Abstract

James Williams is a local Clevelander and Historic Preservationist by trade. After the Cleveland Hough Riots in 1966, he was a project manager for the Famicos Foundation, a local Community Development organization that restored buildings left in disrepair. In this oral history, Williams discusses his passion for preservation, projects and experiences working for the Famicos Foundation. Williams served in the U.S. Army and also worked as a maintenance worker at James A Garfield National Historic Site.

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Interviewee

Williams, James (interviewee)

Interviewer

Taffe, Jamila (interviewer); Schnack, Erich (interviewer)

Project

Green Book Cleveland

Date

8-2-2023

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

147 minutes

Transcript

Jamila Taffe [00:00:00] Yes. Thank you, Mr. James Williams, for being here as a part of our oral history for August 8th, or, sorry, August 2nd, 2023. My name is Mila and we have Erich here at Third Space Action Lab. And before we get started, I just want to say that oral histories may explore topics that could elicit strong emotions. While we do not want to avoid subjects like racial discrimination, we want you to feel comfortable letting us know if you want to decline a question, change topics, or end the interview with no questions or judgment on our part. So let’s get right in. What is your full name?

James Williams [00:00:39] James Garfield Williams.

Jamila Taffe [00:00:42] What year were you born?

James Williams [00:00:44] 1937.

Jamila Taffe [00:00:49] Tell us about your family growing up?

James Williams [00:00:52] I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. My mother and daddy were typical African American hard-working people who worked on the jobs that were available. She did what they called day work. This is doing work in homes of rich people. And they did it by the day. You know, like today you may work for this person, tomorrow you may work for another, and tomorrow. But once you establish with them, then that was their day. That’s what my mother did five days a week. And a lot of times she worked on Saturdays and Sundays that she was serving something for them. My father was a reporter. They used to call him red cap with the Greyhound bus station. And he was there until he retired. So that’s my mother and father. They both worked together very well. He was not the father of her first two children. Her first husband had died. Her second husband had gotten in some kind of trouble. And my father came later. She had had two children by then. When he came, it was my sister, me and my brother. And we had one other brother that did die early in his about 19 months old.

Jamila Taffe [00:02:30] How did your family come to live in Northeast Ohio?

James Williams [00:02:35] My father came there from Detroit, Michigan. My mother and her family were there. They’d been there for quite a while. They had moved from Hagerstown, Maryland to Springfield, Ohio. And eventually they moved into Dayton into a place called. It was right along the river. I can’t think of the name of it, but it’s right in Dayton. And there was, I guess the housing down there wasn’t the best. And so when they got a chance to get out of there, because I think there was a big flood in the early 1900s in Dayton that wiped out a lot of that housing. And her and her mother, three sisters and a brother and her father, they moved up on a street called Sprague Street, which was right near where that was. And that’s where she, her early grown up life was there with her and her sisters. That’s when they started doing day work. And their mother used to do laundry. And my mother’s father was what he was called a tinsmith. Because he used to put gutters on houses, and they would fabricate those gutters right on the spot. And so that was his job. And he taught his son, which was my mother’s brother.

Jamila Taffe [00:04:08] When did you come to live in Cleveland?

James Williams [00:04:11] 1965.

Jamila Taffe [00:04:15] And how old were you at that point?

James Williams [00:04:20] About 38, 37, 37, 70. I was 28.

Jamila Taffe [00:04:34] Where did you go to school?

James Williams [00:04:37] When I was in Dayton, I went to about four public, small, four schools before high school. In high school, I went to Dayton Dunbar, named after Paul Laurence Dunbar. Never graduated from school. I early, after going into the military, took a GED and I passed it. And that was the extent of my high school work. Subsequently, in my 70s, I got an Associate Degree from Tri-C. But by that time, my career, I was in my 70s. I had retired.

Jamila Taffe [00:05:29] What motivated you to get your degree at that age?

James Williams [00:05:32] I always wanted- Everywhere I was, I went to school. When I was overseas, I went to school in the University of Maryland, their overseas program. When I got out of service and went to California, I went to Los Angeles Community College. So when it came time for my transcripts, I had them coming from several schools. Central State University. I took a couple courses there. And that’s in Xenia, I guess, you know, the black school, the HBCU school in Xenia, Ohio. Central State University. All right. Everywhere I was, I would take a course or two. Finally, after I left them, in fact, while I was working for the Park Service, I decided I’d finish up. I didn’t have a few more courses than they did them. Dayton, I went to St. Clair University, got courses there. My transcripts from several schools.

Jamila Taffe [00:06:38] What did you do for fun as a kid?

James Williams [00:06:40] For what?

Jamila Taffe [00:06:41] For fun when you were a kid.

James Williams [00:06:45] Same thing all the other little kids would do, African American kids. I mean, we didn’t have much money. And so we took an old Coca-Cola box with a 2x4 on it. And put skate wheel in front, skate wheel on the back. So we made our own scooters. My father eventually was able to buy me a bicycle for fun. It was just being in the neighborhood, being with people my age. And my daddy used to take me fishing a lot. And he took the family in different places. Since he worked for the bus station, he could get free passes. And I remember one time he took Us to Niagara Falls. We went all the way up to Canada and Niagara Falls and come back and we stayed in one of the. It wasn’t a hotel, but they had homes that people would rent out their rooms to. And I remember us going to Niagara Falls. And his family was from Battle Creek, Michigan. My family’s history has little to do with slavery because if you check the 1850 census, my great-great-grandfather and his wife lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and they had come there from Kentucky and prior to that they were in Virginia. So he’s never been- From what I can see, if he were a slave or something, it had to be before 1850, because in 1850 he was in Michigan with his wife and three children. So there’s that uniqueness about our family.

Jamila Taffe [00:08:54] What type of work did you do throughout your life?

James Williams [00:08:58] How much time do you have? 

Jamila Taffe [00:09:01] However much you need. 

James Williams [00:09:06] I didn’t- It was mostly just menial jobs until I left the military. When I was military, I was- I received training to become a public health sanitarian, it’s called in the civilian world. They call them veterinary inspectors. What we did on the military, we inspected all the food service facilities to make sure that they were sanitary. And we inspected all of the facilities that sold food to the military. And we also inspected all the food that was delivered to the military to see that if it was in good condition. So the civilian counterpart to that is a public health sanitarium. So when I left the military, I got out on. I received a medical retirement because I had. I got my esophagus messed up when I first went into the military because down in Alabama, I was stationed at Gunter Air Force Base. And somehow or another I left the base and was in a jitney. And he took me a couple places. They have what’s known as white lightning or untaxed whiskey. Are you familiar with it?

Erich Schnack [00:10:27] I’ve heard the country song about it by George Jones.

James Williams [00:10:31] Yes. Well, it’s true. In fact, Dave’s would sell it nowadays. They still make it. They still make liquor and it’s usually sold in private homes. You know, they call them bootleg joints because it’s called bootleg whiskey. In fact, it used to be you’d hide it down in your bootleg.

Erich Schnack [00:10:49] And I never put that together.

James Williams [00:10:53] Did you realize all of the joints that poor people would congregate, they were called bootleg joints because they were selling this whiskey to these people? And they all congregated. They would play cards and do all dance. It was a private nightclub. That was what poor people’s nightclubs. Were these bootleg joints, by the way. They still have them even now. They don’t call them that.

Jamila Taffe [00:11:22] Like the speakeasies.

James Williams [00:11:24] Yeah, the speakeasy is more- That’s a euphemism for bootleg joint. The bootleg joint is what the people in our class, that’s what we called them. But the speakeasies were where the people in his class, they went because it’s more out in the open. They had bigger places, ours usually in the houses, in private homes. That’s how that was. One of the livelihoods of African American people is they have them and they’re still around, by the way. They’re just places where people congregate. They buy the whiskey from the whiskey store and they sell it out and drinks just like you would do at a bar. They’ll have some of them. You even have jukeboxes in them. And the people dance and they play cards. That was their socializing.

Jamila Taffe [00:12:21] Do they still have any of those here in Cleveland?

James Williams [00:12:24] I’m sure they do, yeah.

Jamila Taffe [00:12:25] Do you know like where in Cleveland, perhaps?

James Williams [00:12:29] I haven’t gone to one in many, many years. But I do know that my granddaughter’s grandmother, she had one because that’s how people used to survive. My sister had one because she survived because she didn’t have a job. And the fellow, they’d come over in the afternoon after work and they’d just sit around and drink and she could sell them the whiskey and beer and food. [phone rings] So I’m sure they’re- Let me turn this off because the scams. I had to turn my phone off. Please come on, turn off. Oh, these people. I hate these phones for that part.

Jamila Taffe [00:13:29] You want me to see if I can help you out with that?

James Williams [00:13:32] Oh, no. Miss, I know- That’s the one- This is the second time you done me that way.

Jamila Taffe [00:13:38] Oh no, you-

James Williams [00:13:39] I bought the first iPhone that came out.

Jamila Taffe [00:13:41] Really?

James Williams [00:13:42] Yes. I bought an iPhone. The first phones that came out were square things that you had with a shoulder. You carried on the shoulder like a ladies’ pocketbook. That was the first phones. They were about that big. I had one of the first ones. So yes.

Erich Schnack [00:14:02] Big bricks.

James Williams [00:14:03] People, elderly people like myself, they haven’t- A lot of people think of them as being someone that always needs help. And we really don’t. Especially me. I consider an affront to offer me something- I just had the man, they do it all the time. I sold him a car, and when I was getting ready to get something out of my car, he wanted to grab it. I told him, man, I may not be as strong as you. But God has been very good to me and I don’t need any of the helps that I have given to my mother and my daddy and my grandparents, fortunately for me. So please forgive me when I- If I ever- 

Jamila Taffe [00:15:02] Oh, no worries.

Erich Schnack [00:15:03] It’s very well-said though.

James Williams [00:15:05] Oh, I know the phones.

Jamila Taffe [00:15:10] So what are some of your earliest memories of East 105?

James Williams [00:15:16] Oh, you say East 105 here?

Jamila Taffe [00:15:17] Yes.

James Williams [00:15:20] I came to Cleveland in 1969. I was a public health sanitarian in Dayton. The reason why I moved to Dayton, my father was on his deathbed [inaudible] and my mother asked me to come home to take care of him, which I did. I was living in California at the time and I never will forget that she paid for my airfare to get here. When I went in to see him, he says, if I don’t live for five minutes, please don’t let me die in this hospital. He wanted me to come home and take him to his house that him and his wife owned, that they had worked hard to buy, that was their second home. He just did not want to die in the hospital. And so I went back, by the way. I was attending Los Angeles. In fact, I’d taken the course. I was taking a course at University of Southern California. It was a summer course and I had to give up that course to come to take care of him. And I took care of him until his death. We moved and I had to stay in the hospital for two weeks to learn how to be a caregiver. And once I had that knowledge, the doctor said, you can take him home. They took him home. We put him in the dining room and his bed was in there. And that’s where I took care of my dad until he had his last breath. After that, then I got a job with the city of Dayton as a public health sanitarian. And I worked there from ’65 to, I believe, ’69. And the man that was my supervisor, he said, there’s an opportunity to come to Cleveland. He was going to be the supervisor. Like he wasn’t dating. He wanted me to come and I came. And there wasn’t nobody but me. So I just moved up here. And that’s what my first experiences with Cleveland, 105th Street, Euclid Avenue, the whole area where there were African Americans. That was my first experience. I didn’t do very much on the street, none other than go to a few of the bars that were there.

