a staff auditor. I was, you know, I was on the internal audit staff. And for some reason, don’t. Couldn’t really tell you what, but for some reason I wanted to be a bond trader. So I transferred from the internal audit staff to the investment. The investment area. And because I had an accounting background and I was doing well. I was doing well with the, you know, what I was doing on internal audit. They allowed, you know, they. They allowed the transfer. But what I. What I became exposed to and what I became aware of is there’s a a strata, if you will, meaning that I was now being trained to trade with people that I had no social. No social contact with. I mean, meaning that these folks had money and the kinds of information or the kinds of things that I was being required to assist them with took me into another area that I was totally unaware of. Okay? So my supervisor was a very wealthy young Jewish girl. Whose husband happened to be a trader at Kidder Peabody. So she would come in and I used to always be amazed at how well manicured she was, you know, nails, impeccable hair, just, you know, but she was the manager of the staff of the group. So anyway, she was being. She would spend the first part of her morning talking with her husband about how the bond market was going to trade. And I didn’t have. It became very apparent to me that I didn’t have that kind of background. I didn’t have that kind of connection. You know, folks I knew didn’t know what a bond was, had no sense of what I was even. What I might even be talking about, so long and short of it, is that things didn’t work out where I was. Okay. So she basically fired me. The people, though, that. Who’s. The people that I had come from, the internal audit staff that I had come from, they were. I don’t want to Say, shocked. But they said, well, they knew that there might have been some other kind of problem. It didn’t necessarily have to do with my performance, but they said there might have been some racial, some kind of racial overtones in this thing. Well, I told them it wasn’t. I said they were going to place me in the branches. They were going to move me from downtown into the branch system. And I said, no, I don’t want to be a. I don’t want to be a lender, you know, I don’t want to be a bank loan lender thing. So I quit. I quit. That was when I. So when I quit, I kind of went out on my own. I was able to secure or acquire two PCs and I decided to try to become a service bureau, meaning that I would process. I would process accounting transactions for small companies. So that’s how I started. So I did that. I had a couple of clients, they would, they would prepare or they would give me their checks, and then I would put their. Run their checks through this accounting system and give them a check detail, summarize the transactions and take the reports back to them for a fee. That kind of matured into selling, selling accounting systems. So. I was selling, not only I was selling accounting systems for nonprofits, but I was also selling real estate accounting systems. And so that, that, that was what I was doing. Now to kind of come back to your question, at the same time as that was going on, the technology had developed so, so that I could install a program on my machine and have somebody else install a comparable program on their machine, and I would be able to do a remote, you know, basically do some remote tech support. Okay. So that was kind of the beginning of my fascination with remote processing, remote communications that developed into an interest in what were called BBS systems, bulletin board systems. So I set up a BBS in my house and called it the Black Electronic Network. Ben.net that’s what it was called. Ben.net and so I began selling or I began offering email addresses to people. And so we were now, I was now communicating with others via. It was a modem, essentially, you know, a 1200 baud modem. So they would dial in, they would dial into my system, retrieve their messages, maybe pass the message on to somebody else. So the services were essentially what they call FTP, Surface, FTP services. HTTP, which was the Internet protocol, had not been developed yet. So I was working with email and basically file transfer, FTP services and email. But I could see, I could see where this was Going. And so when the Internet hit, I was right there. I was. I was right there. And unfortunately, I didn’t have the. I didn’t have the money to really set up an Internet company. The bulletin board systems were migrating into the Internet, but like I said, I just didn’t have the financial capital to set myself up. There were a couple of companies that had set themselves up down in the, I think the AT&T building downtown. And they blew up. They, they. I mean, they, they blew up when they started selling it. You know, when they started offering Internet accounts.

Nick Mays [01:05:32] I can imagine. How long did you run your business for?

Ross Cockfield [01:05:38] Let’s see, I closed everything down. I’d probably say I closed that. I closed that part down probably in the middle mid-90s. But then, then a buddy of mine, because at the same. At the time, I was not only doing the BBS, but since I had been introduced to the Internet, I was. I began designing websites for companies. And so a buddy of mine who I met through one of these website engagements, as a matter of fact, it was the Urban League. I had done a website for the Urban League way back in the day. And anyway, he approached me, he said, hey, let’s set up this company instead of you targeting black folks, which is what I was trying to do. And there’s a story, There’s a story, kind of a quick story behind that. In 89. In 89, I was here at the library. So I was working part time at the library and doing this Internet selling computer systems and stuff on the side. So I was working part time here at the library, and I was doing that. Well, As part of my Internet computer system sales, I ran into a woman. Actually, what had happened was that I went to a black caucus of the American Library association conference with my computers to sell nonprofit software. Okay. I ran into a woman who worked for Johnson Publishing, okay. And said, well, does Johnson have a website, you know, for all the magazines, Ebony, Jet and all that? She said, no, we don’t have a website. So I said, well, let me, you know, let me see what I can do for you. So we exchanged information. I contacted them, and she put me in touch with Brother, who was the managing editor of Ebony Mann, which was a magazine that was targeted toward black men. After he and I had had conversation about what I did and why I was calling and all that, he said, well, you know, the Internet, you know, the Internet is emerging. Would you be interested in writing some articles? So I said, sure. Well, because he couldn’t give me he couldn’t give me credit for the articles.

