Rediscovering Toledo’s Black Wall Street

Doris Greer:

Dorr Street wasn’t just a few blocks, it was probably a mile or so of shops, businesses, and people who cared about the neighborhood they lived in the neighborhood, they had ownership of the neighborhood.

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 am doing [00:00:30] great. How are you?

Reggie Rucker:

Oh, you know, Luke, I have to say this is a bittersweet moment for me.

Luke Gannon:

Oh, why is that?

Reggie Rucker:

Well, folks listening should know this is one of the last episodes that you and I are getting to work on together, so there’s definitely a little sadness there.

Luke Gannon:

Oh, it’s bittersweet for me too. God, I’m so going to miss hosting this show with you and all of our guests.

Reggie Rucker:

Yeah. So I know, but the piece of this that makes me really happy is [00:01:00] we’re basically getting to come full circle with this journey we’ve been on. Our first true season of Building Local Power, where we dove into the frontline stories in the fight against monopoly power. Kicked off with the story of the Reverend Dr. Donald Perryman in Toledo, Ohio, pushing back against the invasion of chain dollar stores, especially in the Dorr Street corridor Toledo a historically prominent business district once brimming with Black-owned enterprises, shops, and services. [00:01:30] Fast-forward a year and a half as we look to commemorate our 50th anniversary. In part by sharing the stories of communities of color who have the most at stake in the outcomes of our work. It was only natural that we revisited Toledo and Dorr Street and provide a fuller accounting of that story and community that embodies so much of why we are committed to this work of building local power and fighting corporate control.

Luke Gannon:

A few months ago, our colleagues, Ron Knox and Susan Holmberg, [00:02:00] released a story map titled The Fall and Potential Rise of a Black Business District, which focuses on the destruction of Toledo’s Black Wall Street. It shows how people in Toledo exemplify a national effort to revive Black business districts. Today, we are hearing from a lifelong Toledo resident, Doris Greer, who experienced the heyday of Toledo’s Black Business District and its decimation. Here’s Doris.

Doris Greer:

I’m Doris Greer. [00:02:30] I’m 82 years old. I’ll be 83 in March. Praise Lord. I’ve been here in Toledo since I was about three years old. I would think we came here around 1944, 45, and I’ve been part of the community ever since then, one way or the other. I remember much of the neighborhood growing up. The stores, [00:03:00] the ice cream stores, the grocery, the food stores, the spot. I often would go to three places on Saturday after I had chores. I would to the YWCA downtown, which had activities for youth. I would go to the library was safe, and on my way home, I’d stop at the Toledo Art Museum, [00:03:30] where I learned to appreciate classical music and art that stays with me today. In the neighborhood where I lived on the corner, there were two small businesses. They were not operated by African-Americans, but I think they were both Jewish gentlemen, but they were fair, and they took care of us. If we did something wrong or dishonorable, they knew our parents. They would say, “I know your mother.”

The neighborhoods [00:04:00] we felt… We took care of ourselves. We learned for one another. We supported each other. We did recreation churches. This church, I’ve been here at least since I was about five years old. I was confirmed here at age 12, and I’ve been here ever since. I’m here almost every Sunday. Not every Sunday, but most every Sunday. We have learned from many [00:04:30] sitting on this lot is the Lapp??? [inaudible 00:04:34] Drugstore right here in our parking lot where youth, professionals, business people, people in the community met. You could go out of here and converse and have an ice cream cone and here everything that was going on in the neighborhood. We had bakeries. We had shoe shops. My uncle, Mr. Stanley Kyle, his wife was my grandmother’s [00:05:00] sister. He built the first motel here in the neighborhood at Indiana-Collingwood, we had our own newspapers.

People had jobs, some gentlemen we talked to and people that my age and younger or older talk about how they learned how to shine shoes. They didn’t just shine shoes, they shined shoes, and it had to be done a certain way, and they had pride in it, and they were so proud. They had $ [00:05:30] 4 that week, $4, and we would wait for the grocery people to throw out the orange cart so we could make these Cadillac brand go carts and scooters. They kept us happy. We respected each other. I’m not telling you… There was always a vice in every neighbor in every city. We knew where to go, where not to go, when to go, and when not to be there. We had theaters, four [00:06:00] of them at drug stores, gas stations. We could self-contain and sustain ourselves here in the community, which is important that you know who you’re buying things from.