Jamila Taffe [00:17:46] How do you think it’s changed over the years?

James Williams [00:17:52] It’s 180 degree difference. Back in those days, they had these little small stores. And, you know, if it’s African American–owned, they didn’t have a lot of money for some kind of fancy place. So they had their little grocery stores and they had their little stores. They had their little shops. They had their clubs. They always had clubs. See, we had to have an outlet. And there were clubs. There was Leo’s Casino on Euclid. And there was- I don’t remember the names of the ones here, but there were several on 105th Street.

Jamila Taffe [00:18:39] Were you aware of Cafe Tia Juana?

James Williams [00:18:43] I don’t believe so. I didn’t spend very much time on 105. So I never went to just about any of the clubs. That was- That wasn’t what I was doing at that time. In fact, I remember going to Leo’s Casino. And there may have been a couple clubs on 105 Street that I went to, but not where I was a regular.

Erich Schnack [00:19:21] Now, Leo’s Casino has gone down in history as one of the most significant historic music venues in Cleveland’s history. 

James Williams [00:19:30] Certainly is. A lot of people still living went through Leo’s.

Erich Schnack [00:19:35] Mm-hmm. Beautiful architecture, too, that building.

James Williams [00:19:38] Right. And when I first come here, the first place I stayed was a hotel above there.

Erich Schnack [00:19:44] Interesting. Could you tell us more about the atmosphere of Leo’s Casino? When you walk in the door, what was it like? What type of musicians were playing, things like that?

James Williams [00:19:59] It was based on that time. It was a decent place. You didn’t go in there and start just lollygagging. You either sat at the bar, you sit at the bar tables, or what have you. And people acted like they were human beings. They listened to the music. If there was a show on, they listened to the show. A lot of the people ate there. In fact, the venues, even on 105th Street, they were more known for the eating. You had clubs, they was always putting clubs, but they had several places for eating. I know there’s a lady right now that she had something down on 105th Street. In fact, I saw her on television the other day. I don’t remember what her name was, but she had a place that just about everybody would eat there. And so if you had good food, people ate there. Leo’s had decent food as well as they had the entertainment. So the people were there not only for the eating, but for the dancing, for the listening to the music, and for the socializing amongst each other. I would say that’s the same for the places that were long here, except that they were smaller, you understand?

Erich Schnack [00:21:34] So Leo’s was really one of the biggest venues to go to? One of the more popular ones?

James Williams [00:21:40] Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. You’d see people, they’d be standing out on the street in front of there. It was other businesses that were around there that were complementary to Leo’s. I mean, this is where the people would go for a lot of things that they wanted and that was there. Like what we call a shopping center now, where you have all the different businesses, little dry cleaners and what have you.

Erich Schnack [00:22:09] Do you have any stories about Leo’s Casino that stand out to you? Any memories?

James Williams [00:22:16] No. I think I saw Jackie Wilson there. I don’t know if you remember Jackie Wilson.

Erich Schnack [00:22:23] Certainly.

James Williams [00:22:26] I remember that. And there were some of the- In the African American music group venue, there’s a lot of guitar players. So some of them I saw there. And I don’t remember seeing any groups because I didn’t go there that much. I wasn’t that wealthy that I could be there. I do remember it. And I remember that you didn’t have a bunch of drunks hanging around in front of was very well kept. In fact, I would say even on 105th, you never had places like people standing out in front of maybe just a few, but you never had it where they were standing out and arguing, fussing, pulling guns and things like that. I didn’t see any of that.

Erich Schnack [00:23:36] What was the clientele like at Leo’s Casino? Was it mainly African Americans? Was it integrated a bit or-

James Williams [00:23:44] It was mostly African Americans. Usually the whites came because I guess they wanted to see the Blacks. And it was more of a- I don’t believe that they were interacting with the Blacks. It’s like I remember seeing white people dance with Black people. Because Black people have their own ways of dancing. It’s only in the last, I don’t know how many years, 10, 15 years, that white people even have soon, the dancing that we’ve done, and we’ve always been so animated, we couldn’t do nothing else in our lives. Coming up, we could dance. We used to call it the jitterbug. That’s one of the most beautiful dances you’ll ever see people do. I mean, just if some people got up to do jitterbug, if they were good, the rest of the people stood back and watched them because it was just so beautiful. It was so well orchestrated. They were perfect. I can tell you, because my wife and I, we could still jitterbug. In fact, I can tell you a whole lot of people, I jitterbug with Terry Hamilton. That’s something that was part of our lives. They may call it something else right now, but at that. Back when I was younger, it was called the jitterbug, and it was between a man and a woman dancing. They’d start off with the hands together, and then they’d break out. And then he’d turn her around, turn her back around, and then they turn around together. Are you familiar with them?

Jamila Taffe [00:25:36] No, but I would love to see that.

James Williams [00:25:37] Oh, man. 

Erich Schnack [00:25:39] I’ve heard of it before. There’s that one popular song with the dance in the name, right? It’s the jitterbug song.

James Williams [00:25:49] There was so many of them. There’s one called Dance With Me, Henry. A woman dance with a man, but there’s so many. If you capture African Americans from the way they lived, when they were enjoying themselves, you have to have. It’s their dancing. All the new dancing that have come up, they all came from this jitterbug. And that’s- It had a name like before then, and it was so coordinated. I mean, I know I can. I can tell you right now, I still can jitterbug. And I do it very well. And I may not have done it recently, but I know all the steps, all the turns. I used to turn a woman around. I used to turn around and turn right up under her as she went around my hand, and I would go under. So when she came back around, I came back around at the same time. I can tell you. You used to get down, go all the way down to the floor.

Jamila Taffe [00:27:01] That sounds really complicated.

James Williams [00:27:03] But it’s not.

Jamila Taffe [00:27:04] It’s not?

James Williams [00:27:05] No, Miss. It’s not complicated. Because once you learn how to do it, it’s all automatic. It’s sensory, motor. I mean, you don’t have to sit there and figure what I’m gonna do next. I mean, if he start to turn her, she knew he was turning her and she’s gone all the way around. And then they used to break out. She’d go back her way and he would go back the other way. And then they walk up to each other just dancing. I mean, with their steps. I know if there’s anything I know about the dancing in the area, the time that I was doing, I was good. It was a friend of mine and I, we used to compete against each other. He’d have one woman, I’d have one woman. We’d just compete to see who could do the most, who could make that woman look the best. And so that is one thing. It was here. It was all over this country, maybe down in the South, it was a little different. Or in other areas it was different. But it’s first mostly just the two steps. Left foot up and then one is your left. And then that depth right. And then up and then you step back. Back. That was it. Left, up, right up, step back. All of it come from just those three moves.

Jamila Taffe [00:28:42] Maybe you can give us a demonstration later?

James Williams [00:28:46] Yeah, certainly. All you had to do is get me somebody that knows how to be in the ’50s or something. But this. There’s a lot of people. In fact, usually whenever you have like an affair where a lot of people, there’s going to be somebody out there doing that dancing.

Erich Schnack [00:29:14] Were there any? Were there any other dances at this time that stood out to you? Ones that you remember?

James Williams [00:29:20] They all are offshooters. They used to have one called the Chicken.

Erich Schnack [00:29:23] The Chicken?

James Williams [00:29:25] Yeah, it was like a chicken. That’s all part of- I mean- Oh, boy, I’d have to think. But there were so many of them. It was all that were offshoot of this one pattern of dancing they used. Oh, let me think. I’ll think of some more of them. I just remember the checking. Oh, twists. Remember twists?

Erich Schnack [00:29:58] Yeah, I know the Sam Cooke song.

James Williams [00:30:02] Twists. Yeah. It was probably Sam Cooke song, but it was more than Sam Cooke. That twist was- Excuse me.

Erich Schnack [00:30:10] Twistin’ The Night Away.

James Williams [00:30:12] Yeah, they had so many songs. I got to remember how you’re doing. Twist. Come on, let’s do the twist.

Erich Schnack [00:30:26] Everybody knows that.

James Williams [00:30:27] There’s just so many of them that came from that first dance that we did. And every time, there’s always coming up with a new way of adding something new to that. So when- Because when you’re out on the floor, one of the things you want to do is you want to enjoy the person that you with. And you wanted to excuse my friends, but you wanted to show off. And everybody was showing off. I don’t care what dance was. If it’s a twist, they’d all be twists. And I gotta show you twist. Just show you. This is in 1963. This is my first wife and I. We were overseas in Taiwan. And somebody took a picture of us twisting. And I have it because- You would go all the way down to the floor. You may start off twisting here, but if you were really good, you could twist down on the floor. I’ll show you a picture of it. Yeah, it’s all twisting. The main part was twisting your bottom. And you go all kind of ways from there. I mean, I keep this. My daughter gave me this picture of My first wife and me. And I really reason why I keep it because we were both almost on the floor. You won’t believe it when you see it. This was taken at NCO club. And see over there? We were unique. When we got on the floor, people wanted to sit and watch. They wanted to watch us dance because she was a- She was a singer. She loved to sing. Here it is.

Jamila Taffe [00:32:31] Oh, y’all were low. Wow, look at her.

Erich Schnack [00:32:36] Oh, that is a great photo, isn’t it?

James Williams [00:32:38] Yeah, that’s back in the ’62, I believe it was.

Erich Schnack [00:32:42] Now, where was that then?

James Williams [00:32:44] Tainan, Taiwan. We were stationed at Tainan Air Force Base in Taiwan.

Erich Schnack [00:32:49] Very cool.

James Williams [00:32:50] I was a Staff Sergeant. So then when they shipped me overseas, they shipped me and my family. We had three kids. So we drove from actually Dayton because I was stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We drove down Alabama and then west all the way to California. And they put us on a plane, took us over to Taiwan. We stayed there for two years, and we brought us bracing. And our next assignment was in Phoenix, Arizona. But Taiwan was one of the best times we had because we had those three kids over there. I know this does not have anything to do with what you all are asking, but I was interested in finding out more about other people in other cultures at the time. Lenin, America was going to a thing where Americans, wherever they went, they only said, look at me. When they went on to all the other countries, look at me. And so a lot of people would not look upon Americans as being somebody that’s friendly. So Lyndon Baines Johnson at the time was the vice president, and he wrote an article called. Called A Bigger Bowl of Rice, which- It’s about people in other countries. They wanted to really become a part of the United States. And the way he could do that would give them a bigger bowl of rice. And since I knew I was going to be going overseas, I wrote him a letter as a staff sergeant. I said, would you please? He said, we should be going over there and being an ambassador ourselves. And so I said, how can my family and I become ambassadors? And they had me. They gave me all kinds of training. They brought my wife and me out at the base. I mean, you wouldn’t believe this.