[01:09:17] I would write the articles and supply them to him and then he would publish them in the magazine as a technology section or whatever you want to call it. Well, he and I became pretty good friends about it. We became pretty close. And I had the opportunity then to go to Ebony, Johnson Publishing. So me and again, me and my wife and a friend of mine and his wife drove to Chicago and we got a tour, you know, we got a tour of the, the building and I got a chance to meet Lerone Bennett. So it was, I mean it was one, it was a highlight because, because what it showed me was what black folks can do if black folks support black folks. Because I mean, if you have a product, if you have a product that black folks love, you don’t have to go anywhere else. You will be supported. So with that being said, my, my Internet company was called the Black Electronic Network. And I had, I had visions of it becoming the next AOL, but for black people. Okay, So I had developed a disc. You know, I could give you a disc and you know, you could put it in your, put it in your computer and sign on, sign up, do all that. The problem though was that I found myself being a one man show because I was kind of way out there in front of whatever. I mean most people had no sense of what I was even doing. And so I could give you a disc, I could give somebody else a disc over here. If you had problems, I had to stop doing this over here and help you. So the support, all of the back end, all of the back end stuff that is necessary in order to be a success, successful Internet company I couldn’t supply because I just didn’t have the manpower. Plus the fact I was working part time here at the library. So I was doing that on, I was doing that and then trying to work part time here.

Nick Mays [01:12:08] So you’ve, you, you closed the business down and.

Ross Cockfield [01:12:13] Well, not quite, not quite. This buddy, the buddy that I was telling you about who was at the Urban League, he said, he said, Ross, why don’t you shut that down and we can take that same model, we can take this Internet model and do something else. So he said, I said, well, he had an idea of creating a non profit or creating a company that assisted non profit.

[01:12:37] So what we did, I sold off and I didn’t really sell off, but I just basically gave away the name of Bennet. Net. I gave that to someone. And then we started another Internet company called Givenet. And the Model was I give you a disk when you sign up. When you sign up for the Internet service, basically you assist. Well, you sign up for the Internet service and part, as part of the signup process, you identify a non profit that you want to support. So the model, we called it Givenet because the model was such that you pay 2195 for $21.95 a month for Internet service. But $5 of that money, $5 of that subscription is sent off to the nonprofit of your choice. So not only do you, not only do you benefit the nonprofit of your choice, but I now have a mechanism that I can go to the nonprofit and say, if you market this service, you can bring all this revenue back to yourself. Okay, you can bring all this revenue back to you. And so it just so happened that me and, me and him and two other guys, they happen to be white, we formed this company called Givenet. We went to Baltimore. It was a PTA convention in Baltimore. Anyway, ran into someone there who loved the idea. They said, hey, well, why don’t you come back to Chicago and do a presentation? So we thought that we, we were getting ready to blow up. Well, during that time, they loved the idea. The person that we had talked to loved the idea because they were now going to market, they were going to market our product to all the PTA organizations around the country and say, okay, well, the $5 that you pay, $5 of your subscription fee will now come back to the national, national pta. So it was a win, win. You know, we saw it as a win win. They saw it as a win win. Just so happened though, that the week, the week that we were scheduled to have the appointment in Chicago, planes flew into the Twin towers in, in New York. So we got to Chicago to do this presentation and everybody was looking out the window. They were looking to see whether or not a plane was going to come out of the sky and run into the building. So we just. It was one of those. Yeah, we’ll get back to you. You know, the whole. It was bad. It was bad. So. All of the money, all of the money in the non profit sector was now being funneled into relief. Funneled. I mean, it just, all the money was now being diverted to. You name it, it’s a pivot. Yeah, it just, it just, it drew. I mean, it just shrunk. So the long and short of it is that we were able, at one point in time, we were able to get in touch with United Way Services. We were able to become a link on, on their home page, you know, for donations and, and, you know, sign up for Internet service. It never really, it never really took off like we thought it would. The nonprofit sector was. I mean, it was just kind of in turmoil, you know, because like I said, money was going. It just wasn’t. It just didn’t fit. You know, it wasn’t a fit. And then. And at the same time, Dial up Internet service was dying and it was transferring to DSL. So AT&T now became the Internet provider of choice. I mean, you could no longer offer dial up service. You had to go. It was, you know, high speed. Not, not, you know, DSL was the.

Nick Mays [01:18:04] High speed of, of its day.

Ross Cockfield [01:18:06] Of its day. Right, right.

Nick Mays [01:18:10] So I want to, I want to pivot and I want to talk about life in, in East Cleveland. You, you moved into East Cleveland in early 1970s, but you’ve lived on Millionaires Row since 1979. What drew you to Millionaires Row, to this community? And one. And what was your first impressions of, of the city of East Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [01:18:43] I love, we loved it. We loved it. As I said, when we, when we left Washington, when we got married in 72, we thought that East Cleveland was. East Cleveland was the place to be. It was going to be the, it was going to be the showcase or the city that was going to be talked about as the place where black folks could manage black folks.

