Voicing & Action Project: Interview with Charles "Mississippi" Bevel

0:00 and speaking of the that book want of other Sons one of the most memorable things that I recall from Mississippi we were out in the cotton fields because what would happen in the springtime cotton shopping time the trucks would come into town and people would get on a truck early in the morning go out and chop cotton all day and they would bring you back in the evening and we were out in this cotton field and I was basically working as a water boy you know carrying a bucket of water and going around as people would dip up and drink and about anywhere maybe 30 40 yards from us

0:46 was a group of German prisoners of War uh interesting thing that a lot of people don't know anything about in terms of the German prisoners who come over and would also have to pick cotton and chop cotton and stuff and it was intriguing to me to hear these guys speaking in this language you know and I didn't quite know what the whole War thing was about but I turned and look and that was my mother looking at these prisoners just standing Stark still with tears streaming down her face and years later I got up enough courage to ask her what was happening well she had a son in the war she told

1:32 me and she hadn't heard from him for 3 months and she didn't know whether even some of these German prisoners had been responsible for maybe killing her son but the most painful thing she said was that when we stop at noon time to eat our crackers and cheese and baloney the German soldiers would be put on a truck taken into iina to eat at the white restaur restaurants and that if her son had come back to itan at that time and even attempted to enter one of those restaurants he could be hung or killed and it is things like that that people just aren't aware of

2:17 historically in terms of the different things that have just filled the black community with angst that we have no history of but it's just passed down in a cultural way you know but anyway here I was at uh uh 12 years of age of finally making it to the big city and when I got here and and along 7th and n9th Street I would say now from bethma all the way out to Woodland they had all these factories and the noise the clanging of the big

3:03 machines and everything was just incredible to me and one of the things that I would do is you know if I could get a hold of a nickel or a dime or something I would get on the bus and just ride and ride and ride uh and listening to all these people speaking in all these different languages and all it was just a you know incredible time but as I said you know uh that was uh that was how you know I I arrived in Cleveland when your mother moved here what kind of how did she um feed herself what what did she do for food and money well at that

3:48 time steel mills were harming car factories and any kind of factory if you have came up from the south you could find work at that time so my older brothers and Si older brothers and sisters as teenagers and all you know they immediately went to work two of my three of my brothers went to work in the steel mills at Jon and Lin one of my brothers went to work in a hotel downtown eventually my mother got a job working at Mount Si Hospital in the laundry room but she wasn't there long uh because the

4:34 supervisor insisted on some sex and so she quit that and I I uh also found letters where she' applied to get on welfare but was turned down so with the older with the older children working and all of that you know uh it was basically that that's how it worked out in terms of her being able to get the little house and keep the little house and raise the children um you said you were married yeah and um your can you tell me a little bit about your wife her name my first wife name is l she's African I met her uh in San Diego she

5:22 was over here as a an ex exchange student of some kind studying nursing she EO no she is bella bella bella they spell it k p e l l e which is a uh uh uh an ethnic group in in Liberia in Guinea so she was over here uh uh as an exchange student she got pregnant uh and so we were this at a time when you couldn't get an abortion and we went through the whole thing of wondering whether she should go to T1 and all that and decided no and so so i' for two years before I'd been working in Alaska and I'd come back and had decided to finish going to school in San

6:08 Diego uh but when the state department immediately pulled her scholarship and I just said well what the hell I'll go to Africa and so I went and spent three and a half years there and a matter of fact my two firstborn she already had a child my two firstborns were born in Africa uh and so I stayed there and that was an interesting thing too probably the most mind expanding period in my life in terms of world politics and economics because when I first went there they were they had just put in a new communication system so I went to the communication thing and you know applied for a job and they said well you

6:55 know we can most maybe pay you $250 a month and so anyway I'm walking down the street and I see this sign RCA and I work for RCA in Alaska so I go in and they're looking for people basically exp Patriots who you know from Canada America from Europe who can come and work there and so yeah we'll give you a car we'll give you a house and 1,200 $100 a a a month uh uh to uh not $1,200 a week to work

7:40 here and what I would find out later that the liberians who were working alongside me and some of them whom I was training by law could only make $125 a month so the whole process of the US Aid giving them money to put in this or put in that but exp Patriots go over and just pull the money right back out you know and the laws were structured so that you know they go through these things well we can't ruin the economy so people can't be paid more than this or that and it was just mindboggling and mind opening because at the time Liberia was the third largest iron oil producer in the world and all of it going out to Germany Japan and

8:26 America and the country basically my in poverty as it were but it was such a mind openening experience and how I ended up not staying they had asked me in ' 68 to go to Mexico to help set up the electronics for the 68 Olympics so I agreed to do that and on my way to Mexico I stopped in Washington to meet to spend some time with my brother Jim who was working in the Poor People's campaign uh uh and you know Tent City and all that set up there on the mall in Washington and uh I was getting ready to go to Mexico I stopped in Memphis to

9:11 visit some relatives and on TV the next day Bobby Kennedy had been killed so I decided to not go to Mexico but go back to Africa get my family and come back and work in the movement which I did uh and was read to Riot Act you know you will never work again for NBC or RCA and blah blah blah so I came back and worked uh in the movement uh for a few years uh back in Cleveland uh started working as a television engineer at WKYC for which was owned by RCA

9:58 RCA uh and then um um so that's how I ended up uh back in Cleveland uh with my family here with my first wife um did all three of the children come back oh yeah mhm that uh matter of fact all three of them are still are still here in Cleveland you know now um and and you know the the whole thing that I was talking about in terms of the kind of just this continuous migration that we have to go through uh I remember when I first came to Cleveland I would babysit for some of my older brothers and