Erich Schnack [00:34:52] It’s quite the responsibility, right?

James Williams [00:34:54] And then we go over there. And so I said, I don’t want to stay on the base. I want my family to move down into the city where the people are. And so that’s where we lived for two years, right? With the people. And you had a housemaid there, they were very cheap. And I said, I don’t want a housemaid that speaks English. I want one that speaks Chinese so that she can teach us, my wife and my kids, Chinese. In fact, I just- Left of the laundromat was- I thought she was Chinese, but she was Korean, and I spoke to her in Chinese. So we really learned it. And we were part of that whole scene because we wanted to really, when we left there, we wanted to say we really had an experience with the Chinese people. So I know it has nothing to do with this, but that’s so very important.

Erich Schnack [00:35:55] Yeah, I think that’s very interesting to capture, too, just because that is a significant period in American history. Lyndon Johnson.

James Williams [00:36:03] Yeah. 1960. Yeah, ’60, ’61, ’62. I’ve seen Kennedy became president in ’60. So this was about ’62 when I wrote him. No, it had to be ’61, because I wrote him the letter. And I think I might even still have the letter. And then it didn’t come back to me. It came back through the commander of the base down to me, and they said, well, we’re going to make certain facilities available so you could know what to do by being an ambassador.

Erich Schnack [00:36:46] Does sound like you took your destiny into your own hands, right?

James Williams [00:36:49] It did, and it was worthwhile. My kids- I can speak Chinese now. Just speaking to- Every time I speak to a Chinese person, they look at me like I’m a freak. What this man doing? Well, can he sew? Ni- Ni- I was just telling a lady, what did I say to her? Ni hao ma? That means, I tell you, how are you? And she would say back to me, Ni hao ma? And I really- We were so engaged in learning not only their language, but their culture. My housemaid was just like a member of our family, and she loved it. She loved it every- Because she knew whenever we went somewhere, she was there with her kids. And she wasn’t treated like she was a maid. She was treated like she’s a family member. And you should see some of the pictures she have with the kids. She would take them to places with the kids, and they could speak Chinese like she was- She could speak English, too. But I told her, whenever you can, teach them Chinese. And she would take them to all the places and, you know, she was treating them like they were her own kids.

Erich Schnack [00:38:10] So great. So I imagine you go over there, you learn Chinese and learn about that culture, and you did the twist over there. So there’s got to be somebody out there who learned the twist from you, right?

James Williams [00:38:23] Oh, sure, sure. And probably taught them a whole lot of other things, because I enjoy people, and I enjoy the interaction with people, because that’s where you get your strength from what you learn from your engagement with other people, not necessarily people in your own race or it’s people who are from all the other countries.

Jamila Taffe [00:38:53] So I heard that you are into, like, history preservation, historic preservation. Historic preservation, yes. How did you get involved with that?

James Williams [00:39:07] First, when I was in Dayton, as I told you, I was a- I was a public health sanitarian, and I had my opportunity to buy my first house as a result of a situation, an incident that took place when I was working. So I got involved in housing back in ’60- ’67, ’68, ’69. And when I came here, I wanted to continue my involvement in housing. This is hard for you to believe, but at the same time, I brought my first wife here. We came together. We didn’t marry until 1970, but we moved here in ‘69. And I wanted to acquire property, knowing that I didn’t have any money. I did have a few thousand dollars from these couple houses I bought in Dayton and sold when I moved over here. And so my wife and I, we decided we wanted to buy our homes. Well, $2,000 would buy you nothing. So I remember one Sunday, I was visiting some people out in the country and looked in the newspaper, and they had a house for sale for $700 in the Hough area. $700 in the Hough area. I didn’t know it, but the house had been condemned. But this Jewish fellow, he sold it to me. He knew I was- I didn’t know much about what I was doing. So he said, yeah, I’ll sell it to you for $700. Bought the house. And then we had our friends, whom I had the friends keeping my kids while we went in there and started cleaning out this place, 7203 Lexington. And we just began to work on it. We knew the first thing we needed to have done was a bathroom. Second was the kitchen, and third was a bedroom for the kids. We could live anywhere. And so we started working on it. At the time, I was then associate director of the Model Cities program, the Cleveland Model Cities program. And my director didn’t want to go- He didn’t want to go speak to a nun who had a housing, who had a program to help families with it. It was called Sister Henrietta. You probably never heard of her. After the Hough riots, she was from Canton, Ohio. She used to be an administrator at Canton Memorial Hospital. She came over here at that time. Somehow or another, she had been transferred to this St. Vincent Charity. When these riots took place, she asked for somebody to take her out there. She saw all the devastation that had taken place on Hough, Quimby. She said, I gotta come here. And she made up her mind- There’s a reason for me telling you this, so you’re gonna have to take your time. She made up her mind, she’s gonna move out there. Two nuns. They were able to find an old raggedy apartment, four-suite apartment building. They fixed it up for them to live upstairs and downstairs. They ran all of their programs with it. People would come, they’d give them food, they would give them anything they needed. And by that time, there was a lot of people were wanting to get involved with Sister Henrietta. They were Catholics, and some of them had houses that their families had owned that the mother had died and so they started giving these properties to Sister Henrietta. Sister Henrietta started two groups. One was called Famicos Foundation. The other was called Caridad. Caridad was the ladies’ group. They met on Tuesdays and they interacted with- What happened was white ladies from the suburbs would come in and interact with the Black ladies on Tuesdays, you understand? And then on Saturdays, the white men would come in and interact with the Black men. And they would be working on these houses that they bought. And so when I went to speak to Sister Henrietta and she found out about me, and she says she wanted me to come. No, she wanted my director to speak to her group. He said, Jim, I don’t want to go over there and be with them ladies, would you go talk to them? And I went over there. They were only a block from where my wife and I had bought this old raggedy house. I said, hey, I’m with y’all because we’re over here working on this house here on 7203 Lexington. And at the end of our session, she said, you’re an answer to our prayers. And they asked me - I didn’t know hardly anything about construction - they asked me would I come and work with the men’s group so. So they could develop a program for, at that time, it was mostly just trying to help the people fix up their houses. And that’s how I got involved with Sister Henrietta. And they hired me and trained me as a contractor. So I learned the construction. Started, the houses they would buy, my team would put them together, and it was a learning process. We learned all this, and we got to be pretty good at it. So their operations expanded. In fact, at one time, my wife was the director of Famicos till 1990. And she and I had decided we had done so many of these properties and helped so many families that we were tired and we wanted to- We actually wanted to not retire retire, but to go get into something else. And so she quit her job at Famicos. And my construction company, I just gave it to my employees, the three employees that were helping me run it. I gave it to them. We acquired several properties of our own at the time. And so we gave them- For two years we just did nothing but work on our stuff and help other people. We had no involvement with Sister Henrietta and anybody else. One day, the attorney for Famicos Foundation said, Jim- You know, my wife had gone for two years and the fellow that they hired, he wasn’t doing a good job. He said, would you please come help us because we’re losing things that are all going off bad. And I said, okay. So they hired me as a director. The incident, not so much they hired me as a director, but also our church, First United Methodist Church, asked my wife would she- They wanted her to take over the homeless shelters in the city of Cleveland. There was four homeless shelters and the city offered them to have our church take over. So we- They asked Barbara would she manage this. It was called Project Heat. The four shelters, one was on the west side, one was down there on Payne, one was in the church basement. And she took over the managing the homeless shelters and I took over Famicos Foundation. At that time, they were only just doing housing, you know, single-families mostly. They had never done a multi-family. Fannie Lewis, Fannie Lewis had known me for one, because I lived in her community. And two, I had worked with some groups that she knew. And so there was a building on the corner of Crawford Road. I don’t know what the other street is. It’s Chester. The building is called Crawford-Tilden. Are you familiar with it?

Erich Schnack [00:48:34] No.

James Williams [00:48:35] And that means you don’t know the historic properties in the Hough area. That was one of the first ones. Sister S., she said, Jim Williams, I want you to get this building together. I mean, it was so raggedy, you could go look up through the roof and everything. And of course, the vice president from Famicos at that time was Dr. Robert J. Wolf. And he did not want to take on anything that was complicated. But she. It was going to require low income housing tax credits, historic tax credits. It was going to require a ton of money to put that building together. It’s 19 units. You can see it over there right now on Crawford Road and right at Chester. And I just took it as a challenge. And even though Dr. Wolf didn’t want to do it, I went by him because other members of the board said, we believe in you, Jim.

Jamila Taffe [00:49:55] So going off of that, what are some of the most significant historical sites you’ve worked on?

Erich Schnack [00:50:01] Real quick, I want to ask, what year was that when you worked on that historical building on Chester and Crawford?

James Williams [00:50:08] In the ’80s. 

Erich Schnack [00:50:10] In the ’80s?

James Williams [00:50:10] I’ll tell you one thing that’s significant about when we finished, Mayor Voinovich, he was so impressed by what we had done to that building. I don’t know if you’re familiar, the mayors, every year they have their meetings with group. All the mayors get together in one city. They came to Cleveland and Mayor Voinovich wanted to show that off. And we have a picture right now. It was taken by a Plain Dealer of Mayor Daley. I think Voinovich was the governor at the time. I’m not sure, maybe. But Voinovich and all these different mayors are sitting right out in front of us when we were having our grand opening. They’re sitting there. So it was significant. And Fanny Fannie Lewis was happy because she got this old raggedy building taken care of. And it was a historic building. We’d gone through the whole process with the historic preservation. That’s how I got involved. That was the first one.

Erich Schnack [00:51:15] What was the name of the building?

James Williams [00:51:17] Crawford-Tilden.

Erich Schnack [00:51:20] Crawford-Tilden Building?

James Williams [00:51:22] Yeah.

Erich Schnack [00:51:22] Now I’m curious. I’m sure you are- What is the story behind the building? What made it historically significant?

James Williams [00:51:32] I know one thing, that Hunter Morrison, who was Mayor Campbell’s husband, he was born and raised there. That was one reason he’s excited to do it, because he was born and raised there. But you have to find out. I was more interested in the brick and mortar, as you know, I was running it. But the whole history had to be part of the package in order for it to be declared a historic landmark.

Erich Schnack [00:51:58] And to get those tax credits?

