Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Emilie Barnett describes her Shaker experience. Wife of Irving Barnett, she began getting involved with the Ludlow Community Association from the very beginning, collaborating with notable Ludlow activists like Drew and Fran King. She describes the neighborhood dinners and meetings that predated the LCA, which eventually became the foundation for the Ludlow integration movement. She tells stories of the many events and fundraisers that occurred in Ludlow and in Shaker as a whole, and brings a very personal vibe to this oral history. Mrs. Barnett also describes some of the more tense situations in Ludlow, and ends with her life after Shaker, and how Ludlow molded her entire outlook on life.
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Interviewee
Barnett, Emilie (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-8-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
38 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Emilie Barnett interview, 8 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915010.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/507
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:04] Okay, I want to start off with where were you born? What did your parents do? Where did you grow up?
Emilie Barnett [00:00:13] Okay. Am I on?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:15] Yeah.
Emilie Barnett [00:00:17] Okay. I was born in Cleveland at Mount Sinai Hospital, which no longer exists. And I was educated first at Chesterfield Elementary School, which no longer exists. Then my family moved to Cleveland Heights, and I attended Taylor Elementary School, which was torn down, and then Roosevelt Junior High School, which was torn down, and then Cleveland Heights High, from which I graduated, and it’s still standing. My father was a pharmacist, and by the time I was 11 or 12, I was a soda jerk in his drugstore and took two buses to get to the drugstore until my father finally got a car. And then we would drive in his Studebaker through the park, which was always lovely to work at the drugstore. I have had two siblings, an older sister who died a year or so ago, and a younger brother who lives in Texas now. Then I went to college, and I started college at Cleveland College, a college of Case Western Reserve University, which was downtown and no longer stands. I have a history of things being torn down. Anyhow, KeyBank is on the property now. I went there full time for a year and then met my husband and got married and went part time while I was married and having children. And it took me 16 years, I think 16 something, 12 to 16 years, to get my undergraduate degree. And I’m the mother of four children, grandmother of three. My son Bill, who is my second son, is married and has three children. And my oldest son, Dan, teaches in Alaska. He teaches in the villages. And I visited him last, well, I guess it was in March or April in Arctic Village, inside the Arctic Circle. And it was sunny and warmer there than it was in Cleveland at that time. My oldest daughter lives in Texas. She moved to a town that I think is now on the map, Meridian, Texas. She used to live in Cranfield’s Gap. And they don’t have children. She and Jim Bob have animals. She has three dogs, a cat and a horse that they just acquired called Amigo. And my youngest child, my daughter Barbara, did a lot of studying. She went to Washington University, then NYU, and then got her law degree at George Washington and practiced law for a couple of years and then went back to school and spent 10 years in Chicago getting her PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and now teaches at Loyola University in New Orleans. And I’m going to see her next week when I go to New Orleans. So then I went on to school. And whenever I find something, I decide maybe I should do something about it. And while I was going to school part time, I took a course at Reserve that was Urban Sociology. And it talked about the poverty in Cleveland areas. I got involved in looking at the housing in the central area. And I began to put together something called Interfaith Housing of Cleveland or Cleveland Interfaith Housing. And then I became the director and we transformed the neighborhood. We began by developing a cooperative, cooperatively owned townhouses at 30th and Central. Anyhow, that went on. And then I went back to school. In 1973, President Nixon ended all funds for housing. So we closed down and I went back to school and went back to Reserve. And this time I went full time and got a master’s degree in management studies and then went to law school and got my law degree. But back to Ludlow. I think I’ve told you enough about myself. I told you I had two sons. My first son was born. Dan was born while we lived in an apartment at Shaker Square. And then I became pregnant with my second son, Bill. And we decided the apartment was too small. So we started looking for a house. And everything was out of our price range. And my husband Irv had grown up in Shaker and gone to Shaker schools and graduated. And he thought it would be a good idea if we lived in Shaker. So we finally found a house on Becket that we could afford. We couldn’t really afford, but our parents gave us, loaned us the money for the down payment. I don’t think we ever paid them back, actually. And we bought this house on Becket, and we moved in September or October and early November. My second son, Bill, was born. And so I was pretty much in the house