10:43 sisters and finally one of my sisters and her husband got an apartment way out on parkgate in 105 somewhere and I would ride the bus all the way from 7th and 9th in Kinsman out to 105 and Par G and so the movement out began and eventually one of my sisters uh years later would move into East Cleveland and and as I said so I ended up with a whole bunch of nieces and nephews living in East Cleveland you know when I came back this time there they were you you mentioned that you were married twice mhm and um um with

11:29 your first wife there were three children right um can you tell me their names and their ages uh her first child is named Arnold and he was born in I think 64 our second child ersin uh was born in 665 Charles was born in' 67 seven and then we had a daughter Nika who was born in in 71 uh Nicha was the only one born here in the states all of the others were born in Africa which means they have dual

12:15 citizenship uh I think Arnold is the only one who has ever gone back uh to visit and then um you also mentioned that you went to Alaska how did that happen well after and when did it Happ yeah in in a year I got here in in in 51 and hated it now this is going to sound weird I didn't hate the city I hated my mother I mean literally and you truly would have to understand uh and I do understand now being familiar with her life

13:02 story uh the whole thing about her not being able to go to school being raped becoming a baby factor and all of that and it seemed like the only thing that held her together was religion her just absolute fanatical almost believing in Salvation and and you know it all the different Church we would attend you know the pastor wouldn't be through his Harmony and she'd be running up and down the aisles with a couple of verses after and all and sometimes at home she would just get the singing and just break out into that shouting and stuff you know but this

13:49 woman and it was confusing later on trying to figure it all out now she done had all these babies and all that and very religious and just absolutely anti-sex everything you know and if uh and it was straight and narrow if you did anything wrong that was she broke out that LE inching a half wide leather strap you know so I was actually afraid of her you know and and uh so which it was another confusing thing because uh one day I'm lying on the couch in the living room just pining and hoping that

14:35 I could go back to Mississippi with my father because I had acent she had said no and a sister of hers in Detroit died and I asked if I could go to the funeral with her and she said no so I'm laying there on the couch and she came in and called my name Charles Charles and just killed over on top of me slid to the for floor forming out of her mouth you know by the time she got to St Luke Hospital of course she was declared dead and it was very it was very when I think about it back now now it's like here I am afraid of this woman

15:21 hating her and now she's up there and she know all of this now it was so it was very very confusing but anyway uh how I ended up in Alaska did you find yourself believing some of what she had what what her religious beliefs were in that sense interestingly know and I'll tell you why when she had left Mississippi my father had taken me and my brother up to northern Mississippi to a county tuna County where we had an aunt and on Cotton

16:07 plantations during the summer uh the churches would would hold their revivals and on this particular Plantation where we lived there was the uh it was a Methodist Church and the Baptist Church and doing The Layover period that is when you ended chopping cotton to the time when you had to start picking cotton that was maybe four to 6 week period called The Layover and the churches would hold their revivals during that time and so first we went to the Methodist Church and of course if you were a Baptist you could transfer later on etc for two weeks at the Methodist

16:53 Revival you know I guess maybe there was about you know 20 or 30 Sinners running around on the plan anation about half of them got sucked in then we went on over to the Baptist Church two weeks there were three of us left on the morning's B me my brother Jim and a lady named do and D was about 25 which meant that D had been there about 20 years okay so been there meaning the morning's bench yeah so because you go early for 4 5 6 they got you on the morning's bench well after 2 weeks three of us left so they decided to have a special Saturday

17:40 night Revival meeting which was too popular because you work 5 and a half days Monday through Friday and half a day Saturday and people you know they wanted to go to town on Saturday night well anyway wasn't happening for me Jim or do it and so I leaned over to whisper to Jim I said man don't look like we going to make it this year Jim jumped up Hit the Floor shouting and jumping scared me to death I could just see myself sitting there another 25 years with d so I just said Lord we going to have to work this L later I'm coming up from here now shoot

18:27 I got up off that bench made Jim look like he was playing the next day our Auntie was just so glad her two little boys and got religion and during the Revival you would go out you know to your special trie or to your special place in the bond and pray and you know to be saved and all of that and come that winter uh very seldom does it snow in Mississippi I'm standing by a curless window and and it had started to snow but because the sun had been shining and the ground was warm the snow would look like it was just falling not hitting the ground but

19:14 just going straight through and I'm going following this snow straight down the hell and thinking about the devil down there throwing these children and people into the fire and all of that then thinking about you know there's Heaven up there and all of that and it was just almost like something coming up out of me and I couldn't hold it back and it it was like somebody's full of and saying this you don't have nobody that you can talk to about it you can't talk to your father you can't you know uh so you just left alone with this but I just didn't believe you

20:00 know but the thing of it is you know when my mother passed you know you're going back and forth and and I'm thinking you know well she's if it's Heaven she's up there and she knows what I'm thinking and feeling but uh so that was one of you know just just stuff out of my own childhood but to get back to get to Alaska after my mother passed now it was shuffling the between this sister that sister baby sitting over here staying here at night trying to go to school not having you know clothes or tennis shoes sometimes

20:48 and when I turned 17 and my grades had started to deteriorate and all of that and and which was very traumatic for me because cuz I had always been very smart in school you know uh so at 17 I left and went to the Navy uh spent four and a half years in the Navy most of it in Hawaii and when I got out in San Diego I started to school to San Diego junior college and also started working full-time at the atlas icv M missile plant building CPM missiles okay and I did

21:35 that for two years and I decided Well I'm going to school full time uh you know got making a where we going San Diego city city col M and but I decided I'm going to quit go to Alaska make some money and come back and go to school you know fulltime without having to work so you went from San Diego mhm to Alaska to Al yeah the city that always has sunshine to a place where the buildings I mean in the winter time you have to go out and shovel the buildings off of the roof of the buildings and all because what had happened it