James Williams [00:52:00] Yes. Oh, yeah, they got historic tax credits, low-income housing tax credits. Oh, they raised money, but they got it done. We all got it done. And it was built for 19 units and low income. It was all low-income housing yet and still was a historic building.

Erich Schnack [00:52:21] And so really you got into historic preservation because you were in the right place at the right time.

James Williams [00:52:27] Almost.

Erich Schnack [00:52:27] Right. Fannie Lewis, or not the nurses, but the nuns.

James Williams [00:52:32] Nuns. Fannie Lewis asked me, remember, my house is writing her wardrobe. And she seemed to bar my mirror and did it this old raggedy house. So she had a lot of confidence in me.

Erich Schnack [00:52:48] So it sounds like Fannie Lewis was really a big part of- She was instrumental after the riots, right?

James Williams [00:52:55] Certainly she was.

Erich Schnack [00:52:56] Could you tell us more about her? What was she like as a person?

James Williams [00:53:03] She was dogmatic. She did not play. She didn’t care who you were. She was only interested in helping these poor families that- She lived in this community. She lived at 7416 Starr Avenue. And she lived it and she wanted to see something done. And she is the reason Hough is what it is now. She was the one that came up with the idea to start taking these lots and building new houses on them. It was Fannie that did that. They would- They was getting all these lots anyway because the city owned them. And so she started. She got a couple good contractors. Ooh, I just remember- Can’t remember this man’s name. Starts with a C. It’ll come up. She got him. He was a very good contractor. She got him to come over there and start building new houses. All the ones that you see, the new houses in the Hough area down along Lexington, along Hough, Chester, 82nd Street, all those houses were responsibility of Fannie Lewis. She also convinced middle-income African Americans to move in the house and buy these homes.

Jamila Taffe [00:54:41] Was Fannie also African American?

James Williams [00:54:44] As African American as you ever wanted to see. Oh man.

Erich Schnack [00:54:51] So she really was somebody who shaped Hough into what it is today.

James Williams [00:54:56] She is, she is. Because it was her idea to start building these houses. You’ll see them all, all down off Chester. I’m talking about the older ones, the ones that have been here. This happened. This happened about 40 years ago, 30 to 40 years ago. And that all happened around the time we did Crawford Tilden. I don’t remember the date. All I know it was I went to work with Famicos in ’92. It had to be between ’92 and ’95 because in ’95 we started Notre Dame. That’s the other historic building.

Erich Schnack [00:55:44] One last question about the Hough area. Were you living in Hough during the riots or were you there a little bit after?

James Williams [00:55:55] I came after the riots. Riots was in ’66, I believe it was. I came in- I came in ’69.

Erich Schnack [00:56:02] Okay, one last question about how factually could you just describe what it was like when you first arrived in that area? You know, what was the atmosphere like and how was the neighborhood?

James Williams [00:56:18] Poor. P,O,O,R. Poor. If you ever want to do anything, read the story of the Hough riots. Read the story of how the Blacks were exploited. And I’m not going to become animated. How they were exploited that caused them to riot. See, there was a riot before the Hough riots. It was the Glenville riot. I don’t know if you remember?

Erich Schnack [00:56:45] Yeah, I’m familiar.

James Williams [00:56:50] They were poor. We lived on Lexington. I can show you a picture of our house when we were working on it. I mean, it looked just like Tobacco Road. I found this house, and I couldn’t believe. But it was so important to me to keep that house picture. I mean, poor nobody. I was fortunate because I had a job working with the city. And my wife, when she first came here, she got it. I think she started going to school, and she got a food service, some kind of degree so she could work with restaurants. So she worked at a couple hospitals. This is you talking about poor. If that don’t look like the back of road you’ll ever know. See there? We were getting hot water tanks and different things. This is my dog, Brownie. But that was that house that I bought for $700. And when I- We finally got it finished.

Jamila Taffe [00:58:20] Do you still live in the house?

James Williams [00:58:21] Who?

Jamila Taffe [00:58:22] Do you still live in that house?

James Williams [00:58:23] Oh, no, it’s torn down. That was one of the houses that got torn down because they wanted to start building more newer homes. So, right, that whole- There were three houses right together, and that they were able to build two new homes on about four lots right there on Lexington. I mean, when I lived in it, I’m not going to say it was perfect, but we raised a family in it. I’ll just tell you real quick. Right after I bought that house, that man, he knew he had gotten me because it was condemned. The city was ready to tear it down. You hear me? One day I was working on the porch, and a man named Vernon Burleigh came and knocked. Says, listen, you got to get out of here. I’m out here to inspect this for demolition because they’re getting ready to do the demolition. They’d already let the contract to do the demolition. I said, man, this is- I paid $700 for this house. This is my family. We’re in it. We’re in it now. I mean, we’re not living like it’s perfect, but we’re in it and working on it at the same time. He said, you got to get out here. I said, tell you what, Bring your trucks, bring your equipment on. I’ll be sitting on my front porch. I’m not leaving. That’s exactly what I told him. I am not leaving. He left there two days later, he came back and he said, my boss said, would you come downtown and take out a homeowner’s permit. Can you picture going from there, ready to tear it down? But because of my- That I was adamant I was not going to leave that house. And I had every reason to. I done took my $700 and we done moved in there.

Jamila Taffe [01:00:29] Been working on it, too.

James Williams [01:00:31] Yes. That’s one of the most emotional points in my life. When that man told me, they’re gonna tear it down.

Erich Schnack [01:00:41] I’m sorry to hear that.

James Williams [01:00:42] Sorry. You should be happy because as a result of it, he let me come down and take out a homeowner’s permit. That meant I ain’t a contractor, but, you know, a homeowner can take out a permit to work on their own house.

Erich Schnack [01:00:57] That came out in your favor because you stood up.

James Williams [01:01:00] Yeah, it definitely came out in my favor because I got the homeowner’s permit and we finished the house. It was a beautiful house. In fact, we used to do so many crazy things. One thing was Black people would have Section 8. What Famicos would do with them is if they had Section 8, they would put them in the house and then let the Section 8 pay for it. And so I did my own. I had two houses. Like, one was my house. My wife and I, we live on 89th Street. We’ve only had one move since Lexington. That when we moved to 89th Street and I moved the family in there, I let them rent. It was Section 8. Lady had nine kids. Nine kids. And we used the Section 8 to pay for the house, to pay me. I didn’t want that much. And I moved over on 89th Street. But we were able to take Section 8 and use it as rentals. Use it for rentals. We couldn’t tell them they were going to give them the house at the end, which we’ve done several. My wife and I personally have given lots of houses to people because we got our money out through Section eight. You know, they paid us what we expected to get out of it. And then we just tell the family under, hey, give me your name. We’re getting ready to deed this house over to you. We’ve done several. Famicos has done several of them. I personally. My wife and I personally have done them. So that’s what happened to that house. The reason why I’m telling you, because that’s what happened to our house. We had this Section 8 family. They lived in it, and they lived in it for quite a while. And eventually, I don’t know, they had another opportunity. And I don’t know whether they had another opportunity. But eventually the house was torn down, and now there’s a beautiful house sitting in this place. But it went through its transition where it helped a woman with nine kids. The reason why I know her, I’m just moving her grandson into a house over on Amor [Avenue] right now.

Erich Schnack [01:03:32] Wow.

Jamila Taffe [01:03:34] So still connected in that way.

Erich Schnack [01:03:36] Something really quick. For the tape, I wanted to ask you, how do you spell the company that you worked for when you were the director?

James Williams [01:03:43] Famicos, you don’t know F, A, M, I, C, O, S? I cannot believe this. Famicos. You know, John Anoliefo. You don’t know nothing about Famicos Foundation?

Erich Schnack [01:03:58] Yeah, yeah. You know, there’s a book that my professor wrote. It’s called Preserving the Vanishing City, about historic preservation. I’m remembering the name after you spelled it now.

James Williams [01:04:08] Well, John Anoliefo came after me. I finished Notre Dame, and Mayor Campbell asked me to come to work for her. I helped her get elected, and she asked me to come to work for her as a board. As a director of Building and Housing, and I recommended him to replace me.

Jamila Taffe [01:04:25] Well, seeing that you have, like, so many historical memories, did you have any interactions with Winston Willis?

James Williams [01:04:33] Not personally, but I know him, and I’ve seen him in the hospital. He still comes to Cleveland Clinic. I’ve seen- I have not talked to him personally. I know about him.

Jamila Taffe [01:04:46] What do you know about him?

James Williams [01:04:50] I’ll try to keep it as quick, as short as I can. Winston Willis was one of the people that was instrumental in making the 105 what it was. He was buying these properties up and putting businesses in them. Okay? He was doing well until Cleveland Clinic decided- Cleveland Clinic came in 1993, I believe it was. No, no, it wasn’t. It’s ’78, ’73 or something, because I’ve been a patient of them since ’78, and they decided to expand. [loud sirens in background] Winston Willis had brought properties all along Euclid Avenue, 105th Street, [inaudible]. I don’t know if you ever heard of the Scrumpy Dump Theater. That was the Black theater.

Erich Schnack [01:05:45] Mm-hmm. Jazz Temple.

James Williams [01:05:47] And he made one mistake. He got in tax trouble. If you don’t pay your taxes, the property can be sold. Tax sale. I know. I probably bought maybe 40 properties at tax sales. I have.

Jamila Taffe [01:06:06] So what would you give for advice to aspiring historic preservationists?

James Williams [01:06:12] First, I want to tell you that Winston Willis got in trouble with the taxes, and the Cleveland Clinic was there to buy up every last one of them properties as they were sold all around the corner. 105th Street. So that’s where- What happened to him? He lost just about everything. And I tell you who you need to be interviewing. Robert Allen. Didn’t I think I told you about Robert Allen? Robert Allen knows everybody from Winston Willis. He knows everybody. He used to sell something right on 105th. He knows every restaurant that was longer. He knows Winston Willis. You need to somehow interact with him. He’ll talk you till you be blue in the face. But he knows it all. He knows about Winston Willis. He knows about everybody else along here because he was raised during the time when 105th was in its glory and the Euclid Avenue was in its glory. And not only was raised that he had this little business. And then, you know, like, I think he started out shining shoes. Whatever. He’ll tell you whatever he’s doing, but he can tell you so much about all these different people that you’re asking me about.

Erich Schnack [01:07:44] I remember speaking on the phone with him. You did have to reach out to him again. Yes, thank you for reminding me.