They trust you, you trust them, you can exchange it, you can buy it. But we also supported that around us. We are so close to the downtown area here. We walked. Most of us didn’t have cars, even elders, either the bus or the trolley car [00:06:30] or the bus, depending what area you grew up in, and I was in all that era. The trolley car still ran here when I was young. The teachers, you met lifelong friends in this neighborhood. My teacher, Mrs. Prowar in the sixth grade, went to school here, I mean to church here. Her husband worked for the Blade, Blade reporter. She later became the first African-American female teacher in the school system [00:07:00] principal. You didn’t have to go like we do now miles away to get gas or pay more Ford, you have to spend $5 to get $10 of gas to buy quality food.

We had the grocery stores right there, AFP, Kroger’s, bakery ,food. Many people had non-pop shops for clothing and food, but we also went out to the downtown area. We supported them, so [00:07:30] everything helps the other thing. And it’s all part of community, we’re just a section, and in this section the African-American community was… and is central or more dense, but there were other pockets of us, outsticking, what they call Goose Hill in Swanton, the more rural area. Spencer Sharples, they would come into the Dorr Street section. Dorr Street wasn’t just [00:08:00] a few blocks, it was probably a mile or so of shops, businesses, and people who cared about the neighborhood. They lived in the neighborhood. They had ownership of the neighborhood.

Luke Gannon:

Dorr Street was a bustling district. It was the epicenter of Black wealth in Toledo for generations. But even more than wealth, it was the physical embodiment of Black identity and culture. This identity, culture, and wealth were the fruit of the Black [00:08:30] community’s hard work and enterprise.

Doris Greer:

Many of the businesses, the people lived right here in the neighborhood. Even the doctors, the lawyers, the judges, they lived down the street from you. They knew your parents. They knew you. The grocery store people, unless they were out of culture, they lived among us. You knew them one to one. If something happened, you could resolve it on a different level than if it was a stranger and didn’t know your family, didn’t know [00:09:00] your community, didn’t know went which way. And so it gave you a cohesiveness, it gave you a sense of protection, of knowing you were like family. It was like extended family.

If something happened, somebody knew somebody who knew somebody, even the truant officer coming in the neighborhood. The kids would tell on you. They’d tell where you were, why you weren’t in school. So I think the sense [00:09:30] of community and connectedness and knowing whether or not and trust in the will to trust, if you go in the store and something isn’t right, you can trust going back to that proprietor and getting it right and feeling resolved and that you were worthy and they were worthy for you to talk to.

Luke Gannon:

Through Toledo’s wartime industrial boom to integration, through the Black liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. Dorr Street contained and [00:10:00] fostered Black wealth and power. By 1971, at least 70 of the more than 130 businesses along Dorr Street were Black-owned. But today the barber shops and grocery stores, the haberdashers, and the nightclubs are long gone. Instead, that once thriving Black business district is backed up against Interstate 75’s [00:10:30] six-lane highway.

Doris Greer:

Now, I don’t have a grocery store close that’s quality. There are one or two that have stunk it out. We appreciate them being here. The banks begin to leave. That means if they leave, you still have to have that service. You’ve got to go. So can you get the bus? Are you able to walk? You can no longer walk there like we have done for so many years. So not to just this [00:11:00] community. If you put our situation in any community and you devastated like this one has, I think I mentioned to you my concern that we seem to use to had programs that allowed you to save your home, rehab your home. I don’t see that as much or I don’t hear about it as much, and now that you hear about it, can you save what you got and what will you replace it with?

Luke Gannon:

Now, Dorr Street isn’t entirely vacant. [00:11:30] There’s the main branch of the Toledo Urban Federal Credit Union, a new library branch, a fire station, a post office, a park, but on block after block of the city’s own former Black Wall Street. There are long empty stretches on both sides of the street where homes and businesses once stood before the city tore them down to widen Dorr Street. And bookending both ends of this historic strip are chain dollar stores.