22:21 this well I am in the process of writing my autobiography but anyway while I'm up there what I was doing is that the United States had what they called the D line it's called distance early warning they had these powerful Radars that could actually see Over the Horizon and the idea was that if the Russian planes came we would have warning the reality was sometimes these radar stations worked sometimes they didn't you know and the Russian would play games and the planes would be over Alaska of course they could tell people that and it was it was just nutsy I was up there a couple of years uh matter of fact I was up there

23:06 when when Kennedy was killed in Dallas and so when I came back came back to San Diego to get ready to go to school that's when I met uh uh my my second wife that my first wife and then ended up going to Africa uh but then when I came back from Africa started working in Chicago with Jesse in Inc operation breadbasket uh it was very it didn't work out for my wife at all you know she there's no family around etc etc so we ended up coming back to Cleveland where I had lots of family but as it turned out that didn't work out either you know

23:53 so and So eventually uh we got a divorce I went back to California uh in music this time uh and uh and but I didn't stay in music uh that's another crazy story but anyway well how did you get from Mile's reconnaissance or to music how did that happen well uh when I was working uh in Chicago with

24:39 Jessy I uh uh someone gave me a guitar I'm in my you know late 20s or 30s or whatever at that time and I just started to to play and I started to write write songs uh but as I said we came because things wouldn't working out for my wife that we came back to Cleveland and I started working as a television engineer here and then you know learning to play the guitar and all of that uh so I marri my marriage wasn't working out and uh my brother Jim was in

25:26 Baltimore and some people that he knew and had worked with from Memphis who were part of uh Isaac Hayes on to Isaac was playing in in Baltimore and uh I had written this song called I'm a lover and uh so we're there and and uh Jim asked me to play the song for these guys and one of the guys with Isaac hay a guy named Willie maybon wanted to take the song Back to Memphis and matter of fact he did and The Staple Singers recorded it you know so that's uh and after I left Cleveland then to go back to Chicago I was really on my way

26:14 to Memphis to try to get into the whole music thing but the friend that I was staying with in Chicago his girlfriend was a press agent for Jerry Butler uh so uh someone from Jerry's songwriters Workshop came out to the house to hear me play and asked me to come down to their songwriter Workshop so I went and uh getting ready to go to Memphis and this said well no no no tell you what you do so you know we'll do demo of some of the songs and we'll take them to Hollywood and they came back with sacks of money from A&M records for me to do an album okay well here I hadn't played before 10 folk in the living room and off I go to Hollywood

27:02 and this is a true story I get out there in the very first day you know they pick you up at the airport and in limousine take you to the high continental and I'm walking across the lobby to register and these kids come running up to me and the question was are you somebody and I'm thinking that they're talking about a group or something uh and when I realize what they were asking I realized I I I wouldn't be able to do this you know somebody who is worshiping me and don't know nothing about me or whatever but anyway I went ahead with the whole thing we recorded the first album which did very well a song of from

27:48 it called Sal be white reached to number one in Chicago and Washington and so we came back to do a second album and when um we finished the second Alum I'd made up my mind and I walked into the office and told him not to release it literally the first time in my life I'd seen a white man cry because they had I guess they had had big plans for you know they new artist and it's inter interesting in terms of signing the release papers here so so I goe and told him says you know I'm I'm leaving well you know you've signed these contracts and all that and I said well I'm

28:36 leaving okay uh so I left Hollywood um and U staying in Hollywood though I left the music indust stayed in Hollywood and started working again as a television engineer with uh PBS out there I did that for about 8 years before I finally came to realize something that here in this culture you are defined by a job what you do when you talk to people you tell them what you do and all of that but just in a philosophical way I'd arrived at

29:21 no there has to be something else and I arrived at coming to understand what I was as a human being and that would be what would determine how I related to people or what I would accept in relationships with other people not being defined through some job but what constituted Being Human and what that meant in terms of how I would relate to people so I left Hollywood how long did you stay there uh 8 years I left in 83 came back to Cleveland didn't know you know I had skills I could do any kind of electrical or housing repair work and

30:07 all that so I sat in atcts and basements I was sitting one of my sister had a house with a finished third floor so I was staying there and I finally found out or decided what it was that I really was in terms of living in the world and relating and that was an an artist and art in the sense that you know of the things that that we do art to me is the image that I have in my head however I do it getting it into your

30:52 head is Art whatever I feel in my heart getting it into your heart the only I can do that is through ART whether it's Dance Theater talking writing whatever and and and I but I also learned that in this culture art is the most disrespected institution that we have matter of fact it has been reduced to entertainment really I mean we can do all these things but we aren't saying anything to people about what we're thinking of what we're feeling uh and so basically that's uh uh uh kind of like what I arrived at and interestingly

31:41 enough uh I I'd gone to church one Sunday with a sister-in-law and you I'd played a couple of songs on my guitar in church and this lady came up and said what you doing this afternoon I said we know nothing come on go with me well where you going don't worry about it just come on and she took me to East Cleveland theater and introduced me to Community Theater and uh so from there the whole thing Blossom 5 years later I was uh professionally performing Theater in Denver Colorado and eventually ended up on Broadway and

32:26 that kind of stuff but the important thing to me now in in my own life is is the art and but I also got out there did theater did music again not in terms of just the traditional recording stuff uh found it very rewarding uh and meaningful but I also knew back here in Cleveland all of my brothers and sisters some of their children were just in this were all of your brothers and sisters by then in Cleveland except for maybe James I think he was in Baltimore uh now

33:12 James was all over because when he came he went to the Navy briefly he told me studying told story and all that he decided M so he left the Navy and went to American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville to become a minister and of course he was involved in the Nashville Citys with he and his wife Diane Nash and CT Vivian Mary and Barry and other folk he later hooked up withc did the whole movement thing and after King was killed he left CLC and start doing his own you know