James Williams [01:07:51] That man is so- So he calls and sometimes we have talked as long as four hours just talking about the community. I don’t have anything against Cleveland Clinic. It’s just a part of their growth dynamic. I mean, they’re probably about the second or fourth largest hospital in the United States now. They’re getting- It’s not going to be long- They’re going to be the largest one in the world. They’re growing. They’re building one of the biggest buildings that has ever been built for, I think it’s something- Whatever it is, it’s right on the corner of 89th. They tore down a nice set of buildings. In fact, they even tore down the Play House, Cleveland Play House. So it’s just a part of their growth. And I believe it’s worth it because for this reason. When I first went to the Cleveland Clinic, it was 1978, when I walk in there, you probably see maybe one or two Blacks. Do you hear me? You’re in Cleveland Clinic right now, I don’t care where you go in there, whether it’s patients, whether it’s employees, it looks like it’s multicultural. They finally got their self together. And with Medicaid and all these things - they’ve gotten into that part - so now it looks like it’s supposed to. Look, I’m really proud of Cleveland Clinic. As I said, I’ve been a patient there since ’78, and I know that that has been the metamorphosis. It’s great how it’s gone from being a place only for the rich whites to now you’ll find everybody and any human being- You sit and they have- Ooh, I am so proud of it. When my wife- She just got cured from multiple myeloma from the Cleveland Clinic. If it had been 20, 30 years ago, not 20, 30, maybe 50 years ago, she wouldn’t have even gotten anywhere near it, you understand? Because multiple myeloma is a cancer that it’s a blood cancer. And they’re just finally coming up with a couple experimental cures for it. One of them is CAR T-cell treatment. And last December they chose her, the 31st person to take this treatment regimen because she had suffered for six years taking chemotherapy. She was down to nothing. Now if you see my wife, you wouldn’t believe it. So that’s one of the things I’m happy about. She was chosen. Maybe 40 years ago she would not have been chosen. But now it’s on an equal basis because it didn’t cost us a dime. And the whole treatment was over a million dollars and we did not have to pay a quarter. We had Medicare and I have TRICARE For Life from my military experience. So I’m just- I don’t want you to think that I have anything against the Clinic. I don’t have anything against them. I just remember when they were what they were after. They got started in the ’70s.

Erich Schnack [01:11:40] Thank you for sharing that story, Mr. Williams. We will have to wrap up our oral history for now. We have somebody else coming in for one, but I would love to reschedule maybe tomorrow or next week.

James Williams [01:11:53] I can do it tomorrow because we were already having on my schedule for tomorrow, 3.

Erich Schnack [01:11:58] Yeah, we would love to do another one.

James Williams [01:12:00] And I don’t want to just spend my time just talking about what I want to talk about. I’d like make sure you get everything that you want to know about because you haven’t even touched Notre Dame. Notre Dame is one of the greatest things that ever happened in historic preservation. They were going to tear it down.

Erich Schnack [01:12:23] Yeah. We’ll have some questions tomorrow about Notre Dame and more of your projects because we’re very interested in hearing more about it.

James Williams [01:12:30] I only had three historic preservation projects. One is the House of Wheat. [interview ends; resumes on next day]

Erich Schnack [01:12:36] Hello. Today is August 3rd. It is 2:10pm. We are here at Third Space Action Lab with Mr. James Williams. This is a part of the Inclusive Storytelling and Green Book Cleveland project oral history project. I am joined by Mila, Mila Taft. She is sitting taking notes here. I am Erich Schnack speaking on behalf of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. And this is part two of a two-part interview with Mr. Williams. So we’re gonna go ahead and jump back into things from yesterday. The first series of questions I have here, Mr. Williams, are. Are about your time working for the National Park Service, James A. Garfield Historic Site. And I want to start off by asking you, how exactly did you get involved working with the Park Service? Perhaps you know, who did you meet? Who told you about the job?

James Williams [01:13:50] None of that. I had left Cleveland to go to Key West on a project. It went bad, so I had to get a job. So I got a job with the U.S. Navy as a security guard, even though I was 70 years old. And I worked there for about a year and a half. And I was traveling back and forth to see my mother, who was in the nursing home. One day she told me, I’m ready to go, so come home. So I came home to Dayton, stayed with her until she died, and then I came and I worked at Wright Patterson. Each time I placed, I would go to the base and get a job. First it was a promise helper, and then it was man project apartment manager, managing the housing. And when my mother died, I stayed there, Wright Patterson, for almost a year. My wife said, it’s time for you to come home and help me raise our grandchild. And so I looked on USA jobs. There was your Park Service had a job for maintenance person. Okay. And I applied for it. The lady liked me. It was a telephone interview. We never met. And I went to work. That’s how I got there.

Erich Schnack [01:15:19] So you had all those skills already that you were bringing to the table, all that maintenance skills?

James Williams [01:15:25] Maintenance. I was general contractor. In fact, I was general contractor. I even had a master plumber’s license when I was a general contractor because I couldn’t find plumbers that had a license. So. Yes. And remember I told you we built homes for Famicos? I was the person who ran it. I didn’t know hardly anything when I got there, but they enabled me to learn to learn, especially the management side of it. So it was easy for me to say that I’m- I can do maintenance because I did it all from plumbing, electrical, as a general contractor supervisor. So, yes, that was easy.

Erich Schnack [01:16:17] What years did you work at James A. Garfield, if you remember?

James Williams [01:16:26] Left- I don’t have anything in here. It was about 2015, I believe it was my daddy. My mother died in 2009, so I came back in 2011. So it was probably about 2011. And I worked there almost two years. And I just. Mentor is the coldest place in the world in the wintertime. And I had to be there at 6 o’clock in the morning to open that facility up, plow the snow. By that time, I’m about 73 years old and my wife and I decided maybe it’s time for me to just come home. We didn’t really need to work with. We had good retirement income.

Erich Schnack [01:17:21] So that was really your last job before you retired?

James Williams [01:17:27] I did work for them. This stuff is- You won’t believe it. I was also using my GI Bill to go to school. Remember I was telling you I was going here, here, here. So when I got back to Cleveland, I go try some to finish up my degree. And I decided that once I left the Park Service and got my degree, then I wouldn’t probably take another job at that level anymore. The only work we do now is to work, help, helping others.

Erich Schnack [01:18:13] What were the most rewarding parts about working for the Park Service in that short period in time?

James Williams [01:18:24] First, I spent a lot of time in the President’s home. So I learned a lot about history. Not only of him and his family, but his home. And that was the Park Service did impress me because my supervisor was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. She hired me on the telephone and we meshed and she just sort of gave me my- Just do what you have to do. They gave me my assignments. I’d do my assignments and when I finished, I would probably get involved in something that I didn’t even need to get involved in just because I liked it out there. I did enjoy that time. And if it weren’t for the fact that I was in my 70s then, about ’74 or ’75, I would have stayed there.

Erich Schnack [01:19:26] Do you remember her name, your supervisor?

James Williams [01:19:28] Sherida Williams. She had the same last name as me. She was very, very kind. Not only her, but all of the rest of the people. My supervisor’s name was Bob. I don’t know his last name, but we became very good friends. In fact, he’s even come came down to visit me after I left there. I remember I sold him this car. I’d bought a Chevrolet. It was old, it was about in 1980-something Chevrolet, and I drove it all the way from Key West. And then I drove it while I was all these jobs and I still had it out there. And he just wanted - little Chevrolet Lumina - and he wanted it and I said, sure, you can have it. So everybody had very good relationship with everybody. [phone rings] Excuse me. This is my daughter, asking her to pick me up after I leave here. Okay, let me, turn this off. I hope I’m not just being too wordy.

Erich Schnack [01:20:48] No, absolutely not. We appreciate it.

James Williams [01:20:50] But I did enjoy the Park Service. Of the four jobs that I had, from security with the base plumber, property management, and then with the Park Service’s maintenance, that was the one I enjoyed the most.

Erich Schnack [01:21:07] It’s good to hear. What were the biggest challenges working there at James A. Garfield? Were there any hard historic parts of the property that you had to work on that were challenging or plowing in the early morning?

James Williams [01:21:25] That was the biggest challenge because it’s on a six acre plot. It has its own driveway and parking lot. And I have them there at six o’clock. And I got to have this- Not only snow plowing the driveways, but hopefully I would have started up the machine to start plowing. Doing the sidewalks, that was taxing because Mentor’s in the snowbelt. But during the summer and the fall and winter and the summer and the fall and spring, it was beautiful. Just, I enjoyed it.

Erich Schnack [01:22:06] The next question I have, last one about the Park Service is, when you worked at James A. Garfield, were there any changes that you saw at the park? Maybe a building that changed or the way that operations worked?

James Williams [01:22:25] No. The lady that mentioned she ran a good shop. She was ahead of herself. She knew how to deal with people. She would have her staff meetings, which included everybody. People were given assignments based on what the skills were. She was around all the time. She would come. If she saw you working somewhere, she’d stop and talk to you because she liked to talk. And she was a beautiful person. She was one of the best supervisors I’ve ever had.

Erich Schnack [01:23:10] Great. Thank you for sharing your memories about the Park Service. The next section of the interview is talking about more of those historic properties that you worked on. So you mentioned working in the Hough area with Fannie Lewis.

James Williams [01:23:27] Yes.

Erich Schnack [01:23:27] Right?

James Williams [01:23:28] Yes.

Erich Schnack [01:23:29] And that was sort of one big chunk of your history preservation there, and I’m wondering what were the next two big projects that you mentioned?

James Williams [01:23:39] Well, this is Crawford-Tilden. This is the one she asked me, when I became director for Famicos, would I do it, and I knew as much about historic preservation [phone rings] on this level, as my daddy would say, a hog knows about a pair of skates. I thought I turned this phone off. Scams. Do y’all get scams?

Jamila Taffe [01:24:04] Mm-hmm.

Erich Schnack [01:24:05] Yeah.

James Williams [01:24:09] First I turned the ringer down.

Erich Schnack [01:24:10] And there seems to be more and more all the time, right?

James Williams [01:24:13] Oh, yeah. And you can’t get rid of them. Let me get the ringer down.

Erich Schnack [01:24:19] And for the sake of the tape, everybody who’s listening, I am holding a photo of the historic Crawford-Tilden apartments, built in 1908 and restored in 1996 by the Famicos Foundation. And then I am holding another newspaper photo of some folks sitting outside of the building. And the caption on this photo reads, with the reborn Crawford Tilden Apartments in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood behind them as an example. Public and corporate officials acknowledge the role of a federal affordable housing tax credit program has played in urban redevelopment. Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, Seattle Mayor Norman B. Rice, Ohio Governor George Voinovich and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley are pictured in the photo. So I’m wondering, Mr. Williams, could you just tell us more about your involvement in this project and how it, how the process went.