throughout the winter with the two babies. And then spring came and I started going out. And we saw all these “For Sale” signs up and down the street. And my husband, having grown up in Shaker, knew that it was an affluent, mostly Christian community. And we began to wonder if they were selling their homes because we were a Jewish family and had moved in. It wasn’t long before we learned that it wasn’t us. It was because Negroes, what they were called at the time, were moving in and people were afraid of selling their house. My husband was all upset. This is our first major investment. Of course, it wasn’t our investment, it was our parents’ investment. And what were we going to do? And I said, well, I have two babies and I ain’t doing nothing. So one spring day, I was out with my sons pushing a baby carriage. And I guess a stroller, I don’t quite remember what. And it was a nice day. And I saw a gentleman across the street. I don’t remember whether he was mowing his lawn or just what he was doing. And I decided to introduce myself. And I went across the street with my boys and introduced myself to Mr. Price, who was a postman, and said that I was. He appreciated my coming to meet him. And I said that I was glad to meet him. And he said that- I said I was concerned about people moving away. And he said, well, he was concerned about people moving away too. They had bought their house and they had fixed it up and they really wanted to know their neighbors and get to know. And he said- He told me that there were some people who were meeting on Becket, on the other side of- And the curious thing about Ludlow is it’s formed out of the Ludlow school district, which is partly in the city of Cleveland and partly in the city of Shaker Heights. And the people who were meeting all lived in the city of Cleveland. Our house was the second house in Shaker Heights, which was the only thing that made us distinctive. And he asked me to attend the meeting, so I did. And I learned what they were interested in doing. And I told my husband about it. And this was spring and I may have gone to a couple of meetings, but that was about it. And then it was a hot summer day, I’m not sure whether it was June or what. And my husband and I were sitting on the back porch, which was a screened-in porch. And it was cool and we were in a very sloppy summer clothes. We got a knock at the door and I went to the door and this gentleman, very tall, good looking gentleman, dark skinned, not very dark, but anyhow, clearly Negro, introduced himself as Drew King, Dr. Drew King. And we invited him in. And I have said repeatedly that my husband and I decided we had really moved up in the world. That our neighbors were educated and talented and- Well, anyhow, we went on from there and Drew King and his wife Fran held a barbecue in their backyard. And we invited neighbors to come. And that was mostly just neighbors on our own street. They lived on Becket as well, in the Cleveland portion. And then I don’t know how it started, but I started calling people twice my age, well, maybe more than I was 23 at the time. And we started having meetings in the homes. And then we had an international supper at the school, at Ludlow School. And people from the other side of Southington, the Cleveland area, a number of them were Hungarian and they brought wonderful Hungarian dishes, and the African American, Negro, Black, whatever you want to call families, brought some southern foods. And it was just really very, very nice. And out of that came the idea of forming the Ludlow Community Association. And my husband Irv became the first president. And it was very successful in stopping white flight. But it was clear that that wasn’t going to be enough if all the homes that were for sale were sold to Blacks. And so several people in the community, Joanne Finley, who was in medical school, her husband Joe Finley, a prominent lawyer in town, they were a newer white family that had moved in, and I think they had four children, and they felt that we had to actively pursue inviting white families. And we began to do that. But the other thing about the early days of Ludlow, and it’s only the early days, because Shaker School District eventually closed some schools, and Ludlow is now a PEP [Positive Education Program] school, but not a regular elementary school. But one of the extraordinary things that helped Ludlow be a success was the attitude of the school administration. Mrs. Foss was the principal, and she was very sensitive and very bright. And I don’t know if she was a third grade teacher or a fourth grade teacher, but Mrs. Link was one of the teachers at the elementary school. And I met a couple of weeks ago, and she was in town for this presentation that she made, Shelley Stokes Hammond, about Ludlow. And she was telling me that when she had Mrs. Link in elementary school, Mrs. Link was the one who got her interested in research and writing. And I remembered my son Bill having a teacher that really inspired him. And guess who it was? It was Mrs. Link who got him interested in the Civil War and antiques, and he’s continued it to this day. So the education. Oh, and the other thing was that the superintendent of the schools, Mr. Lawson, Jack Lawson, was also extremely positive. And he would say, any student that comes into the Ludlow school that needs help to catch up to the level of where we’re at now will get all the help he or she needs. And that was the case, although for the most part, I can’t say across the board, those