A Heyday in the Toledo Life

Johnetta McCullough:

She thought it was going to be urban revitalization, which is what they sold it as. But once they plowed it all down and made the landscaping with the hill and the sidewalk and stuff, there was no revitalization in any of those plans.

Reggie Rucker:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I am your co-host, Reggie Rucker, back with my co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke?

Luke Gannon:

Hey, Reggie. I just can’t stop thinking about the guest our listeners are about to hear. Her story, I spent so much time editing and just being with it, and her story is just so heart-wrenching and moving.

Reggie Rucker:

Yeah, I’m actually really excited for this one too. I love what you said when we were talking about this Toledo season. It’s this idea how you can read all about urban renewal and understand it conceptually, but it just hits different when you hear the stories firsthand of the people who experienced it and had their lives upended by these policies.

Luke Gannon:

Exactly. Yes, exactly. We can’t go back, but what gives me some solace and hope is that we can write our present and future and begin to repair these injustices.

Reggie Rucker:

Yeah, that’s so true. So tell the listeners about today’s episode.

Luke Gannon:

Johnetta Turner-McCullough, at 75 years, recently retired after a career dedicated to making a difference. She served as the Executive Director of Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities or TASC of Northwest Ohio, an organization committed to breaking the cycle of addiction and recidivism. But Johnetta’s story of impact began long before her time at TASC. Alongside her husband, Nelson, whose family were prominent entrepreneurs on Dorr Street, they owned The Spot restaurant and the adjoining gas station that served as its parking lot. Their ventures were more than businesses. They were vital community hubs. Here’s Johnetta.

Johnetta McCullough:

My history with Dorr Street is my first husband and his family were entrepreneurs on Dorr Street. They started at 1060, which is probably pretty close to where this site is, because when you come up the side street of Hoyt, it was right there on Dorr Street, that was the 1060. And we were at the corner of Door and Detroit. We also owned a gas station that was actually on corner of Dorr and Detroit, and then, The Spot was, well, that parking lot was both the gas station and it was parking for The Spot. The spot was like a mecca. It was a gathering place where people came. Dorr Street itself was a mecca. People traveled down Dorr Street to be seen and to see who was on Dorr Street. All the cars went down, and then, when the bars closed at 2:30, The Spot was where you went to see people, you didn’t want to go to an after-hour joint, but you could come to The Spot and order shrimp, chicken, fish, and it was the next part of the experience after the bar is closed.

We stayed open, I want to think, till 4, 4:30 on the weekends, because the traffic was really good. There weren’t any other restaurant of note that were in that stretch. And so, there were several bars. The M&L was on the right. Jimmy’s Lounge, she was my cousin. There was a bank immediately across the street from us, and there was a Kroger store on Dorr Street originally. And for some reason, just investment, they decided to go away and then, it became a dance hall.

Luke Gannon:

Nelson and Johnetta lived right above The Spot, making it convenient for them to manage the restaurant and enjoy the late night buzz well into the early hours.

Johnetta McCullough:

Because it didn’t close to 4, 4:30, we were kind of like night people. We didn’t get up early, that’s for sure, because we knew that it would open again at four, five o’clock and somebody had to be on, somebody had to go and pick up the fresh produce. There wasn’t a lot of delivery back then. The shrimp and the frog legs, frog legs were really popular. And people don’t think they would, but those were delivered from Detroit, from the Detroit Fish Market, and it’s still there. And they would bring the fresh fish down and those frog legs, I remember. Somebody else was the chicken…

It was like the place to go to after the bars closed. It was like the wind down space, without being an after-hour joint. Everybody that came up there came up because they were invited and there was no exchange of money. It was just where all of us who worked Dorr Street, for some reason or another, would come and gather. And because my husband played the saxophone, if there were any bands or individuals who were in town, for some other reason, somehow or another, it was the mecca for them to… Maynard Ferguson, which was a mainstream jazz aficionado, he came up with his band. If jazz players were coming from anywhere near, they would end up at our house after the bar is closed.

Luke Gannon:

Dorr Street was more than just a collection of businesses. It was a vibrant culture, a home filled with love, music, friendships, and gatherings. It represented a unique lifestyle, one that many younger people, including Johnetta, didn’t fully appreciate until it had faded away.

Johnetta McCullough:

It was what you knew, and so, you didn’t miss it until urban renewal and other factors came through and took stuff down. Then you realized that you had this Black enterprise section, where the people that owned the businesses were friends, neighbors, they were Black, they employed Black people. And it was a good time, but I didn’t miss it until it was gone. Because you didn’t have anything to compare it to

Luke Gannon:

When Johnetta was just 24, on the brink of the so-called urban renewal, tragedy struck. Her husband, Nelson, was killed, and she was six months pregnant. Like many others at the time, Johnetta had no idea what urban renewal would bring. Residents were reassured to trust in promises of progress, from a government that had repeatedly fallen short, leaving the community in the dark about the changes that were to come.