James Williams [01:25:30] First I never done, I had built some multifamily, some, oh I forget what you call them houses side by side and over in the west side. But I never ever done a restoration of a multifamily building that was ready to be torn down. Both of the buildings that we did, Fannie Lewis had to stop the demolition on that one in Notre Dame. Sister Joan Gallagher, my associate, she just about had to be in the building to keep them to stop it. So I had never worked under those conditions. In fact, the president, the vice president of Famicos Foundation on both situations said, no, we’re not going to do it. The first one I did for Fannie Lewis because I knew Fannie Lewis and she had a lot of respect for my wife and me. And if she came to me and asked me to do that, it’s because she had nobody else that she could trust to do it. And even though we had never done it before, I felt that we would get through it because she would be doing her part and we would be doing our part and we got through it. That was a four-million-dollar project. We didn’t have to raise the money as much as you could look out the roof same way of Notre Dame you can see outside. And these buildings had set, they had set deteriorated for a long time. So I was, I wanted to do it because she felt that that community needed it. And I had one other person that was involved with Hunter Morrison, who was Mayor Campbell’s husband. He knew me through my wife because she was on the board of Hough Redevelopment Corporation and he was born in the building and so he was pushing Fannie to get it done because that’s they can show that’s his birthplace. And he helped us a whole lot. He gave us a lot of support even though she wasn’t There at the time he gave us a lot of support. Hunter Morrison did.

Erich Schnack [01:28:15] So when this project was going on, what were your day-to-day duties?

James Williams [01:28:24] I managed it and I ran it. I wasn’t the project manager. Capri Builders, they did all of the work but I was on the owner’s side. I was making sure that everything got done. You had to have your paperwork done in order to get your drawdowns, low-income housing tax credits. You have to make sure everything’s right in order for you to be able to get the money that comes through that process. And then there was a loan on that building. KeyBank gave a loan to cover up the parts that didn’t, you know, the balance. And of course they have their requirements. And so I had to make sure that everything was done to meet their requirements because they were funding the project for first one, I don’t know how I did it because I’d never done it before. Most of the situation that you see that we encounter, I had never done it before. I had good people that we all worked together and we all were project oriented. We were oriented toward trying to reach that goal even though none of us had ever traveled that before. And fortunately we did it. Especially that was, I would say that was most difficult because we had never done it.

Erich Schnack [01:30:11] It’s like building a ship while you’re sailing it, right?

James Williams [01:30:14] Yes, yes. We had never done it. She’s trying to get man to hire local people and we’re trying to make sure that work meets the requirements so far as the building regulations. And then we had to- Part of the group was trying to make sure we had the money.

Erich Schnack [01:30:43] Were you at the dedication ceremony when it-

James Williams [01:30:46] If you, if you read the program, you see that the closing remarks by James G. Williams. You see it? I never try to be out in front. Usually if you’re a good manager, you’re back there making sure everybody else is doing the things that they’re supposed to do. And I’d always wanted to give our staff, the people that were doing the work, they do some- It wasn’t necessary. I tried to make myself be as small as I could be so that we could get the project done. And it worked. We did Crawford-Tilden and then next thing you know, the City of Cleveland asked us to do a receivership on a building downtown, about a 40-unit building down on 1850 Superior. Here’s a man that’s never done it before and the building. Bill Resker from the Community Development said, Jim, the owner of this building has not taken care of it. We want to put it in receivership, you understand? We didn’t want to. The judge had already decided to put it in a receivership. And he said, well, you would you, being the director for Famicos - yeah, it was at Crawford too - would you act as a receiver? My boss said, no, we don’t take on no project with a debt. But the board was about six people and fortunately I had the group, the majority said, let’s do it. Because here was first, tt was 44 units of housing for poor people, single people. And the worst part about it, it was segregated. It was segregated. It had, in order- When you come to the front door, when you knocked on the door, everybody looked in this glass. It was a mirror. It’s called a two-way glass. Are you familiar with them? Where the one on the inside can see you, but the one- Yes. So they kept that building segregated. The first thing I did was stop that. The owner, he was, wherever he was, he came and he moved in the building. He said, I want to move in here because you all are really doing a good job on this. And we let him stay there until we got it done and he got himself to where he wanted to be. But that was a beautiful story because even now, that building, they were able to get low-income housing tax credits on there twice. And that house was 44- The people that would normally be homeless living down in those, the streets downtown.

Erich Schnack [01:34:04] So you mentioned that the 40-unit house, the building-

James Williams [01:34:10] I’m sorry, yeah.

Erich Schnack [01:34:11] Was segregated? Could you tell us more about that?

James Williams [01:34:17] It segregated to the point where there were no Blacks living in it. That’s how you segregate. You say all this kind is in it. All of that kind ain’t. They never let him in. You couldn’t even get in because of that door. They didn’t have to worry about even somebody telling anybody. No.

Erich Schnack [01:34:38] So you used your voice to change that.

James Williams [01:34:41] It was more than my voice. I was a manager, I was a director. We did the redevelopment. Once we got in there, we raised tax credit money to do the redevelopment of that building. So, yes, definitely- It’s not that I’m- I know what it was supposed to be. You had old people, you had young people, you had poor people. And how can you just discriminate from somebody? Because he’s young and poor and happened to have his skin color different from yours. And I tell you what, the people that lived in there, they never said a word. They never said a word. And it’s the same way even now. That was just a situation where somebody just didn’t want Black people in it. They didn’t get in until we took over.

Erich Schnack [01:35:44] That’s going to.

Jamila Taffe [01:35:45] That.

Erich Schnack [01:35:45] You were able to change that. I’m wondering what was the name of the building exactly?

James Williams [01:35:51] It’s 1850 Superior. That was the name. It’s right next to a dry cleaner that’s down there on the corner. 18th and Superior. It’s a big, long building.

Erich Schnack [01:36:06] And so you mentioned that you got historic tax credits for that building.

James Williams [01:36:11] Not that one.

Erich Schnack [01:36:12] Not that one?

James Williams [01:36:12] We didn’t need it.

Erich Schnack [01:36:17] Thank you for sharing that story about working on that 40, that building that fit 40 folks in it. I’m wondering, going back to Fannie Lewis, how did your relationship with Fannie Lewis begin? I know we talked about it a bit yesterday but wanted to make sure we get a little bit more of that story.

James Williams [01:36:51] When I first came to Cleveland, I came working with the Health Department as a public health sanitarian. During that time, there was a program called the Model Cities program. I don’t know if you know about it. You probably don’t either because this was a time when the government was putting up money to- They take a designated area - it’s called a Model Cities area - and they go in there and they start. First, they put together a group of people who are living in there. You know, they become their- The people who are going to be lobbying for what needs to be done and they’re going to be meeting and they’re going to work toward doing what they know needs to be done to make that a community just like ones contiguous to it. The Model Cities area in Cleveland was part of the Central area and part of the Hough area. And there’s a little part of the part where the Cleveland Clinic is. But that- No, it didn’t go down- It only went to 79th. I think it went from about 55th to 79th Street, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure on that. But anyway, it took in the southern part down around Kinsman north to Superior. That was Fanny Lewis’s ward. That Ward 7, I believe was Superior 55th up to- It went all the way up to Martin Luther King. And so since I remember so vividly now, once they decided the community development was going to send a person over there, they were going to hire a person to run the community development programs in that Model Cities area. They hired a man named Chuck. I can’t remember his last name. But. Boy, my story gets more complicated because as a public health sanitarian, I did something. I raised hell. What did I do? I know what it was. If I don’t tell you this, Model Cities won’t mean anything to you. Because my boss, they had a program where they was trying to clean up communities, you know, especially the poor communities that had a lot of rats in this, a lot of exterior work that they were doing. And they hired a group of people who were ex-cons and gave them jobs. And their job was every day they would go out to whoever their supervisors said to work that area to get it cleaned up. They would get rid of those old, used to be burned barrels. They would do everything and also bait for rats. I was a public health sanitarian. So my boss said, I’ll put you in charge of this over in working with these criminals. And they weren’t criminals. They were just- They all became friends of mine. Just because somebody had committed a crime, a lot of crimes were committed because people had to. They couldn’t survive. So he asked me to go down there and run this, and I did. I told them, fellas, I said, listen, we had four vehicles. I said, we’re going to go out every day. I’m going to give you your assignments. And once you get it done, then you all can do anything you want as long as you stay in that community and be ready for me, them four trucks ready to go back. So they were so excited. They were cleaning up the neighborhood, making people feel good. And it worked well. It worked so well, my boss said, you did a good job. I want to take you- I want you to come downtown to help me work on the restaurants and stuff. I get down there, he fired two of those people. He decided that he didn’t need them all, and so he let two of them go. And they had a union. They were in a union. You just have to understand this because this is how I met Fannie Lewis. He fired those people. I’m now working in another part of the city. And they did a job strike on him, whatever you call it, or a sit-down. They said, we’re not working no more. All the work we’ve done, he just decided he didn’t need them anymore and just got rid of them. So they raised him hell. And he said, Jim Williams, you know these people, would you go down there and talk to them? I said, yeah. I went down there and I had a meeting with them. I said, what is it about? They said, he fired them. There’s no reason for it. And so what happened was by the end of the meeting, they said, we want to have somebody as our leader and we’re voting for you to be our leader. Now I’m on the other side in supervision. [laughs] And these people done made me their leader. And see, I was young then. I took it as a challenge. I said, okay. So I went and got the agreement of understanding with the union and the city. And it said that whenever there’s any kind of discipline or to do with any employees, they had to have a union representative when the paintman did it. I read all this. I wrote- Oh, I wrote it up- I had it typed up in the middle of the night. I was getting this, and the next morning I delivered it to three people. One was the director of public health, which is my boss’s boss. The second was the director of personnel. [laughs] And the third one was to my boss who had fired them dudes. And I slipped his under his door last because I knew he was going to fire me that day. So I go down to work with him that afternoon. They- No, I didn’t go to work. Yes- I don’t remember. But anyway, after I did that, I went to work. Yeah, I was still down there because he had sent me down there. And they said that they was going to have a meeting between the director of personnel, director of public health, and my boss, and these people and their union representative. And they asked me, you got to be there with us. I didn’t care. So I was there with them, and they read the treatise or whatever I said that had to be done. And they told us all to leave the room. And when they brought us back, they said, well, we’re going to bring these two men back to work and do it the right way. Reason why I had to tell you the whole story, because as we were walking out the door, my boss said, I want your resignation on my desk at 4 o’clock, as I’m going out the door with him. So I said, all right. I didn’t do it right away. He had to call down and say, I want your resignation. But if you remember, the Model Cities program, I met people in the community and I told three women what he had done to me. They went downtown- I don’t know if they went to the Mayor or the Director of Community Development to say, we want that man back to work. He hired me back to work, [laughs] but I could work for him. They sent me out to Model Cities to work on that program. So that’s where I met Fannie.

Erich Schnack [01:46:32] Oh, okay. So it’s- [crosstalk] It’s interesting how that connects. Okay.