33:59 organizations and whatnot and it were doing that during one of those time that he was in Baltimore but all of my brothers and sisters basically except for two brothers who ended up in St Louis all of us ended up in the Cleveland area I'm going to ask you a probably a cliche question but but kind of kind of fun can you name all of your 17 brothers and sisters yes can you name them in the order of their birth yes I thought so do would you do it for me okay that was Maddie ANZ bevel Dennis bevel Jr Earl bevel Rosa thoron darthur de Elma thoron David

34:45 bevel uh Mary Alice bevel Otis Calvin bevel Victor lyd bevel clar Kermit bevel Floyd Zella bevel James bevel m myself Charles bevel then there's Helen bevel Evelyn bevel and Johnny bevel wow yeah it's amazing and it's interesting you know for when I got into the whole genealogical thing uh uh which is another just whole fascinating thing in terms of learning about my history and my family and and and but I I know all of my 61 nieces and nephews and mo I know most of that children you know those uh particular all of the ones here

35:32 in Cleveland you know uh 61 nieces and nephews MH that's that's a large number and and your children you had you had the first three with your first wife right and and four because we had a daughter in 71 mhm did she survived yeah the daughter has six children of her own my old Arnold our oldest child he has two children U my son ersin has two children who finished college and he and his present cohart just had a baby congratulations yeah and then my son Charles he has three he has three sons and of course I said that my

36:19 daughter Nicha she has five children and have you um in your with your second wife have you had children with her no uh we met after I was in theater you know she I met her in New Jersey when we' gone to do a play there called it ain't nothing but the blues and in fact the theater that she worked at called Crossroads was a black theater they were the one responsible for us getting to play uh it ain't nothing but the blues to Broadway she has three children three grown sons of her own you know so uh so she stuck in New Jersey now with grandchildren and was she your um were her children children when you

37:05 married her or were they adults two of them were still at home the youngest was in high school the oldest was uh working as a barber but he was still living there which was kind of a funny story cuz after I was there for a month you know I told her well uh he's got to go and oh he's going to he's got to go of course I mean even he appreciates it now in terms of you know having someone that to kind of push him out and the ego out of the nest mhm uh so yes she has three grown children and three six grand children herself

37:54 now well um so you met married her in 80 no in 2000 2000 okay and um were you living in C you were living in New Jersey then I was uh uh matter of fact I moved in with her and we were doing a play in Washington at the arena theater Washington DC or Washington DC and we got married in Washington DC in 2000 and so now she's in the apartment in New Jersey and I'm in the apartment here and we you know just kind of flit back and forth whenever we can find their time the um but you were artists

38:42 together yeah mhm um what does she do as an artist what kinds of work she basically in terms of livelihood thing she's uh incredible teacher she's retired now uh you know she did the whole teacher of the year thing in New Jersey and all that for few times but when Crossroads Theater was first founded by two black guys who graduated from Harvard I mean not Harvard but from ruers she was a part of that group that uh put the theater together and she's an incredible administrator but not on the official staff she's one of these people who

39:27 if you want to go to the White House Su will get you in the White House okay she's that kind of person uh and so uh uh so she's one of those background people that just kind of make things work and um in terms of race she would consider herself I would think black yeah you know when I think of my energy and where it's going to be placed for the next 30 Years cuz I'm going to live to be 105 okay I made that decision they're basically two

40:13 things one is exposing and doing what I can to end white supremacy the other thing is EXP exposing and getting women in particular to understand misogyny and I think that is more important than dealing with the whole race thing how women have acquiesced to just whether you're speaking of it in just physical terms economic terms or whatever how capitalism have just wrapped them up and taken away

40:58 all of the human power that they have and and it's analogous to me in some ways to the whole black experience that when you come to realize that I'm a human being and I'm just not going to take it anymore uh because when you think about it let me give you an example uh uh I have a brother Al say a Jim who uh in spite of all that he's done in the civil rights movement and it is my honest belief that when we are past it far enough that when people look

41:45 back what he did in terms of that in the whole movement thing will probably measure up the things that happened in the American Revolution or the Civil War what his contributions were but as it turned out Jim was a pedophile and had been molesting some of his daughters from the time that they were four five six years old when the whole thing was discovered and it was discovered because Jim has all these children 14 15 children 17 children by eight different women me and my wife was in Las Vegas

42:31 and I looked up a son of his who was out there and he was reading this book about the children I think it was about the Nashville movement and he was realizing he had all these brothers and sisters that he'd never met so I says okay here this one live here this one live here call and he did and they all got together in Washington and suddenly the girls are sitting around saying Oh YouTube YouTube and so at the time Jim had a six-year-old daughter still in his home with his last wife and these girls said oh hell no and so they started the whole process of trying to reconcile with him in terms of what you had done to us plus we got to get our sister out of your house they went round and round and

43:17 round for three years and so finally one of them said you know to hell with it I'm going to try to do it through the courts they went to Illinois Pennsylvania Tennessee and finally in Virginia had a law where you could look back and all these other states you turn 18 baby you got one year to file charges if you don't forget it and I'm just thinking if legislative bodies were 50% women how they that that just wouldn't wouldn't be on the books anymore so it's getting women to understand that a lot of this stuff whether you're talking about education child care whatever it's not going to happen until women are at least in legislative bodies to the extent that

44:04 they are in the population and it's like it's almost like when I compare to the Civil Rights Movement there were white people in the South who are hated that stuff but they weren't going to step out in front of them black folk I'll be with you when you step up and and it's frustrating sometime you know when I see women acquiescing and all that and I do what I can you know the thing working with my nieces and nephews getting them to understand that you have to get to that point of defining yourself as a human being and not as a job where you can begin to make some profound decisions in