[01:19:16] You know, it was the next Tulsa. I mean, that was the kind of vision that we had. So at the time there were two movie theaters. This is in 72, two movie theaters, restaurants. I mean, there were, I mean, in our area, there were Kentucky Fried Chicken and there was a Red Barn, car dealerships, movie, you know, as I said, movie theaters. It was, I mean, you know, it was great. It was great. And so when we had our family, when we got began to have children, our first child was born in 73. I’m kind of jumping ahead, but there were, I mean, East Cleveland’s school system was on par with any system in the county. And the fact that it was black folks teaching black folks, I mean, it was black folks running things, you know, so we, we were, we were in love. We were in love with the city. So to kind of come back to the Millionaires Row piece. We were living in 72. When we moved into the city. We were living on the north side of Euclid Avenue, and we moved into a house on the south side of Euclid Avenue. Okay. Well, it just so happened my uncle, the one that I mentioned to you that had taken my mother in when she left Southern. My uncle was a lawyer, and he had a law office right on the corner of Southern. Actually, he owned the building that we were in. He owned the building. He owned, I think there were seven units, maybe seven. Seven apartment units. And his office was on the corner. And then there was a bar called the Cubbyhole that was next to his office. Well, he approached me, you know, he approached me, he said, hey, I got a client, walked away from the house. It’s a VA Repossession. Are you interested? And I said, yeah, you know, so he took us up to, you know, took us to the house. And the. As it turned out, the company that was supposed to be maintaining the house after the owner had left had not turned the water off. So pipes had burst, ceilings were out. The floor looked like a roller coaster floor. The wood had warped. There was no heat in the house. The boiler didn’t work. But my wife loved it. And at the time, we had three children. So my son. My son who was born in 79, he had just been born. I had two daughters. So we, you know, she walked into the house and we said, okay, well, they could live up here. You know, everybody can have bedroom and, you know, all that. But the work, as it stands, right, I’m still working on the house. But, you know, God bless her, she. She loved the house. And we took his offer.

[01:23:23] So we moved from Elberon across Euclid to Roxbury into this barn. This big, big house.

Nick Mays [01:23:35] Were you conscious of the history of billionaire’s role?

Ross Cockfield [01:23:38] Millionaires Row had not even. Had not. No, there was no such thing. Only to the extent that historically Millionaires Row, which was actually a section of Euclid Avenue, Millionaires Row had moved east, had moved east into East Cleveland. East Cleveland being the first and oldest suburb of Cleveland. So that wealth that had built the big houses on Euclid Avenue further down, say, 30th and so in Euclid Avenue, had migrated east. And the Millionaires Row that the historic Millionaires Roll became Millionaires Row in East Cleveland because Rockefeller moved. Rockefeller had moved into East Cleveland at that time, but Millionaires Row, as we are calling it now, did not exist.

Nick Mays [01:24:46] Can you. Can you give me, like, a brief snapshot of East Cleveland, 1970s East Cleveland, 1980s, East Cleveland, 1990s? How is it changing and evolving? Big picture?

Ross Cockfield [01:25:03] Well, a lot of, you know, a lot of the change. A lot of the change in East Cleveland, you know, kind of came about because of economic downturns or economic. Or changes, changes in the economy, changes in. Fundamentally in the manufacturing sector that created a loss of jobs for most of the folks. A lot of the folks in East Cleveland, East Cleveland being a blue collar, blue collar city. So in 70, in the 70s, and even prior to that, I’ll just say from 65 to maybe 1980, East Cleveland was a thriving community. And then when you had this economic shift, manufacturing shift, if you want to call it that, under, under the Reagan administration, a lot of folks lost jobs. And, you know, you also had the crack epidemic and, you know, drugs and whatnot.

Nick Mays [01:26:11] When you say thriving community with a family.

Ross Cockfield [01:26:13] I’m sorry, when I.

Nick Mays [01:26:14] When you say thriving community, what does that mean?

Ross Cockfield [01:26:18] What does it. Okay, it means that there were shops, clubs, businesses. East Cleveland. East Cleveland was the kind of. It was the kind of community that. Okay, let me put it this way. It reminded me. It reminded me of how I grew up. Meaning that everybody, everybody in the neighborhood went to the elementary school. Everybody went from the elementary school to the neighborhood junior high school. Everybody went from junior high to the neighborhood high school. I didn’t, because of my education, I didn’t follow that same path. But it was very conceivable that the child, you know, the person that you went to elementary school with is the same person you graduated from high school with. You know, if nobody left that neighborhood, you both followed that same path. So there were people, you know, that could easily be said that, well, I knew him. You know, I knew him when we were in kindergarten together. Well, if you could take that on a, say, at a micro level and blow it up, you had a whole community. You had a whole city of people that grew up and went to school together. You had, at the time, I want to say, five, maybe five elementary schools. So you had five elementary schools. You had children from these five elementary schools going to one junior high school. So now everybody from all these sections of East Cleveland are coming together in this one junior high school. And then you have all of these people who now go to a high school and they’re all in there together. So you had a sense of neighborhood and community that was kind of unmatched. And it carries on today. The Shaw picnic is probably one of the largest alumni picnics in the country, because you have people, generations. You know, “my mother went to Shaw and my daddy and my son. And, you know, we all. You had that person for teacher, and I had.” It’s crazy. So we moved into that environment. My wife went to Kennedy I went to Collingwood. But we were. When we moved into East Cleveland, we had moved into the city at a time when a lot of the consciousness, you know, black consciousness, if you will, was really coming around. So we kind of fit right in, even though we were outsiders. You know, we weren’t part of this legacy of Shaw High School or East Cleveland students. But we kind of fit in. You know, we kind of fit in because we came in at that time. At the time we did so.

Nick Mays [01:30:08] And then in the late 80s, Reagan era, born in the 90s. What’s happening?