James Williams [01:46:37] Once I went out there and I met her, I said, what do you. What’s Your worst problem. Just like you always ask me, what’s the worst problem? What’s the worst problem you have in this community? She took me over to where the school was, East Tech High School before it was East Tech High School. There it was, it was an East Tech high school there. But they tore it down to build a new one. And they didn’t build it right away. All the junk and the trash man had taken that whole area and just loaded it up with debris. Fannie takes me down there and she said, get this cleaned up. So I figured this one at the property, property owned by the Board of Education, they have a responsibility in the city of Cleveland who has charge of waste collection. They had a responsibility. So I went to both of those two people and I said, why can’t we all get together and get all this stuff removed? All this. It was the worst thing. They drive down 55th Street and see trash five or six feet, just as far as you can see. They cleaned it up. And that’s how I met. Got close to Fannie. From then on she knew that if she needed something she could come to me because I’m a little. I go against the grain. I’m more interested in the people who need it rather than the people who said it was wanted to do it this way. Sorry it took so long. But now you know how I met Fannie. We were that close all the way to the day she died.

Erich Schnack [01:48:27] I like that last section there that you said, you know, that was very well spoken that you did it for the people.

James Williams [01:48:34] Always everything, everything we do, my wife and I, that’s all we live for.

Erich Schnack [01:48:40] Yeah, we could see that coming out in the story. Right. Thank you for answering that question.

James Williams [01:48:47] Sorry it took so long.

Erich Schnack [01:48:49] No, I think that all of those details really tie it together. So we appreciate you answering that the way that you did. Now I wanted to move on to other historic properties that you’ve worked on and your time maybe with the Famicos Foundation? So could you tell us more about other properties that you worked on?

James Williams [01:49:13] There’s only one other historic property that I worked on with Famicos and that was the Notre Dame building.

Erich Schnack [01:49:22] Can you tell us more about that building?

James Williams [01:49:24] Very significant, yes. It was like East Tech High School. It was just sitting there empty, trash all out in the driveway. I don’t think I have pictures of it. Yeah, this might have a picture of it. But you know the building. I’m sure you do. You know the building.

Jamila Taffe [01:49:53] No, I don’t.

Erich Schnack [01:49:53] Yeah. Mm-hmm.

James Williams [01:49:56] It was an old girls’ school. It was an Old Catholic girls’ school, big building. Oh, took almost a block. I could not find nothing on Notre Dame. But I think you may see some pictures, some corn. You might see pictures of me.

Erich Schnack [01:50:21] For the tape. Right now, I’m holding some photos by the Famicos Foundation and another magazine by the Famicos Foundation.

James Williams [01:50:33] Those are our annual reports.

Erich Schnack [01:50:42] Now, I’m wondering, Mr. Williams, could you just describe from start to finish with your involvement in the Notre Dame?

James Williams [01:50:52] First, you don’t have the time, because it starts similar to just- Who was I working with? I was director of Famicos. We had done Crawford-Tilden, which was successful, and we probably had done 1850 Superior, which was successful, and Bill Patman, who was a councilman just like Fannie Lewis is, he came to me, he said, Jim Williams, I want to show you something. He drove me over to see Notre Dame. He said, can you- I’ll give you all the money that I can get because they had a councilman fund. He said, can we get Famicos to try to save this building? I said, we’ll try. I had a nun who knew- I have to bring her in here because when I took over as the director for Famicos Foundation, she had been a mother superior for the Sisters of Charity, one of the largest, a group for the nuns. She wanted to, like Sister Henrietta did, she wanted to move out of that palace, come down here and live with the people. So at that time, the Sisters of Charity moved. A lot of the nuns moved into the communities. She had come to Famicos one time and worked as a volunteer for a little while and so she wanted to come back. And so she asked my boss, Dr. Williams, Dr. Wolf, would he let her come work there. And he said he would, but he said, Jim Williams is the director. I was executive director of Famicos. You need to talk to him. And I met her at her apartment where she lived in Lakewood one afternoon, and she had soup, and we talked, because this is her getting to know me and me getting to know her. And I told her, she says, how can I be of help there? I said, Miss, when you go out, when we raise money, if I get a note at the door, I can talk to people out of getting some money, but I can’t get in the door because of my color and my status in the community. She said to me, you know what? A nun and a Black man, we can go places. And she decided that she wanted to be with me, and I wanted to be with her because we knew that we were going to be working as a team. And so she came to work for Famicos. Bill Patman says to me he wants to do Notre Dame. I was on my way to Canada with my family for a fishing trip. And one night after that, somebody got raped in that building. And I don’t know how they got in touch with Sister Joan since she was my assistant at the time, so she was replacing me. She had to go out there and listen to all that mess and that acrimony from them people who were so mad that that girl had gotten raped in that building. And I felt so sorry because she had to do it all by herself. But she did it, she took it. And that just gave her something much more of a stronger desire to let’s do this. We didn’t know that this building was going to cost $11 million. Our first, when we did our first did numbers on it, it was $3 million. I’m serious. But again, my boss said, no, we’re not going to do it. Cleveland board of- Cleveland had six board members. I knew that Dr. Wolf had three on the no side, but I know that I had three on the yes side. That was Joe Weiss, which is Sister Henrietta’s cousin, Bob Burkhardt, who just believed in whatever I could do, And I forget who the other one was. I think it might have been Ralph Burney. No, it might have been the lady living in the community, Kathy Kaspersky. I had those three and Dr. Wolf had three. Sister Joan Gallard was on the board. She was a wild card. So when Joe Weiss was a president at that time, when he said, after they had all the discussion, he says, I entertain a motion to do this project. Sister Joan Gallagher said, I so move. Now what does that mean to you? If I got three people, Dr. Wolf’s got three no’s, and she’s the wild card and she says, I, whatever you call it, I make the move, the proposition that we do the project. That means she’s automatically on the yes side, right? And so that’s how we got started. And it was a mess, but we did it. We’re God-fearing people and we felt that we would have the power of God behind us. But another thing I’ve always felt, anything the mind can conceive and believe it will achieve. I think that may have come from Napoleon Hill. Anything the mind can conceive and believe. Did you hear me, Miss? It will achieve. We had- The first historic preservation project, we had never even known what historic preservation was before we got started. The second one here, this thing is a doggone- It’s about 70 units in that building, plus the ground floor with all the facilities. And it was a school, so it had to be modified. So that’s what we believe. A fellow named Richard Schaefer, still my best friend, he was our writer. He could write like nobody’s business. He wrote more proposals and we got more proposals approved. And because at that time we were trying to get $3 million. We hadn’t done the final pro forma on the place. So by the time we got done with the pro forma, we realized it was a lot, much more than that, maybe six or seven million dollars. It wasn’t until we really got into it when, you know, all the work we had to do on the roof, that it was at 10 million when Sister Hen- And that did not include the ground floor. That was just for the housing part. The low-income housing tax credits and the historic tax credit money and the loan money. And not all this granting money that we were raising. Well, we raised it. We finished the building and they had this grand opening. And then. It was a beautiful sight because this building had sit like this maybe 10 or 15 years and now we’ve got people moving into it. And that was a group of people. We all we had going for us was the fact that what we believe we achieved. And that’s how we did it. I was no, I hadn’t directed no nonprofit corporation before. And in fact, I probably have something here to show each person that he worked with us were unique in the fact that they brought something to the table. So I guess I asked you the question. How did it get started? Well, it was starting on a bunch of people who, who just believed that they could achieve. And we did it. And the nun, Sister Joan Gallagher, she’s about 92 years old right now, she still drives and we get together. In fact, the Notre Dame group just got together about maybe about a month ago. And we just sit there and just enjoy the fact that we’d accomplished something that many people said it couldn’t be done.

Erich Schnack [02:01:06] Now when you gather up with everybody who worked on that project, do you guys go back to the site then?

James Williams [02:01:13] No, this is- We have lunch. These are the people that all the people in the office. As soon as I left Notre Dame, it wasn’t not that thin finishing. Mary Campbell was up for election. I didn’t know Mary Campbell. I knew her husband, remember, I helped his home in Crawford-Tilden’s. He said, Jim, would you help my wife? I said, yeah. We knew nothing about elections. [laughs] Nothing.

Erich Schnack [02:01:51] There’s that trend again, right?

James Williams [02:01:53] Yeah.

Erich Schnack [02:01:55] And you jumped right into it, huh?

James Williams [02:01:56] Yes. And the day before the primary, Fannie Lewis said that she was going to help Mary Campbell, and she didn’t. In fact, she didn’t even come to the meeting. But I had come to the meeting. I’d had my staff and my family. We were already distributing literature all over wherever they tell us to go. So that night, when they had the meeting to get ready for the election, they didn’t have anybody to cover Ward 7. Hunter said, Jim, would you cover it? I said, yeah. So that was like the Thursday before the election. I had to get all the people- We had to have people to every poll. They had some of the people, but we had to get people there at the polls to distribute the literature, Fannie was the supporting the man against Mayor Campbell. And they had already knew they had it. Fannie controlled her ward. But we had all them people out there at the different polling places saying, would you please vote for Mayor Campbell? [laughs] And we won in her ward, Fannie was mad at me. Boy, she was the maddest person. Took a long time for her to get over that. We won. So down at mayor’s headquarters or something, she says, Jim, I want you call me and I want you be in charge of all the elections on the east side of Cleveland. I said, mayor, I have never did any of the stuff like this in my life. She said, if you beat Fannie Lewis in their own ward, you can do it. [laughs] And I had a couple conditions and she agreed to them. And we took it on, and we won. And she gave me- She called me in a couple days after the election was over. She said, I want to turn the building, housing department into- It was at that time, it wasn’t a department. It was below a department. I want to make it a department, and I want to make you the head of it. And that’s what she did. And that’s how I really was able to really do things when I was director building [and] housing. Whenever they had problems, she had someone that could see, look at all sides of it, and generally take the side of the person that was the aggrieved person of the [inaudible] people. I don’t know what question you asked me, but that is- I hope I’ve answered it.

Erich Schnack [02:04:49] You have, yeah. You accomplished a lot. Notre Dame even got involved in the elections and all that.

James Williams [02:05:01] Well, got her elected. And we had a- We really ran this city. We did some things that had never been done to this city because we were listening to the people. She was a listener. Oh, man. You can’t bring story. She’s not going to do something about it. And she’d have us all- Even though I was head of the building Housing Department, I’d be working with one of the other directors on some of the other things, so. But we got. We really got a lot accomplished. She was only there for four years.

Erich Schnack [02:05:41] Oh, wow. It was four years.

James Williams [02:05:43] Yeah. What happened? Well, I don’t want to- That’s not important. Anyway, she didn’t get reelected. It wasn’t because she wasn’t good. It’s just that Frank Jackson, he had a team that was really good and he beat her. She’s doing very well. She’s in historic preservation right now in Washington. She’s running a. I don’t know. It’s a big facility that has to do with history. She’s been running it for years.