44:50 terms of how you're going to live your life you know as a human being so it's it's like that's the focus going forward for me those two things dealing with white supremacy and and uh uh uh misogyny uh because what happens I've come to realize if you're in a relationship it's real if it's real and you know it and and so and sometimes in relationships with women for me it can be frustrating because I can see the acquiescence and I know I can't be fully me until you are fully you in terms of a relationship can

45:37 you tell me how your uh notion about misogyny and uh white supremacy plays out in your relationship to people in East Cleveland yes I remember well let's take one at a time if you can or if they work together yeah I I was in a meeting with some City administrators from some planers from the county in terms of this whole thing about East Cleveland being insolvent and what we're going to do and how we're going to do and they were talking about how you do things you know you

46:24 planning whether you going to get money from here and all all of that and I'm I'm thinking like wellit well hold a minute let me tell y'all something I got a niece out here who got nine babies uh who in a couple of years had died of drug overdose you know leaving the babies and so forth and so on I said but y'all aren't considering these people you you you know they're here they don't have any resources 70% of them are on some sort of government assistance and no one is talking about these people and the administrator from the city said well uh they they're transients you know uh which is true but

47:12 still in fact there they are you're not considering them uh and and it's the whole thing uh and I'm trying to kind of connect those things to what you're saying about the whole misogynist thing one of them is that to change things or do things you have to deal with facts and one of the facts is that people are going to have sex one of the facts is we can talk all the thing well you know they could use prophylactics and all of that no they're not going to do that because it feels better to them without the prophylactics so they're going to get pregnant and they're going to have

47:58 babies uh that's that's the reality that you have to start with to change anything and sure that they need to be educated uh and and and again uh all of these people from outside making decisions about what's going to happen in East Cleveland without any real input from the people who live here whether they are transcend or not uh but anyway I'm I'm lost now in terms of trying to respond to your question so how do you define misogyny um

48:43 misogyny is that I'm male and I have set up religions political systems economic systems that mean when it comes to making human decisions as a male I'm going to make those decisions and not you as a female uh and the thing of it is I have never seen anybody who had an advantage in any kind of way who just relinquished it that some other person is going to have to decide sides and no this ain't right uh uh and think of it this

49:33 way sometimes I tell people when I look at this stuff every living human being that I know came into this world through a woman's vagina after they have sat in her stomach in her womb for 9 months what those women think and feel I I haven't a clue but yet I'm making the decisions about what happens after that process has occurred and most of the times it means that as a male I can abandon those children and ain't nobody going to say to me when I think of it let me let me tell

50:19 you this L when I first went to Africa one of the most mindblowing experience I'm standing at the top of the gang just getting off the plan standing at the top of the stairwell and out there in front of me was a sea of black people waiting for their children to come back and all of that and I literally mean black and uh I'd never seen that before because here in America black is a racial term not a physical description okay and so and a matter of fact when we went up country two days later to to up to the village where my wife was from and her mother was looking through

51:06 our wedding albums and all of that and I kept hearing the word que so later on I I said well you know I'm learning what is que she said white man and I well I hold a minute that thought had never entered my mind during my whole life that I could be considered a white person because in America because of the one drop rule I mean you can have blonde hair blue eyes pale skin if we can have a suspicion that you got a drop of African blood in you you can't be white which means that in America of the 30 or 40 million black folk here more than half of us have been abandoned by these white men that's a

51:54 reality that you can't even get people to talk about and in a capitalist Society where you pass your property and everything down to your children basically we have been abandoned and no one talks about it we talk about abandonment in terms of all these Rascal black guys out here making babies and abandoning them well there a whole damn race we've been abandoned and ain't nobody talking about it they talking about it in terms of conversation whether it's education or whatever uh so when I look at the whole thing I have to look at all of that stuff about women having children or however they came they don't have resources to do anything and when

52:40 you don't have resources I can guarantee you you're going to abandon something uh uh and so as human beings you there are certain institutions that have to function for your culture to survive one of them is Art one of them is religion one is home one is education one is Health one is work or providing resources you know government making policy and as a human being you have to be aware of those institutions and and and

53:25 and be aware that I'm not in the process people are just making decisions and I I ain't said nothing about nothing but I have to to subscribe to what they've decided uh and and it's like that whole misogyny thing where women have just accepted or acquiesced to being defined by someone else just as Black Folk have acquest to being defined by someone else every one of those names whether you start with black

54:11 octoroon color we didn't decide that that was decided by someone else as I said like my grandfather on four different sentences he's a colored man black man a motto and and and something else and it's like he didn't decide that someone else decided that and that's the whole thing of getting people to understand as a human being there are powers that you have to know about yourself and begin to to exercise I don't know whether I answered anything that you asked enough well you did and and both keep will work at it too because um I was thinking back just for a second uh on

54:56 the F your first mention of coming to East Cleveland and um you said that someone said come on go with me and didn't tell you where they were taking you but you ended up in East Cleveland's theater mhm and it was a woman that took you there right um was that your first encounter in East Cleveland that was my first encounter like directly with something in Cleveland I knew people in East Cleveland you know that that I would visit matter of fact I had a sister actually who lived in East Cleveland but you know just in terms of something different in East Cleveland other than

55:43 you know go visit my sister or whatever that was yeah which sister was it uh her name was Mary Mar yeah and um do you know when she moved to East Cleveland I do not because when I left at 17 uh in 56 you know most of them were clustered either uh down matter of fact she at that time was living in the projects on 50 on Scoville in 55th somewhere down there cuz I uh lived with her as I attended East Tech uh but she was the one who who who made the move to to East Cleveland from then and I don't know exactly when when

56:29 that occurred do you remember where she lived in East Cleveland uh no it was somewhere east of that railroad uh let's say if you uh uh the railroad I think on one side of it is Cleveland the other side is East Cleveland R around third fourth and fifth streets of long that she was east east of that on third fourth or 5ifth somewhere in there so you'd go and visit her mhm um but not have much to do with the community at large no M dealing with the community at large was when I came back