Ross Cockfeild [01:30:17] Drugs. Drugs, you know, more drugs, more drugs and drugs and more drugs. And then the city was beginning to go into decline. There was, you know, the administrative problems at City Hall, Fiscal problems with the city. It was on its decline. You know, it was on its decline.

Nick Mays [01:30:57] Is this where you see people moving out of East Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [01:31:00] Well, East Cleveland? Even today, you know, East Cleveland is not suffering so much from an expense problem so much as it is a revenue problem. And when I say that you had. The city gets most of its revenue. Gets most of its revenue from income tax. So when you have people. When you have working people that are leaving the city or when you have. Well, when you have working people leaving the city, and when you have people that are replacing those people that are on public assistance, then you’re obviously, the income taxes that are being paid to the city are no longer being paid. So the city’s. The city services suffer. You know, that’s really what it comes down to. And then when you throw on mismanagement, when you put mismanagement on top of that, you create a very toxic situation, because now people. Now you have a mismanagement problem that is exacerbated by the fact that you’re not getting the money that you need to get in order to effectively run the city. And that. That right there has just been multiplied over the. Over the next 20 years.

Nick Mays [01:32:42] And yet during these transitions or times of decline, you stayed. Why?

Ross Cockfield [01:32:55] A lot of it, I believe has to do with the fact that. I want to call it brother man, I want to say syndrome, you know, say, hey, brother man, you know, brother man, brother man, can you help brother man? And when you feed into that, then you wind up. You wind up putting people in positions that they don’t deserve to be in, or the need for you to make a hard decision about what somebody’s doing or what somebody’s not doing is somehow compromised. And I don’t want to say that in a truly Negative sense. But coming out of historically, when I say historically, black folks coming out of situations that we’ve come out of, you know, Africans, Africans being, you know, coming out of slavery, coming out of Jim Crow, you know, you name it. Coming out of coming out of situations that. Demand that people help one another, that gratuity that we offer one another is many times compromised and forces or causes us to make unhealthy decisions. So if I choose to hire you, knowing that you’re not qualified for the job, even though I know you need the job, you know, I might know you, I might know your family, I say, well, listen, you think you can do this? And you say, sure, I can do this. And then you need. I know. I know from the start that you can’t do it. You know, you can’t do it. But we want to try to make this thing work, and it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. And so when you take that, and you take that mindset and you multiply it out, then you have mismanagement. All the things that you just don’t want to have, particularly in the public sector, because now you’re dealing with public money, which carries a whole different kind of character than whether or not, you know, we’re dealing with some private money or whether or not you’re dealing with somebody that has a small business and I want to hire you. Public money is entirely different Animal.

Nick Mays [01:36:04] Was there a sense that you wanted to see. You wanted to help the city, or you wanted to see through the city during the hard times and kind of get back to the city you moved into? So maybe you felt like you. You had to kind of stay, weather the storm, so to speak, and help support the city evolve and kind of get back to, you know, a good space.

Ross Cockfield [01:36:39] I love where I’m at. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want to live around. I don’t want to live around Pepperville or, you know, I don’t want. I love black folks. I love where I’m at. I’m not going to move. Don’t have any intention of moving. I’m going to die right there where I’m at. But the reality, the reality of life and the reality of just the cyclical nature of change says that things are not going to ever always be the way they used to be. So you have to be able to adapt. You have to be able to take the good from the old, merge it with whatever this new thing looks like and try to roll forward. So I Don’t have any, you know, just kind of in speaking of where we are in 2025, I don’t have any illusions about East Cleveland being what it used to be. That’s not going to happen. But what can it be? And what do I possibly want it to look like, given the kinds of things that I see? You know, for example, just to give you a hypothetical Little Italy, which is adjacent to University Circle, or maybe a part of University Circle, has gone through a similar kind of change or a similar kind of transition. It used to be that you didn’t think about driving up in there. You know, my cousin decided to drive through there back in the. I want to say back in the 60s and got his windows bricked out. You know, so now you have. You have people from all ethnicities, all walks of life. They all walk up and down Mayfield Road or Little Italy, and they in and out of the shops. The shop owners, I’m assuming, haven’t necessarily changed. I mean, they’re all of an Italian flavor, but you now have a different clientele, and everybody has kind of bought into that new. I’d say that the owners or the people, the residents of Little Italy have kind of accepted this transition. That’s about the only thing that I could really say would be comparable to what I would envision for East Cleveland. But.

Nick Mays [01:39:24] So if it can’t. If it can’t ever get back to what it once was, then [what] do you envision of what it could be?

Ross Cockfield [01:39:36] Well, Let me begin by saying that the city needs revenue, meaning that the city needs people who are capable of paying an income tax. Okay. Who that is somewhat of the question. Meaning that are we going to attract the upwardly mobile college student white to move into the city? And now we’re talking about gentrification. Okay, are we encouraging that kind of development? Are we encouraging upwardly mobile black folks to move back into the city? Are we looking to provide affordable housing where you not necessarily have the upwardly mobile, but you have people that. Who are working, you know, working class people that might need some type of assistance with their living. Do you want to bring them in? But maybe more importantly, what kind of shops do you want? What kind of, you know, what kind of life do you want? What type of social life do you want this new city to have? What is that going to look like? I mean, are we going to have people holding hands, walking little dogs up and down Euclid Avenue? Are we going to have music coming out of shops? Are we going to have coffee shops, you know, restaurants, you know, what. What does that look like? And who’s going to be the owners? You know, who are the owners? And not only that, but who. Who’s going to. Who are the patrons?