kids were smarter than my kids, because the families that moved in were professional families, and they were well educated and their children were well educated. So Ludlow was a very, very stimulating time for us. We were never bored. We made lots of friends. I had been a very shy girl as a teenager. Oh, and the other thing is, I was Jewish, and all my experience was with white families. And so living in Ludlow and meeting others was terribly enriching. For me. And it set a pattern for my life that I have continued ever since, living abroad and meeting new people and taking on projects that I never would have thought that I would do. But I think it was 1962. We read about an incident in which delegates to the United Nations, representatives from African Nations to the United Nations, were traveling down from New York to Washington for a meeting. And they were driving on the highway, and they were refused service at one or more of the restaurants because they were Black. And I thought that was terrible. I had been involved in the Kennedy presidential campaign. I had a friend who had been very active, Paul Unger, who had been helpful to me with Ludlow, who was even more active. He headed the Cleveland office for Citizens for Kennedy or something like that. He was to have an appointment as the commercial attache to the embassy in London. He was a very successful businessman. However, he had supported John Glenn in a primary against then Senator Steve Young. And Steve Young. Oh, and I was having a farewell party for Paul and our house on Becket, and everybody was there, and we were waiting for Paul to come back from Washington. And he came back and he told us he wasn’t going because Steve Young had opposed his nomination and it was cancelled. So he did not go to. But anyhow, he knew people in the State Department. And so I spoke to Paul about this, and I said, Paul, this is terrible. People have to know that not all of the United States is like this. And I’d like that we invite them to Ludlow. And so I talked with people in Ludlow, and we had been having. I don’t know if we had been having annual parties or not, but maybe we had. Anyhow, we decided that we would try to have this international weekend in February. And so I wrote and Paul gave me names. I wrote to Adlai Stevenson, who was UN I wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was at the United Nations. And they both sent me charming letters of rejection. I said to Paul, is there anyone you know at the State Department? And he knew someone who was head of protocol or something like that. And I contacted her, and she gave me the names of ambassadors from the African countries. And I wrote to several of them, and I think four accepted. As I recall. We had someone from Mali, someone from Mauritania, someone from Ghana. I can’t remember the fourth. Oh, Nigeria. Yeah. So we had four African countries represented. And it was a terrible weekend. It was a really bad, snowy weekend. I think that it was- Well, it couldn’t have been- It couldn’t have been Valentine’s Day weekend. Because that’s earlier. I think it was the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of February. And most of them had flown in on Friday and beat the storm, which I think, well, maybe they came in on Thursday. Anyhow, the ambassador for Mali and his wife drove from New York to Cleveland in this terrible storm. Or I guess their chauffeur drove them or something. And they were hosted at Ludlow families. And we had a very big party celebration, and it was a great weekend. And then I’m trying to think. Well, there were several others after that. I was not. I was always in the background. I didn’t. My husband Irwin, was leadership. And lots and lots of other families became involved and active in Ludlow. And we had outgrown our family. In 1960, at the time of the presidential campaign, I gave birth to my daughter Laura. So we decided that the house was getting too small for us and we needed to find another place. And we put our house on the market, and we found a house still in Ludlow, on Onaway that was bigger and nice, and my husband was earning pretty well, so we were able to afford it. And we put our house on the market, and it was sold to a white family. And I don’t remember the timing of this exactly, but I do know it was around Memorial Day weekend. Well, it was before that, but shortly before that, the family, the black family, from whom we had bought the house on Onaway, heard about something. They were planning to move to Beechwood, and they had heard about something happening in Beachwood, and they decided they were not going to move. In the meantime, we had sold our house and had no place to live. And we were supposed to go away for the Memorial Day weekend. And my husband said to me on Friday, we can’t go. We have no place to live. We have to find a place to live. I said, I’ll find a place. That Saturday, while he was at work, I saw this small ad in the paper and went over to Chadbourne, where there was a house for sale. And I went inside and I liked it. And it was big enough for us. It had three bedrooms and it had an attic, a finished third floor with a bath. And I called my husband and I said, I found the house. And he said, well, let me come and see it. Well, he came over after work, saw the house, signed the deal, and we went away on our vacation. But we remained active in the community. And I guess that’s my Ludlow story.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:14] Did you need some water?