57:14 about 3 or 4 years ago because I had so many nieces and nephews here well I want to stick with that time when you went to the uh East Cleveland theater for a second just for a little bit sure and tell me what you thought about East Cleveland as a result of seeing the theater uh nothing in in the sense of a a community all I was interested in is just the theater itself what was happening at the theater uh Community plays uh I remember one incident so the two people who ran the theater was Jean and what was the lady's name Pace they they were two white

58:02 people uh uh and it was interesting they ran the theater with a rotary telephone believe it or not okay but they had a Cadre of supporters people from Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland uh it was a uh uh interracial theater in the sense that's the way they had set it up but there was one particular incident they wanted to do the play Carmen Jones and of course Carmen Jones was written I think in the early 40s and they had all of this dialect stuff in there okay and so I wrote them a letter I said look you're talking about a period where you can name just hundreds of black

58:48 people artist singers and all of that and you're going to produce this play where we're talking about is and and all of that and then it's like the same thing you know sure when I go home you know get in the house I throw off my work you know my suit or whatever you know my language can change uh but but but it's like all of that stuff is about maintaining a concept that the general public out there white folk have about what black folk do how they talk how they be and we're not going to do that in this play you remember what year that was

59:36 that was in the late 80s uh I'm sure I have somewhere a copy of the letter that I wrote to them were you a part of the play when it happened mhm and what role did you play I don't remember you know I probably was just in the chorus you know singing um but I remember the first place that I did there was a play called sugar it was a I don't remember what the movie was but it was a movie with Marilyn Monroe and uh uh what's the guy Jack Lemon I think what he dressed up as a woman or whatever I don't remember what the movie was but the stage play was called sugar that was the first production that I had done at East Cleveland was that before or after the

1:00:24 play where you wrote them a letter that was before yeah um but you know when I came back and got involved with East Cleveland it is something that I realized that when my sister had moved out to East Cleveland I guess when I was away that was a Ford Motor plant on Court Road General Electric was harming there were other things where East Cleveland had a tax basee okay so when sewers were went wrong you could get the The Fix You could pave the streets none of that existed when I came back

1:01:09 here uh and so you're still trying to be a city but without dealing with the reality that the people who are in the city don't have jobs they don't pay income tax like right here in UK right now I pay income tax the city take that little $200 that I give them and $200 in this man they fix the streets they fix the lights the whatever East Cleveland doesn't have that and no one is addressing that problem from the base well they uneducated they can't get jobs well educate them well blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and and so you get into that thing I tell you what it's like and it's crude to express it in this

1:01:54 way but there this gen General undercurrent and Obama's administration of how he is being fought and dealt with demonstrates it and it's like well if the going to get some I'm again it uh I understood that in the South and through the Midwest now that whole pervasive attitude is still that if the nigg going to get something I'm get it now when you came to visit your sister in East Cleveland years ago yeah did you think of East Cleveland in any particular way in terms of race no uh I I did not I

1:02:43 wasn't I was aware of this because another sister of mine had moved to Eddie Road and there was a pattern that you could see that the white people who had teenagers they were the first to get the hell out of here okay the next ones were the on with little children the old white folk they didn't have no problem staying because they didn't have to deal with that whole sexual interaction that everybody is thinking about uh but as I said the pattern was the white people with teenagers we got to get out of here the younger children could stay a

1:03:30 little longer until they got a little older and they had to get out of here and so it's like this when I think of it now let's say you take Little Italy which is right next door they have been able to say look we're going to hold on to our community by however it is we're just not going to let them in okay but that seems to be a Tipping Point and I'm talking about all over the country where when a certain amount of black people get in in the community the other people leave and so we can migrate in uh and and and I don't know all of the history of East Cleveland in terms

1:04:16 of that but I do know that in Cleveland in places like Glenville and so forth that was the pattern uh and and it's like what people don't seem to understand that uh uh in terms of maintaining a community uh there are these institutions that have to be in place and the first thing is that if you do not have resources if you do not have quote unquote a job it's not going to work it it's just not going to work and that is basically when if you think of it

1:05:02 now we used to have to do physical work to stay alive whether you were in the South or wherever you had physical work that you have to do right now with uh rubber Hydraulics and computers they do the work all we have to do is sit up and watch a plasma screen and work our fingers and so we don't need these massive groups of people working on all the time and we haven't addressed that issue and it hasn't been addressed in terms of so you have this you know my nieces and nephews they're migrating again they go up on the hill in East Cleveland they can get into Cleveland Heights or in the South

1:05:48 ukl and so the migration you know starting back a warmth above the sun it continues who's migrating into East Cleveland my nieces and nephews I have a into East Cleveland not out of uh no one is is is is in what is happening a part of it is that institutions seeing the land they know sooner or later the people who are there can't keep up the houses and through some institutional means they will be moved out and the institutions can come in and what they want to do and and particularly in terms of my thinking the hospitals and the university right next

1:06:34 door they're coming so you think that they will be the future uh influx in East Cleveland are you are you aware of the Russian population that is in East Cleveland yes in in the apartment buildings there yeah and see this is and that whole thing is another it's interesting because I studied Russian when I was in in college uh because uh you know I'm kind of a peaceful person and if my enemy I really need to talk to my enemy okay so uh uh speaking of the cold war war war area so so yeah I'm aware of those apartment buildings there being full of Russians that were given places you know and and supported and so forth and so on without too much