Nick Mays [01:41:42] So what do you want to see? I guess.

Ross Cockfield [01:41:43] What do I want to see? Yeah.

Nick Mays [01:41:45] Because you do have some really good questions, but I’m interested in what you would like to see. What’s your vision?

Ross Cockfield [01:41:55] I want flavor. I want flavor. I want. What I want is. I don’t want to. Let me kind of give you a sense of what I’m talking about. We. Not so much now, but before. And when I say before, I’m saying maybe 10 years ago, okay, I could go out to my garage and put on some Stevie Wonder and turn it up. And then one of my neighbors would. I’d hear some Aretha Franklin. And across the street, I might hear, who knows, James Brown, okay? And you could almost imagine the three of us competing with one another over whose music is going to get heard the loudest, okay? And that’s flavor. To me, that’s flavor. Many years ago, there was some guys that lived across the street from me, diagonally across the street. And they would get up in the morning on Saturday morning. They get up in the morning and with drum, they’d bring the drums out and they would drum, they would drum, you know, 11 o‘, clock, you know, 11 o’ clock Saturday morning. And it would just light up the whole neighborhood. You know, I’m just to hear drums being played and that. That to me is flavor. You know, that’s. That’s. I tease my girlfriend, you know, she lives out in Lyndhurst, and I tease her aunt said, I’m gonna bring James Brown out here. I said, these people. These people are dead. You know, you put some James Brown and you see them coming out the houses, you say, oh, you see. You know, see them. The shoulders move. But that’s flavor. And that’s what I want. If I can. That’s. It’s a hard thing to try to quantify, but it’s more of a qualitative. It’s a qualitative state. More so than the quantitative state.

Nick Mays [01:44:48] Is it part of it, like sustaining the Black city history model?

Ross Cockfield [01:44:57] I just want flavor. I want flavor. I want, you know, I don’t want. I don’t want somebody to yell out, you know, I don’t want somebody to stick their head out the window, hey, turn that down. You know? No, I’m not turning it down because I want it, you know, I want. I’m playing it because I know you like it. You know what I’m saying? It’s hard. It’s a hard thing. I’m not in favor of graffiti. I don’t want somebody to walk around and mark up, you know, I don’t want you to deface property. I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to take your potato chip bag and throw it out your window. You know, I want you to maintain. I want you to maintain your neighborhood, maintain your life, maintain your, you know, maintain the community. Make it something that you’re proud of. But on the back end of that, I want flavor. I like putting hot sauce on your potato chips.

Nick Mays [01:46:01] What’s your opinion on how you do that with revitalization, redevelopment? How does East Clevelanders or what role does East Clevelanders play in ensuring that whatever revitalization efforts come works for them?

Ross Cockfield [01:46:24] The thing that needs to happen, there has to be community organization. Okay? That’s first and foremost. There has to be community organization. And when I say that, kind of spinning into this millionaire’s role, neighborhood association, The development, the development that is being planned for East Cleveland, this area, is something that had been planned, I can say maybe 20, 30 years ago. When they saw they, whoever this. They is, developers, city officials, whoever, whoever this they is. But when they saw that East Cleveland was unraveling, they said, okay, well, we’re going to step in this, this. The [Cuyahoga] Land Bank is going to step in, and we’re going to selectively acquire properties for future redevelopment. Now, because they own the land. Now, because they own the land and control the property, they have pretty much the control over who they allow to develop that property. Now, they can, they can choose a number of different. They have a number of different options. They can, they can give me, if I, if I live next door to the vacant land, they could say, well, hey, well, we’re going to give it to you, or we’re going to sell it to you at a nominal price and let you take care of it. We’ll let you build on it, or if that. If that’s appropriate. But we’d say we’re going to give it to you, or they can hang on to it and wait for somebody with deeper pockets and say, well, we’re going to give it to you or sell it to you and let you build whatever you feel like you want to build on it. Well, they planned this or saw this a number of years ago. The question that I have, the question that I have for the residents of East Cleveland is how far down the road are you looking? Are you intent on turning. Turning this property over to your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren? Or are you going to walk away from it when the gutters start to fall, or when the steps need to be replaced, or when you have too many cracks in the sidewalk? So what are your intentions? Because now you. You have. There’s an obvious uproar in the city over community control. You know, we want to control this dirt, but do you really want to control this dirt? That’s the question. Do you really want to control this dirt? How far, how far are you willing to go to make sure that this dirt is being controlled? You know, what do you intend to do in order to ensure that this dirt is being controlled? And who are you controlling it for? Are you controlling it for your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren? Because on the flip side of that coin, they’ve already made that decision. I’m saying, when I say they this, they’ve already decided that 50 years from now, this is what we want East Cleveland to look like. And we’ve made. We’ve already made the initial foray into the city in order to acquire the properties that we will now use for redevelopment. So, I mean, it’s like you, you know, for lack of a better term, you now have a rat infestation. You know, how do we deal with all these rats? How do we deal with, you know, do we put traps out? Do we get. You know what I’m saying? I mean, those are the kinds of questions that to me are before East Clevelanders, we can complain and argue about a quarter of a million dollar house or a half million dollar house being built three doors away, knowing that at some point in time, the values of that house are going to affect the property values of mine. So at some point in time, I’m going to have to pay an increased amount in property tax. But am I okay with that? And if I want to fight that, why am I fighting it? You see? Am I fighting it? I’m not fighting it because I’m just uncomfortable today, or am I fighting it because I want the same property that I live in to be given to my grandchildren? And what is that? What is the property going to be? What condition is the property going to be in when I turn it over to them? Am I going to let the ceiling fall in? You know, am I going to maintain it in order for them to have something that they can live in? Or am I just pissed off because My property taxes today are going to go up.