Erich Schnack [02:06:16] I wonder if she’s involved with the National Park Service. Very well could be then, very much in charge of that, and the Department of the Interior.

James Williams [02:06:27] Well, she’s not- The agency that she’s working for. I think it might be a private agency. I don’t know what she’s- We’re supposed to go to visit her between now and Christmas or something. I’ll find out what she’s done. Whatever it is, she’s- She doesn’t- She doesn’t mind getting in the mess and getting down there, getting her hands dirty.

Erich Schnack [02:06:55] The both of you, right?

James Williams [02:06:58] Yes, but think of all that we become. Remember I told you up to that I had never graduated from high school. All I had was a GED all the way up to a few years ago. I never even had a college diploma. I mean, a college degree. But I learned so much by reading and learning about people. And I did a great deal of reading, which you can see because I’m quoting people like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie. Those are the books that I live by. And that’s probably a great reason for my being able to be successful in these different areas where I had very little training.

Erich Schnack [02:07:47] It’s actually a good transition into the next question I have for you. What are some of the authors, people in your life that you look up to? I know you mentioned Dale Carnegie right there. Could you talk about maybe the people who have shaped the way that you look at the world?

James Williams [02:08:09] Well, Dale Carnegie, there’s two books that he wrote that I live by them. I tell people, you should read this. One is Dale Carney’s book was how to Win Friends and Influence People. It tells you how you interact with somebody to establish a relationship with them. That’s what that book tells you. It tells you a man’s name is the sweetest, most important, important-sounding word in the world. So if you meet someone, the first thing you want to do was put his name in your head. So you start calling him by his name. Those are the kind of things I learned from him. Or if you go into a situation where you’re meeting somebody you don’t know, look around, see something that’s important to them, it might be their family’s picture. I might be a diploma. I remember one lady, she had pictures of her riding her Harley. Mention that to them. If you want to really get the people on your side, talk about them first. I mean, you don’t have to be condescending about it. I just happened to mention something. See this little girl’s picture of the children’s picture. Boy, it’s a beautiful family out there. You know his book? I recommend anybody that got any sense they need to read how to Win Friends and Influence People. Caucus. If, if you can win friends and influence people, you’re going to be getting people on your side. You understand? All of my kids, everybody I’ve ever talked to that I believe would benefit from it. I let them know that’s one of the best books you can read. The second book by Dale Carnegie is How to Stop Worrying, Start Living. Why? Because you can spend your whole life worrying about things you can’t do nothing about. I’m gonna just tear her messages, tell her I’ll call her back. I’ll call you later. She’s one of my best friends. You can spend a lot of time in your life worrying about things, especially when you go to college. How am I going to get to this? How am I going to do that? And once if you do that, you spend a whole lot of time that is non productive. You hear me? Worrying, worrying. And what happened in my early life was I was always doing something that I shouldn’t have done or being in trouble and then I had to worry about it. And once I read Dale Carnegie’s first book, I read his second book and I felt that one was just as important as the first one because it tells you if you got a problem, don’t be trying to figure out how to solve the problem. Figure out what’s the worst thing that can happen to you as a result of that problem. Problem. The worst thing that can happen if you shoot somebody. The worst thing that happens is you’re going to go to prison. Put yourself in that position and say, accept that within your mind, then you’ll be able to work up. Well, how can I get. Maybe, you know, what else can I do? But if you start worrying you’re going to keep. You’re always looking at the top level. You never may not even get down to where you should be. So if you start at the bottom, you can work yourself up. Man, when I used to be in trouble, when I was in the military, I could spend days telling you about me being in trouble in the military. And in every situation, they were trying to put me out on an unsuitable discharge. I was supposed to be out on a Friday. Thursday I was in the hospital. They didn’t account for the fact that I had a disability. I had a problem in my life that happened in the military. So all I did is. The day before I was. It was Wednesday. Tuesday I took a physical. Wednesday I was supposed to- I went to see the doctor and I told the doctor my story. That’s where I worked myself up to. And the doctor said, well, we need to bring you in to evaluate you medically because you got this problem with you. So I went to the hospital that morning, got into bed. My commander came in. He’s raving, hell, get out of that bed. You supposed to be out of service tomorrow. Get out of bed. I said, you had to go see the doctor. I never saw him again. But they thought that they had won. But remember what I said? You start from the bottom and work yourself up. [sirens in background] And I remember the fact that my esophagus had been messed up when I first got into service. And they didn’t even operate it on me. So all I did is just follow that through and went to see the doctor. I’ve been getting disability checks since 1964. That’s Dale Carnegie. And I’ll quickly tell you about Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Erich Schnack [02:14:30] Please do.

James Williams [02:14:33] He’s like Dale Carnegie, where he tells you what steps you should take to try to get yourself up to where you want to be. Trying to think. A couple of his quotes. He had stories about this little kid that he couldn’t hear, but if he put his teeth on the table, he could distinguish the sounds of people talking. And that’s how he could be able to hear. And he had stories like this of people who overcome different obstacles. And it tells you how to start off, put together a plan. You want to do something, do a plan. Start off every day what you’re going to do for this plan every day and keep working that plan, keep doing the things that you said, and eventually you’ll get to your goals. That’s how he became a rich man. And it told you keep a diary. I still have the diary papers of today, this tomorrow, this what it taught me. It’s a discipline. It taught me to set goals and taught me to be reasonable about my goals. And so that’s the reason why I’m- That’s the reason why I’ve done all these things that you wouldn’t think that I could do. You wouldn’t think that a person who never graduated from high school could do. I think by telling you those three, you really got the butter out of me because that’s my life. I’m 85 years old and I am very successful based on the fact that I did not come up the same way that other people came up. I happen to read those three books starting when I was about 18 years old, probably took maybe a year, two years. I read the two Dale Carnegie books and the Napoleon Hill book. Later when I read Napoleon Hill book was when I wanted to start having a business.

Erich Schnack [02:17:15] Thank you for sharing your inspiration and the books that you’ve read that really have helped you along in your life. I think it’s important to understand, you know, where people get their inspirations from and how it works into their life just like it did for you.

James Williams [02:17:32] We’ve helped many, many people. I can tell you, my kids, my grandkids, my kids, my grandkids, they’re all doing well. I’ve only had two out of 30, 30-something. And that’s because they went out on their own. But the rest of them, and I’m talking about kids, people that are not among my immediate family that we’ve helped, Barb and I, by instilling in them the same thoughts that you’ve heard from us.

Erich Schnack [02:18:09] For me, want to move on to some of our last questions here. I saw in one of the program guides that you gave me earlier that Louis Stokes did the remarks at one of the opening ceremonies. And I’m wondering if you ever had the opportunity to meet certainly, Louis Stokes? Could you tell me about your interactions with him?

James Williams [02:18:42] I know, like Fannie Lewis, I knew he was a leader. In fact, I came here to work for Carl Stokes. Carl Stokes was the mayor when I came here. And I knew they both were leaders, and they both were leaders. That had a sensitivity toward whom they were, whom they representative and represented. And that’s the reason why they put so much time into what they were doing as leaders. That’s the reason why they both became very successful leaders. Carl Stokes, as the mayor and his brother as a Congressman. So I did things that I, as I said, I knew both of them and I recognize their strengths and I know that that has helped me in my life. It’s not only them. I could tell you more. I’ve written Story of Malcolm X. I mean, Malcolm X has. There’s a whole lot of good, good about Malcolm X. There’s a whole lot of good about a lot of the people that have been either on one side or the other. And if you can just get some kind of understanding of what they were going through and how they chose to react to their situations. Carl Stokes, both him and his brother, their mother did their work, but they both graduated from college, became attorneys. You understand, That’s the kind of stuff that I’ve recognized and different leaders should know. It’s not who you are. Where did you come from? How did you able, how were you able to escape? Came from. And Louis Stokes was a person. He was, he was quiet, he didn’t make a lot of noise. But you know, when he had something to say, everybody better listen.

Erich Schnack [02:21:02] Do you have any specific memories about your interactions with Louis Stokes? Mentioned that he was quiet?

James Williams [02:21:11] No. Usually it was mostly in a setting with other people. I never really sat down and talked with him a lot, but I learned a lot from his demeanor and how he presented himself and what he did to accomplish what he did. So I never had, I never was directly involved with either one of them, but I was close enough to be able to get something from them just by being with them and listening to them.

Erich Schnack [02:21:50] Thank you, Mr. Williams. The last question I have for you today, wrapping up our two-part oral history, is looking back at your life, what are you the most proud of?

James Williams [02:22:07] The most that I’m proud of is my sensitivity to the human condition. That only comes, it usually comes when you believe that in a higher power. There’s nothing in my life that will affect me as much as encountering somebody and thinking about what I can to help them get to where they need to be. I leave a house with money in my pocket. There’s a reason. Helps all the time. If I drive down the street and I see somebody, they’re asking for something. Sometimes if I see somebody, they’re not even asking for anything. I can sense it. You can tell whether somebody needs some food. So that’s the most important thing about me is my sensitivity to others. And it’s not so much recognizing what the problem is, but be willing to do whatever I can to alleviate that problem. That is my strength. My wife and I, we both live this way. We can’t even count the number of people. I know. I wanted to show y’all something. We can’t even count the number of people that we’ve had living in that big house. She’s done raised her kids, her grandkids, her great grandkids, and everybody else’s kids. She had one lady. The only way she could get this job was she had to have somebody to take care of her daughter because she could not take care of her. That girl stayed with Barbara for two years, slept in the same bedroom with our granddaughter, Lived everywhere we went, she was with us. I just wanted to show you all the pictures of that house. I took them today, by the way. This house is. I believe that it’s fortuitous. I believe that God felt that the person that needed to be in that house had to be my wife and me, because all we do is help others. I just wanted to show you. You can show them to her. Take it and just start scrolling to the left, and you’ll just see how beautiful that house is. And it was there when we walked in. We have not made any changes inside that house at all. Sister Henrietta, remember me telling you about Sister Henrietta. She’s the one that started Famicos Foundation. One day I went into her house and she called me. She said, Jim, I want you to go look at the house. These people come here from Arkansas. They have this house, and they had a group home for kids in there.

James Williams [02:25:55] And the man that had the group home just walked away and left Cleveland. And the house was sitting there empty. And I told Barbara, because we was living in this house that we bought for $700 and restored. And I. Scroll to the left.

Erich Schnack [02:26:24] Going to stop recording now.

James Williams [02:26:25] Okay.

Erich Schnack [02:26:26] We’ll continue to chat about this, though.

James Williams [02:26:28] I told Barbara, I said, let’s. Okay, you’re welcome.

Erich Schnack [02:26:33] Just for the sake of the tape, thank you for participating.

James Williams [02:26:36] Yes.

Erich Schnack [02:26:37] Bye-bye, everybody.

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