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Winston Earl Willis (born October 21, 1939) is an American former real estate developer who established his business in Cleveland, Ohio during the early 1960s. He created University Circle Properties Development, Inc. (UCPD, Inc.), which owned real estate parcels in Cleveland and was the largest employer of black people in that part of the country. Under UCPD at East 105th and Euclid, upwards of 23 businesses operated simultaneously. In the 1970s and 80s Willis ran afoul of tax and other laws and lost his properties to seizure in 1983. His ongoing legal battles with the city of Cleveland over ownership of his lands spans several decades, including his 2007 petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Willis was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the third of the five children of Clarence C. Willis and his wife, Alberta Frazier Willis, both natives of Montgomery. The Willis children attended St. Jude Educational Institute at the 36-acre (150,000 m2)City of St. Jude. [1] In the fall of 1954, when Winston was 14, the Willis family settled in Detroit. Winston's father's years of experience as a carpet installer for the Montgomery Fair department store enabled him to find suitable employment and settle his family into a quiet neighborhood on the West side near Dearborn. There, Winston created, published and delivered his own neighborhood advertising newspaper, the Western Detroit Shopping News. His high school career at Chadsey High School was uneventful – and brief.[ citation needed ]
He sold Collier's Encyclopedias door-to-door, a venture that resulted in his arrest for loitering in affluent white neighborhoods.[ citation needed ] His knowledge of the floor covering trade, which he learned at his father's side, led to his hiring by a Detroit retail tile store, where he advanced to manager. His plan was to head for Hollywood, where he intended to become the first successful black movie producer. Before setting out on that odyssey with a neighborhood friend, he took a brief trip to Cleveland in 1958 for a short visit with relatives at his mother's insistence. After arriving, Willis went on a four-day spree playing One-Pocket, a billiards game, and won several thousand dollars. He decided to stay a few weeks, playing more games to finance the planned trip to the West coast. He reconsidered that plan and decided to postpone the trip. The 19-year-old Willis leased a building that was previously an automobile showroom and opened The Jazz Temple, a liquor-free coffeehouse and night club, to immediate success.
Willis approached such legendary jazz artists as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Cannonball Adderley, The Ramsey Lewis Trio, and Dinah Washington and convinced them to come to Cleveland to appear at his club. The trendy establishment also attracted visits from Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael and performances from other notables, such as comedians Redd Foxx, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Dick Gregory. The night spot became popular with college students, and the clientele included interracial couples, which triggered resentment and threats from the racially polarized community. A bomb was planted in the club, and Willis closed the business a few weeks later. [2] He launched another venture, the Hot Potato Restaurant, on Cleveland's lower East side. The small restaurant enabled him to finance his next business.
Willis hoped to revitalize a large parcel of land encompassing the old Doan's Corner at East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue, site of the Keith's East 105th Theater [3] where comedian Bob Hope got his start in vaudeville. The area had deteriorated following the Hough Riots of 1966 and the Glenville Shootout of 1968. Those events accelerated white flight from historically polarized Cleveland communities, affecting businesses on Euclid Avenue, which suffered rapidly dwindling patronage. After a long and contentious legal struggle with the former titleholder, The Cleveland Trust Company, Willis bought the property, which was flanked on either side by University Circle and the Cleveland Clinic.
Willis opened and operated numerous businesses on the Euclid Avenue strip. He established University Circle Properties Development, Inc. (UCPD, Inc.), a commercial property development corporation, to manage the stores and shops. The businesses included restaurants, movie theaters, clothing stores, taverns, a food market, a check cashing store, a penny arcade, a state liquor store, and an adult book store. At one time there were 28 businesses in operation, employing over 400 people. A 1973 Cleveland Press newspaper article heralded the strip in a cover story entitled: “Winston Willis’ Miracle on East 105th Street...”. [4]
In 1975 Willis was convicted of failing to pay city income taxes. In 1979 a police raid found drugs and gambling equipment at Winston's Place. By 1980 he was found guilty of more tax violations and accused of owing thousands of dollars on water and sewer bills. [5] Willis alleged that he was being harassed by the city and that his properties were targeted for excessive inspections by the fire department. The fire inspections gained the notoriety of a sporting event; they were unscheduled, unannounced and routinely happened at the height of business hours when the restaurants and movie theaters and other businesses were teeming with customers.[ citation needed ] Newspaper publisher W.O. Walker’s Call & Post ran an editorial sympathetic to Willis, "Fire Inspections as Weapons":
"It is unfortunate when city workers are forced to carry out their normal duties as a means of affecting the policy and prejudices of higher ranking officials….That does not excuse higher-ups from blame for fomenting a plot against Willis...." [6]
The property Willis owned occupied an area the city wanted for a large medical-educational complex connecting Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Willis fought the city with lawsuits, as reported in the local press, "Willis, who has made a battleground of the courts in his fight… is on the legal rampage again." [7] Other headlines followed, such as "Willis Alleges Land Squeeze In Area Around E. 105 and Euclid". A July 13, 1977 front page Plain Dealer article reported: "Cleveland businessman, Winston E. Willis yesterday filed a $100 million dollar lawsuit charging that the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University Circle Inc.,(UCI) and others are monopolizing real estate and violating antitrust laws. Willis, who owns a strip of shops and offices on Euclid Avenue between E. 105th and E. 107th Streets, said he and his tenants are being forced out of business." [8] Numerous lawsuits Willis filed in the local Federal District Court and the Ohio Court of Common Pleas in defense of his holdings were dismissed.