Emilie Barnett [00:19:15] No, I’m fine.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:18] That’s great. Well, what other kind of activities did you guys do in the neighborhood? You mentioned the barbecue. Would you do kind of similar things every once in a while during the summertime?
Emilie Barnett [00:19:28] Oh, I think there probably were activities. We became close friends with some of our neighbors, the activities. And I wasn’t involved in this. There were lots of coffees that attract for people who might be interested in Ludlow. So there were a number of those. I became president of the PTA. Oh, I know one of the things that we had, and I think it was co-sponsored by the Ludlow Community Association and the school. We had the then governor of Hawai’i come and speak. And of course, Hawai’i was noted to be very diverse. And so that was a great experience. Oh, well, we had fundraising things and we had a speaker. He was an author of some book. I don’t remember the book and I don’t remember him. But he came to town and spoke to Ludlow and my husband and I had dinner with him and we had Lena Horn come for- I don’t know whether it was her book or- Well, anyhow, she came and my husband and I had dinner with her. And then there was the huge fundraiser at Severance Hall where we had Ella Fitzgerald. And I had nothing to do with this. Ron Spatrino was Ron and his wife went to school with her. I forget her name, but she was the real estate person. And Ron was very active in the entertainment industry and he was able to get Ella Fitzgerald to come. And we sold out the Severance Hall. So that was very exciting.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:15] When you first moved in and kind of learned about, you know, the integration movement, was it a big deal or was it just kind of-
Emilie Barnett [00:21:24] It was a very big deal. It was a horrendously big deal. My husband wrote something that I had not seen until after he died. And I collected his papers. I gave this to Shelley. He was an attorney and he was also in an investment group. And his other friends in the investment group were very, you know, they were standard. They didn’t care one way or the other, but they weren’t about to live in Ludlow. And so he was kind of always explaining himself. And then I don’t remember what the occasion was, but they invited then mayor of Shaker Heights. I’m blocking his name because I didn’t like him from the beginning to come. And he was very opposed. Remember, Ludlow was part and Shaker. And I remember him saying, they’ll never cross Van Aken, they’ll never cross Lee Road. If they’re going to live in Ludlow, that’s one thing. But they’ll never cross. The other thing that happened was in order to keep Negroes from moving into Shaker, they bought up property. And at the end of our street on Onaway, Onaway, Becket and Ashwood, there were several lots. And the city of Shaker Heights bought up all those lots and turned it into an ice skating rink. And they did that someplace else too. I think they did it over in the, in the Onaway area where Fernway comes into one of the streets. There’s a triangle there. And they bought up that property. The mayor was very opposed to it and he would not come to any meeting. I think he finally sent his chief of police or something. But eventually he retired. And the gentleman who had been head of the Rapid Transit because Mayor and he was very supportive. So that was the one thing. I don’t think we had problems per se. Actually we did. There was a woman who- They had a nice house on Onaway in the Ludlow school district. And she was raped. And I don’t know whether they ever caught the person, but she stayed. She said, we’re not moving because that could happen anywhere. So they stayed. And that was very nice. I think that’s all I remember. And I don’t remember my kid’s name, so you’re lucky. I remember this.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:07] Just kind of more about Shaker in general. Were there any kind of theaters or any restaurants that were some Shaker that you would work here?