1:07:20 noise uh but it gets back to that thing of this whole undercurrent is that the are going to get something so let's kind of not deal with that and you know what a part of the the the thing list maybe this is all out of whack in terms of what this interview should be about but one of the most profound things to me is that what we do to not deal with something we begin to develop a whole bunch of euphemisms where we don't have to talk about it it is like and the most blatant example to me is the nword thing oh oh we don't oh everybody on TV oh the n-word the NW the n-w no the word is when I'm at a

1:08:06 meeting and I hear nword uh do you mean uh necrofilia nasty noisy or which nword are you referring to uh see and and it means now and we develop euphemisms well the urban po no you're talking about Black Folk uh the exurban population no you're talking about white folk let's talk in real language so we can decide how we're going to solve this problem because we develop all of these euphemisms you know for just like the heroin thing that's happening out in the curs now suddenly you hear on NPR oh you know the the amount of deaths by heroin is more than

1:08:52 homicides and and and and vehicular accidental well I wasn't hearing y'all talking about her a few months a few years ago stop using euphemism white folk kids are dying from heroin now say that and and then we can talk about well okay I don't mind you going ahead and developing whatever program you talk about honest conversation honest conversation speaking of honest conversation M uh can you tell me about how racism has impacted on you personally racism I also heard you talk about white supremacy um if you could talk about either one of those and how

1:09:38 it affects you personally or has impacted on you personally when I was I must have been eight because this was after my mother had left and we were in tunicle County Mississippi and the plantation owner had gotten a new combine machine that is the machine that Harvest oats and they was all out there trying it out you know about seven or eight black men and the the plantation on a 16y old son well me and my brother Jim had gone out there because if the combine go along cutting down o you rabbits would run out and we would chase the rabbits okay so they had stopped for lunch and they all standing around

1:10:26 and the white boy said something to me and I said huh because I didn't understand and he turned on me huh boy don't you ever say huh to a white man you say yes sir no sir I will skin your black ass wow and I'm standing there and I look up and all of those black men had their hands in their pockets counting their toes and I'm thinking like well why don't y'all say something to this this boy and uh so Jim kind of hunched me in the side and said let's

1:11:12 go and it was probably one of those moments where Jim had decided to know because the for the rest of that day he was just like quiet sitting with his eyes almost closed just you know and he said to me don't say nothing to Daddy about this because he knew our father uh another incident on that you said he knew your father yeah tell me what that means well I'll tell you in this next story our father had told us to go down to our aunt's house and grind up some corn for the chickens okay so we were down there on on am at's back

1:11:58 porch grinding up the corn and this same white boy came by what y'all doing you know we can rind some car Mr Perry get them goddamn hoes and get in the field because our father didn't Farm like other folk you know folk when they're chopping cotton they would start on one side of the field go all the way to the other side then start over go all keep all the weeds cut down you looked at out on my dad is cotton field you wouldn't even see no cotton weeds and be he wasn't going to do that but one time a year okay so we got the hoes went to the field by the now here come our daddy uh Jim I thought I told you boy to grind some cone I said well Jim said well we was Daddy but uh uh uh Jack Perry came

1:12:47 by and told us to get the hoes and go to the field well we were kind of sub sharecropping with my aunt's husband so Daddy went out in the field and told Uncle ER you know you got to go up there and tell that white Mo man that them was my boys Uncle ER wasn't about to go tell wife so Daddy turned on his heels and went headed straight for the big house that's why Jim didn't want me to say nothing to to Daddy about what had happened the second time because he knew what what Daddy would do well Daddy went up there and so come night he wasn't back so the two of us sitting at home wondering and worrying okay by 11:00 at

1:13:32 night we hit the door the screen door to the porch open and it was Daddy he didn't say nothing to us about what had happened and all that but the next day our aunt told us what had happened Dad had gone up there and told that white man look them's my boys and if you want them to do anything you come tell me and I'll tell them if I think it's something that they should do uh uh uh and until they get 21 you come tell me what you want them to do well of course at the end of that year we had to move but uh uh and our Aunt Maddie kind of told us that story in terms of what had happened uh and that's the way our father was

1:14:19 uh so that's what Jim meant when he said don't tell Daddy because you know he just didn't want a daddy to go through a whole another thing that maybe we would have to move before the year was out was there any other kind of punishment for your father's uh bold statement and I think a part of it was somehow or another he was in the Masonic order and those things kind of meant something to to different black men in their relationship to white folk uh things that they maybe could do or or whatever that others couldn't uh but now in terms of the whole

1:15:05 uh racism and white supremacy see most people don't know that the concept of race first of all in terms of taxonomy where scientists classify species the word race is isn't in there anywhere the word race as a concept of dividing human beings up is less than 500 years old most people don't even know that that in the 17th century when the whole when human beings became a commodity just like anything else that is you could sell and

1:15:52 buy them in justifying that they had to come up with it where they're different they're not fully human and all of that kind of stuff so that's when that whole race classification thing started and really wasn't brought to finality until the 19th century when these particular scientists in Europe began to measure heads and and all that crazy stuff but before that there were black people in Africa I mean in Europe and they were you could black was a descriptive thing then rather than a racial thing uh and people aren't aware of that they just assume that you know race has been how people have been divided up forever but that's not true uh and so

1:16:41 I see a clear difference between racism and most people conflated whether you're saying white supremacy or or racism but what happened was in that whole thing a sort of totem pole thing develop where white is pure now let me give you an example if I you were at my dining table and there was a bowl of sugar there and that was a a pepper sprinkler and I took the pepper sprinkler and shook it over the sugar do you think I could convince you that that whole bowl of sugar is now pepper but that is the concept of white supremacy and we have all bought into it

1:17:29 um they come on in they got to come in and and do all right put some roach stuff down all right uh we'll get going after he'll only be here a second oh you can shut it off yeah so here's the deal me taking the the pepper and sprinkling it over the Sugar Bowl and suddenly the The Whole Bowl of sugar is pepper that is how we deal with race in America it's it's crazy the Brazilians when they got into it they came up with 134 classifications between Africans white people and Indians well here in America when it came down because mostly