Nick Mays [01:51:58] Is it nuanced for you in terms of maybe supporting or understanding that the external dollars need to happen to help revitalize East Cleveland? But maybe not, you know, supporting or having reservations for what the Cuyahoga Land Banker Circle East is doing.

Ross Cockfeild [01:52:28] Yeah, I would say all of that. Certainly all of that. All of that. But, but, but I, I, I see it even beyond that. Or, or I see it requiring more than that. One of my neighbors who owns a house at the end of the street, house was in bad shape. I mean, weather, weather had beaten the house up. Paint peeling, everything else. And so I said, hey, I said, let’s get this painted. Let’s get this, you know, let’s fix this. And so he said, yeah, okay, okay. Well, that was one year. Next year comes around, house hadn’t gotten any better. And so I said, I’ll be willing to help you, you know, I’ll help you fix it up. Well, my point in saying this is that it comes down to neighbors helping neighbors. You know, we have to take ownership. We have to take ownership of the problems that we face and recognize that these problems are really, I mean, they’re really small. I mean, they’re small in the scheme of things. When they come. When you, when you look back over, over the historical timeline, I mean, this is nothing, this Trump thing. He’s a nothing. He’s truly a nothing. And I say that to say that I have a ladder. I have a ladder. You need, you need to put the strap on your gutter, your gutter, the straps broken, your gutter is hanging. So instead of the water going down the downspout, it’s going in the opposite direction. It’s falling out the gutter onto the ground. So over time, you know, over time, that’s going to create more and more problems. At some point in time, you’re going to have to get the gutter completely replaced. You’re going to have to train, you know, you’re going to have to change the fascia, you know, maybe do some roof work, you know. So all I’m saying is that I got a ladder, you got a problem, why not let you use my ladder? You know, simple fix. And those are the kinds of things that we need. We need to take, we need to take ownership of our problems and say, I can handle, or we can handle these problems up to a point. When that point is reached, then we reach out to the city and say, look, we’ve done all we can do to get this neighborhood the way we want it to look. Now, we need you to have. We need public assistance in bringing. Maybe bringing a backhoe in or bringing someone in to repave the street or put in some sidewalks or whatever it might happen to be. But we can collectively do a lot for ourselves without even asking for a dime from anybody Amish. Do it. They put up a. They build a barn in a day, they lay out some chicken and, you know, they lay out chicken and potatoes or whatever they eat, you know, and they put up. They raise a barn and don’t think anything of it. Now, why can’t we do that? We did it. We’ve done it before. I know we’ve done it before. You know, nobody had to tell me whether or not we did it to know that we did it before, because that’s what we had to do. Okay, so we did it before. Why can’t we do it now? We suddenly think that the city, the administration or whoever, you know, they’re supposed to. I’m supposed to hire. I’m supposed to vote for somebody as my representative, and they’re going to take care of me. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. They’re not going to take care of me. I got to take care of myself. And if I. And then I got to reach out to you, you know, when I start, when I feel like I’m drowning, yeah, I’m going to reach out to you. But in the meantime, me, my neighbor here, my neighbor over there, neighbor over here, we can get this working. We can do this. We can do this.

Nick Mays [01:57:31] Your work here at the East Cuban Public Library, I love it. You worked here first from 1989 to 2002 and then again in 2014. And obviously present. What do you see the library’s contribution to East Cleveland over the years?

Ross Cockfield [01:57:56] Libraries, I’d say libraries traditionally, or the perception. I’ll put it like this. The perception of libraries is obviously a place where you come in, you check a book out, take it home, read it. Libraries have evolved. Have evolved to be more conduits of information. We provide information access or guides to storehouses of information as opposed to necessarily being books. And in addition to that, particularly in our community, in this community, we provide programming services for people who otherwise just don’t have that. You know, we provide outlets for seniors, for children. We have a performing arts center that is on par with. I mean, there’s nothing like it in the county. Nothing that I know of in the county. So we’re a conduit, you know, we supply information. You know, you have a need, we should be able to supply information to help you satisfy that need. That’s kind of how I see it.

Nick Mays [01:59:35] Does the East Community Public Library provide programming and services that community development organizations in the city. City would typically provide, and in doing so, kind of responding to the current situation and economic, social.

Ross Cockfield [01:59:59] No, no, no, we don’t. We. We’re. We can’t provide social services, if I’m interpreting your question.

Nick Mays [02:00:07] Well, not social services, but like providing services, providing programming that public libraries typically don’t provide. But because of the current state in East Cleveland, are finding yourself like. You know, back to school. And there’s things that. Right. Typically there’s nonprofits doing that work.