Doris Greer:

I [00:12:00] hope that we’re not too far down the line that people will come together for all factors. There are different segments in this neighborhood and community that represent segments of themselves. I would really like to see them with some of the planners to say, “What might really work, what looks good for you, and some other may not be what works here.” I would like to see the banks, the financial issues, do some kind of creative work [00:12:30] that would allow the businesses who are willing to come back in and reestablish and make things available, even if it’s just the gas stations and the grocery stores or the mom and pop.

We need good healthcare facilities where we can get physical therapy, and water therapy and things like that. [00:13:00] And the children need sustaining, as I showed you, we used to have a full-size swimming pool area, and we ended up with a splash pad. That’s not the same. It’s comforting, but it’s not the same. So I think we need to realize that nothing is the same when you look back, but there are positive factors. There are sustaining things that kept you going, that allowed your family, your community, [00:13:30] your stores, your businesses to operate in a cohesive way with all of you both as proprietors, and ownership is very important. People who own things protected, they want to make it better. They want to keep it better. When you don’t own something, it’s not quite the same. Even a child’s toy, if the kid feels that’s his toy, don’t try to take that kid’s toy, but if he just borrows it’s not the same. [00:14:00] Ownership is important. Proprietorship is important.

Luke Gannon:

The destruction of Toledo’s Dorr Street is a story of disinvestment, discrimination, and corporate domination. Today, community leaders are working to repair the systems that tore Dorr Street apart.

Doris Greer:

There’s a greater accessibility to the services and to incorporate it around other businesses that may come on. I think that’s a positive sign. [00:14:30] I have heard that some groups may sit down together and work to try to give ideas that are working together as opposed to just my idea and your idea, because if we don’t give and take, nobody has nothing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s why we have these wars. People no longer come to the negotiate. I get six, you get three. I got three, you get five. Sooner or later, it’ll work out. But we each [00:15:00] have something that makes it better for all of us to sustain, and not only to sustain, but thrive. We want to thrive. We don’t want to just live today. We’re trying to leave something for the future.

As I said, when I look back at the devastation of what I used to see here, not the congestion, but the conglomerate, the cohesiveness of the different cultures, societal status, [00:15:30] different types of proprietorship, all living and working here together. It can work. It can work. And it’s not just good for the culture. It’s good for the whole city. The whole city benefits. The whole city benefits.

I think to keep the factors that I’ve mentioned, that you can sustain yourself within the community, that you don’t have to just go out all the time. It’s there for you that you [00:16:00] feel a sense of trust to it and it to you, and it’s accessible to you. And I think there’s a variety things. We need the drug stores, we need the recreation support. We need the healthcare. We need residential for elder, mixed in with youth. We need to talk to some of our young entrepreneurs and say, “Are you willing to come back this way but to work in a collective manner?” I think there needs to be [00:16:30] something that reaches out to light groups and bring them in to do like things as a group and not just as individuals, but participating as individuals.

Luke Gannon:

Thank you so much, Doris, for sharing your history, your personal story, and your vision. Up next on Building Local Power, we will dive deeper into Toledo’s Dorr Street, where you’ll hear about the undercurrents of Dorr Street’s rise and fall, and [00:17:00] how leaders are envisioning a new iteration of Black wealth and prosperity in Toledo. Stay tuned.

Reggie Rucker:

Luke, thank you so much for this episode piecing together a really important piece of oral history for past, present, and future residents of not just Toledo, Ohio, but hundreds of communities across the United States that share a similar story and are working to recover from similar injustices that wrecked those communities. [00:17:30] And to Ron on our team, great job collecting these stories on the ground in Toledo. We can’t wait to share more from this series with our listeners, and to you, our listeners, thank you as well for tuning in. As always, we’ll be back again in two weeks with more from this story in Toledo. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode, which includes a link to our racial justice storytelling project to dive deeper into how monopoly power is deeply intertwined with the racist policies that [00:18:00] destroyed Black communities in the name of urban renewal. I’m doing air quotes here.

And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. And as we look forward to a future without the brilliant Luke Gannon, send an email to [email protected] and let us know if you have thoughts on the future of the show. Is there a format you like more, a topic, or voices [00:18:30] you want to hear more of? A city we should go to next to extend the city series, we’re all ears. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Téa Noelle. The music for the season is also composed by Téa Noelle. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.