Johnetta McCullough:

I must admit that I did not have awareness of what urban renewal was going to bring. My mother-in-law was all over it. She didn’t like the settlement that they offered for The Spot, and they decided they were going to take it by eminent domain, The Spot. I went to a hearing and I want to think it was the City of Toledo hearing, in which she testified. And she fully had her brains around it, because they had moved from 1060 down to the current restaurant at 1344 Dorr Street. And she understood. She understood that they had taken out the earlier part of Dorr Street down by Washington, St. Benedicts was the Catholic church, said there was the only Black Catholic church, St. Benedicts. And she was Catholic, and so, she understood that it was moving. And I didn’t understand that they were going to obliterate the whole neighborhood. I did not.

It took maybe a couple of years before I realized, “Uh-uh, this is not what she thought it was going to be.” She thought it was going to be urban revitalization, which is what they sold it as. But once they plowed it all down and made the landscaping with the hill and the sidewalk and stuff, there was no revitalization in any of those plants, and if they were, it was on the other side of the street where they built the fire station and they built this shopping center, which was subpar when they built. It was just this cruddy little strip mall thing that they put there, which was to placate the people in the neighborhood where they said that we’re going to do revitalization. That is all that they did. Everything else, everything on our side of the street, there was never any plan to fix any part of that. And they did that, and that was all that they accomplished was a new fire station to replace the one that was on Detroit and this shoddy lower shopping center.

Luke Gannon:

In July, 1974, following Nelson’s death, Johnetta’s in-laws helped her move both their home upstairs and the restaurant out of The Spot. That day marked the last time Johnetta experienced the spirit of Dorr Street before it was demolished by so-called urban renewal.

Johnetta McCullough:

That was the last day that The Spot was open, and it was July 30th, I want to think. Because they moved me on Glendale to an apartment that was removed from the people that I knew. By the time I had baby and got myself together and came back, they had torn down The Spot, they had torn down the M&L, which was on the other side of the street. The bank was gone, the cleaners was gone, the Dorr Hall was demolished. All the things that I knew, somehow or another, within six months, were gone. There was a conversation about replicating, to some degree, the Black mecca, that would be for entrepreneurs and that people would have opportunity. And that did not happen. They did provide some housing, which was something that they promised, and that’s New Town on the other side of the street. It’s apartments, and they’re not permanent supportive. They’re just low-income housing.

That was a welcome development to put those houses, which start at City Park and worked their way up to Junction. And in fact, I lived there in ’75 to maybe ’77, two years. After I had had my daughter and there was nothing else there, it was brand new and I qualified for one of those apartments in the upstairs. And so, I moved in there for couple of years. They fulfilled their promise that they said, “We’re going to put housing back. We’re going to put some housing back that we tore down.” They didn’t do anything for the enterprise part of offering opportunities for businesses to come back. And I think it was part of the design or they wouldn’t have built that hill and the sidewalk, the way it was positioned, to ever put anything… There was never anything in it, and so, I think that, by the time people figured it out, it was way too late.

They were selling it as green space. That was the new phrase. We are launching green space, and they built a new elementary school across the street. They developed Smith Park. They did some spotty sort of things, but they never got back to, and I don’t think they ever wanted to, have that concentration of Black people, especially Black people who were in charge of their own destiny. There was never that. It was diffused. Integration brought opportunities to be in the mainstream. You could open something in a strip mall someplace else, looking back, that that was the plan is, “We’re going to diffuse this concentration of Black people with resources.” With that, comes political clout.

Luke Gannon:

After “urban renewal,” the slow cruises down Dorr Street, waving to passersby, late-night gatherings at The Spot after the bar is closed, and the joy of eating frog legs, while listening to jazz musicians from Detroit in lively music clubs, all of that came to an end. Dorr Street’s vibrant culture was dismantled, leaving its residents with a fractured community. Thank you so much for sharing your history on Building Local Power, Johnetta. On the next episode, we will look at how politicians in Toledo are working to rebuild trust and Dorr Street.

Reggie Rucker:

Such a great episode, Luke. Thank you so much. And folks, since you’re not able to see Johnetta, let me just tell you, Johnetta is my new goals at 75. She easily has another 75 years in her, but Ron Knox, on our team, thank you again for your work collecting these important stories from underground in Toledo. Be sure to check out the show notes from today’s episode, which includes a link to the inspiration for this podcast in story map form, written by Ron Knox and Susan Holmberg on our team. There, you can dive deeper into how Monopoly power is deeply intertwined with the racist policies that destroyed Black communities in the name of “urban renewal.” And as always, you can visit ILSR.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Tea Noel. The music for the season is also composed by Tea Noel. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.