Emilie Barnett [00:24:19] Oh, it was a very expensive one. It was on Van Aken. And I don’t remember the name, but the notoriety was that they wouldn’t let Jews come and eat. And I can’t, I don’t remember. But we did go there and eat. I think it changed. There was Stouffer’s at Shaker Square and we had events at Stouffer’s. I can’t remember what they were though. I don’t know.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:55] So how do you think Shaker is different from other Cleveland areas in regards to its history and its people?
Emilie Barnett [00:25:08] Well, Shaker started out as the Shakers’ community. And then Van Sweringens came in and developed the Rapid Transit and owned a great deal of property in Shaker. And the Van Sweringens’ house is still on South Park at the entrance to the park. And I went in and it isn’t as impressive inside as it is outside. But anyhow, they were very clear that this was a white, affluent community. And they not only restricted lot size and laid things out in certain sections to be certain sizes, but they restricted it in terms of personnel so that you could have servants and servants could live on the property. But Jews, Italians and Negroes, I think, were the three categories that were not welcome. There were restrictions in the deeds. So there was that period of time for many, many years, probably 40, 50 years anyhow, that Shaker was a restricted community and all white and primarily Christian. Ludlow changed all that. Not only did Ludlow set an example, but Negroes, Negroes, African Americans, Blacks, whatever we want to call these men and women and children, began to move into other parts of Shaker. And additional community organizations formed based upon the model that Ludlow had presented. And so Shaker became an extraordinarily successful community. Ludlow was one of the first in the nation and it celebrated its 50th anniversary of being an integrated community a couple of years ago from, let’s see, 1957. So it was 2007, they had the 50th anniversary. And as I told you initially, intellectual education level of the young people coming in was high. They were smarter than my kids, that was for sure. However, things changed when Congress passed a law, I think it was Congress or maybe it was the Supreme Court, that you could not discriminate against people because of income. We already had anti-discrimination in terms of race and religion. And Section 8 was a federal funding to help low-income families move out of areas of poverty. And so the Shaker School District encompassed both the city of Shaker Heights and the city of Cleveland. And it was a very popular place for people who were employed with the city of Cleveland or running for office in the city of Cleveland who wanted their children to go to good schools. So that was fine for decades. However, with Section 8, families started to move into the Shaker School District who did not have- Not only did they not have income, but they didn’t have the background in education that former families had. So that there was a major catching up that had to take place. And my children haven’t been in the Shaker schools for a while. So I don’t really know what, how they addressed it. I know efforts were made to address it. There’s a movie that I gave to Shelley that is coming back and I think it’s going to be used by Shaker and maybe perhaps by Cleveland State as well, that it opens with the protests at the high school about the gap between the achievement, the achievement gap between blacks and whites in the school. So it has been a challenge.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:29:21] Is that the reunion?
Emilie Barnett [00:29:25] No, that’s a different one. The reunion, I think, was an ABC television thing. No, this was done by somebody else. The Reunion thing was outside of Ludlow School, and I think I was in it. My son Dan was in it because he had gone. I don’t know where Bill was. I talked a lot.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:29:47] Just a quick question. Have you lived in Shaker since your school, since your kids have been in school, have you stayed in the same house?
Emilie Barnett [00:29:56] No. My husband died the first year I was in law school and my two sons had come home from college and I had two daughters, and I was working full time and said, I can’t take care of this house and wash all the clothes and do all that. I guess it didn’t occur to me that they could. I decided to help my sons buy a house, and I was going to move with my daughters, and I bought. At Shaker Square, Shaker Towers was turning from a rental to a condominium. And I bought a unit. Shaker Towers, which is still Shaker School District, but the line between Cleveland and Shaker is in the middle of our driveway. So I live in Cleveland now.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:42] Do you think- I don’t know. If you are aware of when the- Not aware of when the Ludlow schools closed. Were you aware of construction?
Emilie Barnett [00:30:59] I don’t know because I didn’t live there anymore. Yeah, but there are still white families there. I mean, it’s still an integrated community. The kids are bused. The kids all over Shaker are bused.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:21] With the centennial- This is a weird question. So with the centennial, if you were to kind of take a couple minutes and kind of wrap that up in a short little spiel, what would you say?