Ross Cockfield [02:00:33] Well, before the pandemic, we used to have. The library used to be full of children. I mean, it was. I mean, we had. I mean, it was full of children. It was full of children. And what we did, we provided games. I mean, it was more of an after school hangout, if you will, that we offered children come in, play video games and whatnot. You know, and there were. There were things. Actually. We had started the chess program around that same time. But there were other services, I guess, you know, I can’t really put my finger on them. But there was a. It was more of a hub, if you will. I mean, people were coming here. A meet up, you know, meet up and move on or that kind of thing. But. Those are the kinds of things that I see us needing to do. We need to be. We need to be a safe space, a quiet space, A space where services that you otherwise might not be able to get can get here or at least find a road to. And I don’t want to say that we’re doing something that other libraries are not doing, but we’re just finding that East Cleveland is just a harder nut to crack. And I think it has to do with the. Maybe some of the levels of despair that might be in the city or the level of dysfunction. There’s a certain dysfunction in East Cleveland that is hard to get your hands around.

Nick Mays [02:03:10] Can you talk about your role in the creation or the construction of the Performing Arts Center?

Ross Cockfield [02:03:17] Well, I left in 2002, and before I left, Greg Reese, who was the director at the time, and Ernestine Hawkins, who was the deputy director, the three of us collaborated. It was Reese’s idea. It was his idea to build a performing arts center.

Nick Mays [02:03:46] Whose idea?

Ross Cockfield [02:03:47] Greg Reese? Yeah, it was his idea and he ran it by us. We thought it was a Fantastic idea. He used to have the performances in the lower auditorium and felt that it was better to have a performing, you know, a theater. Okay. So with my help, we put together a proposal, and he took it out and started shopping it.

[02:04:24] And because of the contacts he had, he was able to get Steve Mitter to buy into the idea. And once he bought into the idea, he took the idea to other foundations in the city and raised the necessary money to have the theater built.

Nick Mays [02:04:56] When was it built?

Ross Cockfield [02:05:00] I’m gonna say because I was gone. I left construction, then I left in two. Well, we did a lot of the preliminary work in 2000, up to the time I left. I left in 2002. I believe it was built in 05. Either 05 or 07. I think it was completed in 05 or 07.

Nick Mays [02:05:23] What do you think the Performing Arts center represents for the community?

Ross Cockfield [02:05:37] All the concerts are free. We’re bringing. Or we bring the local jazz. I mean, local. He’s a. He’s a jazz. He’s a jazz buff. I mean, Reese is, and he’s on staff right now. He was a former director, but he’s on staff right now to handle the performances, and he writes the grants for the funding. But it’s a. On a Sunday afternoon, you can’t beat it. You can’t beat it. I mean, the music is great. The crowds are great. It gives people an outlet that they otherwise wouldn’t have. It doesn’t cost a dime. Well, I think it’s wonderful.

Nick Mays [02:06:38] Okay, a couple more questions.

Ross Cockfield [02:06:42] So let me just throw this. Let me just throw this in as an aside. Back in the day, speaking of forecast, back in the day, I had them. I had them come by my house and set up in my garage to celebrate my wife’s birthday. And I invited all my neighbors, so we had chairs lined up in the driveway. See, that’s flavor. That’s flavor. That’s flavor. I mean, you just extend. You say, hey, come on down. You know, that’s when you bring James Brown out, right? You bring James Brown. Yeah. So anyway.

Nick Mays [02:07:43] You’ve later, you became a. At some point in your career, you was a director at a charter school. You taught at Bryant & Stratton College, a lot of various careers. I mean, what made you get into education?

Ross Cockfield [02:08:06] I picked up on what my father told me. It’s. And. And I’ve. I mean, it’s just. It’s crystal clear to me now. You know, without. Without education, you. You lost. You Lost.

Nick Mays [02:08:21] How long did you teach?

Ross Cockfield [02:08:24] I didn’t. I didn’t teach. I mean, I. No, I taught at Bryant & Stratton.

Nick Mays [02:08:29] Bryant & Stratton? Yeah, yeah.

Ross Cockfield [02:08:32] Oh, man, let’s see. 2014, I want to say two years, maybe from 12. From 12 to 14, something like that. And the thing about it, you know, the thing that I found maybe really disheartening is that the. I’m teaching remedial math, basically. Just remedial math. And what happens? Bryant & Stratton, It’s. Well, I don’t want to go on record by talking about it, but you have people. You have people that didn’t complete college, I mean, didn’t complete their high school degrees. They’re now 25, 30, trying to get a job. Employer says, well, do you have a college degree? So Bryant & Stratton steps in and says, okay, well, why don’t you sign here, get you a student loan and go through this program and we’ll give you a degree after X number of years or whatever, after you complete this course requirement. Well, The degree isn’t worth the paper is printed on, but now you have a child or you have somebody out here carrying around $20,000 worth of debt that they’ll never pay off. So I saw what was going on, but the fact that these people can’t even multiply and divide just. Was just kind of broke my heart.

Nick Mays [02:10:50] And how many years were you the Director of the charter school?

Ross Cockfield [02:10:53] From 2004 to 2004.

Nick Mays [02:10:58] What’s the name of the charter school?

Ross Cockfield [02:10:59] Marcus Garvey Academy.

Nick Mays [02:11:00] Okay. And it was here in East Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [02:11:03] It was. It was East Cleveland.

Nick Mays [02:11:07] And you said how many years

Ross Cockfield from 2004 to 2011.

Nick Mays [02:11:15] What brought you into directing a charter school?