1:18:14 we were dealing here with black and white folks it was like oh hell no that can be only two things we ain't going to have no in between like in South Africa they they have an in between they call them colored or whatever in America oh no you are either white or black so given given your first in first me memory of um a youngster saying to you or asserting his authority mhm uh over you and your brother well over you actually um given that how what did that do to you how did how did that how did that impact on you what did what happened I I could see that your your

1:19:02 brother sort of schooled you to just step away but what how did you feel it reinforced things that were already in place because in itaba when we moved to itaba from Swift town and it was in iaba when I first went to school the school that we went to was a seven room brick building with a Auditorium in the middle and three classrooms on this side three classrooms on this side that was for 12 grades uh the elementary school for white kids was our big Elementary School uh the white kids in iinaa was

1:19:48 bust to Greenwood to the Greenwood white high school the black kids on plantations around iinaa had to walk to school or there was one uh man old man Grandam who had a piece of bus that he would haul maybe black kids in in in in into school so all of these things were just institutionally there that said to you you were less than I remember I sort of followed in Jim's Trail in terms of if he would get a job when he would leave I would be the next gu to get the job and I remember he had gotten a job Uptown and it'll been a shining shoes in the white barers

1:20:33 shop and uh after he left I did that and it was like they would be in there just talking about what they do and how they do with black women or you know and all of that and you was just you were just there a spit bucket or something you know you didn't even matter in terms of being some human thing that was hearing and understanding and relating to what what they they they were saying so institutionally all of these things were just there and you accepted it you you were inferior you would feel inferior you know the whole thing about your hair you got nappy hair uh all of these

1:21:19 things were were were there and and to show you how deep this stuff can go I have a brother who lives did white people talk to you about your hair uh no at this at this point you know you you you all of these things and what we don't understand is that by you know by the time that you were three or four years old there was nothing that anybody could say to you in English that you didn't understand right but what we don't understand is in that same way we absorb all of the cultural stuff and you know that you're inferior that you're black that you you

1:22:05 AR the smartest white folk and and and and and so it's interesting I have a brother who's in his 60s now who lives in Denver Colorado he's basically Street person schizophrenic and all that and when I go out through Denver sometime I will visit him and one of the times he was talking about and he was asking me you know why did God do that to us why did he give us all this old nappy hair and so this stuff can become ingrained and very deeply ingrained so it's just an acceptable thing in terms of your feelings your thoughts about yourself and all of that uh and unless you find some way to come to a whole different understanding it is just there

1:22:52 you know so you have these personal experiences where um first you're shining shoes and they're treating you like you're a non-person and they're talking about things sounds like adult conversation first of all sort of sort of adult because they're talking about their sexual encounters and all that but it's also uh embedded in that is the inferiority of black people MH um and so and then you had the second the second encounter that you talked about was uh of you saying huh what do you mean or whatever to this white boy teager and having that impact on you

1:23:39 mhm those are Lessons Learned those are Lessons Learned and and and and it's like this you know I guess during the 60s you know with James Brown I'm Black and I'm Proud and we went to all of that and we were win and dashas and afro and all of that but as a kid in the South if you wanted your life threaten call a black person black that's how deep it was how how much self-hatred had was ingrained uh uh you know and so because the whole hierarchy of coloration had been adapted by black Black Folk the Black Folk in

1:24:26 town who were the preachers or who were the teachers were were you know lightskinned and straight hair and that sort of stuff so that whole cultural thing as I said you just learned it from the time you were what was the most respectable thing to call a black person in Mississippi in your youth uh just colored colored was more respectable negro uh well I I don't I don't know whether I even thought of it in that term but that was the term basically you didn't you know that was the term that was in Vogue at that time colored colored people you know it's a you know it was a colored boy or it was

1:25:12 a colored girl or whatever you know I I don't even recall I mean it we were aware of it the term negro but the term at that time was just colored and certainly not black uh because as I said that was very derogatory words yeah now you've described how it how racism or white supremacy impacted on you and what kind of lessons you gleaned from those encounters that you described um and you've talked some already about how racism impacted or impacts East Cleveland can you say a little more about that yeah see there there are

1:25:57 things there's personal racism of course there's institutional racism and before I get to East Cleveland let me do this I was up to up to the coffee house there on campus in case was in reserve and I guess the lady who's in charge of diversity or inclusion had written an article and they had these on the front of the paper it had these little circles with the percentages of different people of quote unquote that Necessities or races at the University and for Black Folk it's about 5% and I'm thinking institutionally if you were to take all of kayoga County I don't know black folk

1:26:43 I don't know what percentage of the county we are uh I know in this Cleveland we're probably about 50% or more and you have all these educational in institutions in Koga County and at every one of them our percentage would be about five 6 7% okay and we're talking about inclusion well if if Case is seriously interested in inclusion why is case on the case and saying we're sitting in a city with black people being 50% of the city if we're serious about education if we're serious about transforming this nation why is our program geared towards having 50% of our school

1:27:29 body 50% black well here's the thing the answer will come back well you know we just we still have to go by standards the educational standards that you know we we select the kids who the top of their classes out of whatever school well then part of your program would be going and helping those schools structure themselves to do that and the school would say well you know there kids out there ain't no dadd in the house and the mama got all these other babies and so the kids stay up at 2:00 in the morning uh playing on their cell phones if you are serious as an institution you got to be talking about

1:28:14 that and addressing that uh uh whether it's occurring in East Cleveland or wherever and so uh and so institutions are structured in a way that allowed them to escape taking part in the transformation that has to take place if we're going to deal with the with the whole uh inclusion thing and I just don't see it happening uh uh from an educational institutional point of view

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