Emilie Barnett [00:31:35] The centennial of Shaker Heights. We’ve come a long way, baby. If I’m speaking personally, and it’s not so much the centennial of Shaker Heights, but my experience throughout this has been that it has been the most enriching experience in my life. And it has led me to dozens and dozens of things that I never would have anticipated. The centennial of Shaker Heights points out that anything can happen, that you can go from great to lousy to good to great again. And we’ve had great leadership. I was at one time working for Shaker Heights. I became the director of the Department of Housing and Community Life under Pat Mearns. And we incorporated all of this. We incorporated the development of quality housing and the maintenance of quality housing, as well as the maintenance of not just integrated, but energetic. Energetic neighborhoods and energetic schools, energetic families who really cared about the community.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:32:59] I heard that you did the Peace Corps at some point. Is that true?
Emilie Barnett [00:33:05] I served with the Peace Corps in Jordan, and that’s My latest project. Well, when I lived in Jordan again, I had led a very sheltered life until Ludlow. And after my husband died and after I had been doing other things and didn’t have employment at the time, I wanted to reach out. And so I served for a while in Zimbabwe. I lived in the bush and worked with families. Individuals, not families, individuals from villages around. And then I volunteered for the Peace Corps and was sent to Jordan. And I lived in Jordan 2000, 2001, and made a number of friends, all of whom were Muslim. And I came back, and In September of 2001, we had the tragedy of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade center and the Pentagon and the crash of the plane, and everybody I knew, family, friends and anybody I knew, we were all upset. But the other thing was, they all started talking about those horrible Muslims and they were afraid. I thought, well, not all Muslims are terrorists, but we don’t know any. We’ve never met anybody here. And I decided that ignorance was the worst problem. And so I developed this program called Communities in Conversation, and, excuse me, it focuses on the Abrahamic religions. Anyhow, before I started that, I decided I didn’t know enough about other religions myself. White Jewish girl. So I went back to school and I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and got a master’s in religious studies. And that was great. I had a survey of Islam and Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism, Daoism, But I still didn’t know enough about Islam. So I went to London. That’s when I lived a year in London and attended the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations. It was sponsored by the Aga Khan University, which is an enormous university in Pakistan that does things all over the world. So then I came back and I thought, well, maybe I know enough to start. So I wrote a study guide. And I had a friend, Joan Brown Campbell, who was director of the department. She was a minister, and her daughter actually was mayor of Cleveland. Jane. Yeah, and Jane had me on the Community Relations Board while she was mayor. Anyhow, Joan was interested in what I was doing, and we decided to try it at Chautauqua. She’s the director of the Department of Religion at Chautauqua. So we did, and people at Chautauqua liked it and said, we’d like to have it in our own communities. So I began to do that in Cleveland, and next week I go to New Orleans to see if they’d like to start doing it in New Orleans, because the goal is to have these conversations in communities throughout the country. That’s it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:36:23] That’s great. That’s great. I think a lot of people don’t know enough about, particularly Islam.
Emilie Barnett [00:36:30] But, you know, when- Well, no, it wasn’t Shelley. It was yesterday. The FBI and the Department of Justice sponsored a civil Rights institute out near NASA on the west side. And I went, and the speaker, the main speaker, was the daughter of Desmond Tutu, the archbishop. And she opened Darling Woman, the father. Funniest, most impressive speech I’ve ever heard. However, she said something in the beginning. She said, I have been working. You know, she was a daughter of apartheid, grew up in apartheid. I have been working with a white friend of mine on a book, the Two Aspects of apartheid, from a white person’s perspective and a black person’s perspective. And one day we were talking on the phone, and I asked her, how do you feel about this? Working with a black woman on something like this, or just working with a black woman? And her friend responded to her, I don’t think of you as black. And she was offended. She was offended. And she said to her friend, being black has shaped my entire life. And this went on for some time, and I thought about it, and I do want to write to her, because I think what her friend, she said that they- [recording ends abruptly]
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