Ross Cockfield [02:11:20] I mean, after. After my Internet thing fell apart. The woman who formed the charter school knew me. I mean, obviously she knew me and knew my background. I mean, we, she and I, when I mentioned this, this All African People’s Revolutionary Party, I had recruited her back in the day to participate in this organization. So she kind of knew where, you know, kind of what my head was, you know, what my head was into, and reached out and said, you want to come in as a director? She had had one or two people before me, I think one for sure, but she had fired them. But I came in, I didn’t know anything about running the school, but that’s a whole nother conversation. I met some fantastic women, fantastic teachers, and I just let them. I just stood back and let them do their thing.

Nick Mays [02:12:43] Were you able to make A difference?

Ross Cockfeild [02:12:45] Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Nick Mays [02:12:47] Can you give me an example or just kind of talk about it.

Ross Cockfeild [02:12:49] Oh man, I want to say the second year, second year I was there, we would, we would sit around after, at the end of the school day, school, let’s say school, school day ended at 3:30. We would sit around for two hours and just talk about the children, talk about the children individually, what their strengths and weaknesses were. And then in those after school meetings we would decide or they would decide, I didn’t because I wasn’t in the classroom. They would decide, well, you give me so and so and I’ll give you so and so and so. The children were constantly being moved around based on their strengths and weaknesses, irrespective of how they were assigned in on the, on the roster. You know, they could easily be pulled away and you spend some time over here and you spend some, you know, so they were being moved around, but the school at the time had a failing, had a failing record. You know, the. After taking, after students took the state test, but they had a failing record. So when I came in, my role or my job essentially was to raise the standard of the school. Well, we had a situation with the eighth graders. The school was sixth, seventh and eighth middle school, which is an unbelievable challenge, particularly when you’re dealing with black children. But so Anyway, these were 8th graders who were taking the state proficiency test. And this one test, I don’t know what it was, but we stepped into the room and they had decided to pray without, you know, it was not anything that we had told them to do, suggested, but they felt it was a real, it was kind of a deep moment because they had, the children had decided to hold hands and pray about passing this test. And we kind of stood back and said, wow, this is really something. And they passed. I mean the majority of them passed the test. And so the school went from failing, we went from failing to a C. We jumped from a failing grade to a C average. And by the time the school closed, well, for financial reasons, I was let go, but we were on the verge of moving into that top slot.

Nick Mays [02:16:23] A couple of wrap up questions. What do you think people often misunderstand about East Cleveland or misconceptions.

Ross Cockfield [02:16:39] It’s a great place to be. There’s a passage, there’s a line out of Tobacco Road. I don’t know. Lou Rawls. Lou Rawls sings this version of Tobacco Road.

Nick Mays [02:17:04] I know the artist, but not the song.

Ross Cockfield [02:17:06] Okay, well the song. There’s a line in. There’s a Line in, in that song that says, I despise you because you’re filthy, but I love you because you’re my own. And that’s, that’s how I carry around East Cleveland. That’s about it.

Nick Mays [02:17:32] You’ve built a remarkable career and legacy of giving back and entrepreneur and even. Your work, career, jobs, there’s still a service component in that. When you think about what you’ve accomplished and your contribution, what are you most proud of?

Ross Cockfield [02:18:11] I don’t want to say I’m not proud of anything, but there’s nothing. I guess maybe I’m proud of the fact I’m able, I’m still in the game. I mean, because it’ll break you down. I mean, meaning that you got to have perspective. If you don’t, if. And I, when I say perspective, I love history, you know, I love African history, African American history. And, and so when you, this, this period that we’re going through right now, let’s just say this, this Trump thing, you want to call it, that, I mean, you can look back, I try to read, I kind of read, you know, maybe 50 year cycles. And when I say, when I say 50 year cycles, I say, okay, you’re coming out of reconstruction. Okay, you had coming out of reconstruction, you had Jim Crow 50 years. You have the beginning of the civil rights, civil rights era, another 50 years. Here we are, another 50 years. So you have these ebbs and flows where we make progress, and then we have these reactions to our progress, which is what we’re facing right now. So I don’t, I just read the, I just, you know, I just kind of read it as ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows of struggle. I’m not discouraged. I know that what we’ve been through is certainly worse than what we’re dealing with right now. I mean, in the worst case, we lose our cell phones, okay? We can’t watch Netflix. Okay? So big deal.

Nick Mays [02:20:18] What advice do you have for younger generations about perseverance, service, or investing in one’s own community?

Ross Cockfield [02:20:29] Hey, Love yourself, love yourself. You’ve loved yourself, you love it, you love, you know, the rest is easy. But you got to first love yourself. And you can’t love yourself if you have somebody telling you about yourself. So you got to find out, you know, got to find out about yourself. I used, I would tell my son, I said, if you can control, if you can control, if you can control the square foot of dirt that you stand on, you could control the world.

Nick Mays [02:21:13] And then finally, when people look back at your life and your decades in East Cleveland, in your work, your life in East Cleveland. What do you hope, though, remember about Mr. Ross Cockfield and his contribution to the city of East Cleveland?

Ross Cockfield [02:21:30] I’m just. Just somebody that, that loves, you know, loves his people. That’s all I can say. I love black folks. That’s. That’s it. That’s. That’s it.

Nick Mays [02:21:43] Well said. Beautiful. Well, Mr. Ross Cockfield, thank you for your. Your time and sharing your. Your story with us. I appreciate it.

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