In his battle with the city, Willis erected a large billboard on the side of his building overlooking Euclid Avenue, the main thoroughfare for suburban commuters to Cleveland's downtown financial center. He used the billboard to criticize what he believed was corruption and cronyism among Cuyahoga County officials, the local judiciary, and philanthropic institutions, and what he believed was rampant racism in the community.
The "community billboard," as it came to be known, was soon a featured neighborhood attraction for residents and patrons of the numerous Willis business outlets on Euclid Avenue. Willis used the billboard to express his moral outrage and changed the text every two weeks.[ citation needed ] The signage was considered "an embarrassment" to the establishment elite and the staid University Circle area.[ citation needed ]Call & Post publisher and well-respected force in the black community, W.O. Walker, gave Willis a dire warning: "Take those billboards down, son. These white people will crucify you."[ citation needed ] Walker also attempted to use his considerable influence to convince the city's redevelopment planners that black businessmen should not be shut out of their plan, but he was unsuccessful. [9] Rumblings of "take back the block" reached City Hall and council meetings. Carl B. Stokes), the city's first African-American mayor, resisted takeover attempts that came to his attention. [10]
Accused of having written a $421 bad check to a local lumber company, he was indicted by a grand jury and arrested on the charge that was later proven to be false[ citation needed ]. During his imprisonment at a Chillicothe, Ohio, correctional facility he was held in solitary confinement for ten days without access to his attorneys while the taking and immediate demolition of all of his Euclid Avenue properties was executed. The entirety of these lands, buildings and business holdings were taken without payment of just compensation. After being released from prison Willis filed a legal complaint and sought the assistance of Professor Spencer Neth [11] of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, who is an expert in the field of commercial transactions. Professor Neth concluded and stated in his written expert opinion that the check had been paid, “the transaction was closed” and there should not have been an indictment, trial or conviction. The judge hearing the case refused to allow him to present his findings.
With Willis isolated in solitary confinement 190 miles (310 km) away in Chillicothe, Ohio, his Euclid Avenue business compound and buildings were cordoned off and surrounded by huge numbers of the Cleveland police department, and S.W.A.T. teams. During the entirety of the 10 days of his incarceration/isolation, members of the police department's Intelligence unit kept the entire complex surrounded on an around-the-clock basis. Unmarked police cars were stationed at each intersection leading to and from the area. As reported by numerous eyewitnesses at the scene, “the wrecking ball swung quickly and unmercifully”, flattening tall, multi-story brick buildings into a barren empty dirt lot. Within a few days, not a trace of the Willis/UCPD, Inc. business empire remained.
Willis maintains that the historic pattern of land takings from blacks in this country is a continuation of slavery.
After decades in Cleveland courtrooms fighting to defend and protect his property rights, Willis has become somewhat of a legal scholar, living a quiet life in the shadow of his former empire, far removed from the life he once lived. Since the massive destruction of his large business empire in 1982, one singular obsession has occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else: “Payment for my lands and my federally guaranteed relocation benefits.” Most recently in his ongoing quest, he successfully prepared a Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States Supreme Court. His petition was accepted and docketed. A short time later however, he received word of the high Court's denial. But rather than surrender to defeat and become another sad statistic among fellow African-American land theft victims, he continues to fight for his constitutionally guaranteed property rights. As noted in the reporting of hundreds of other cases documented in the 2001 Associated Press series Torn From The Land, "… these property thefts are just the tip of one of the biggest crimes of this country's history." – Dr. Raymond Winbush, scholar/activist, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University.
Willis maintains that the historic pattern of land takings from blacks in this country is a continuation of slavery.
"To deny a person their right to own property is a form of slavery. I am a slave without bondage."
Cleveland, officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in Northeast Ohio along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the U.S. maritime border with Canada and lies approximately 60 miles (97 km) west of Pennsylvania. Cleveland ranks as the most populous city on Lake Erie, the second-most populous city in Ohio, and the 54th-most populous city in the U.S. with a 2020 population of 372,624. The city anchors the Cleveland metropolitan area, the 33rd-largest in the U.S. at 2.18 million residents, as well as the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton combined statistical area, the most populous in Ohio and the 17th-largest in the country with a population of 3.63 million in 2020.
East Cleveland is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 13,792 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb lying east and south of Cleveland and west of Cleveland Heights.
Euclid Avenue is a major street in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It runs northeasterly from Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, passing Playhouse Square and Cleveland State University, to University Circle, the Cleveland Clinic, Severance Hall, Case Western Reserve University's Maltz Performing Arts Center, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. The street runs through the suburbs of East Cleveland, Euclid, and Wickliffe, to Willoughby as a part of U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 6. The HealthLine bus rapid transit line runs in designated bus lanes in the median of Euclid Avenue from Public Square to Louis Stokes Station at Windermere in East Cleveland.
Cleveland Clinic is an American nonprofit academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation, Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921 by a group of faculty and alumni from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The Clinic runs a 170-acre (69-hectare) main campus in Cleveland, as well as 14 affiliated hospitals, 20 family health centers in Northeast Ohio, 5 affiliated hospitals in Florida, and cancer center in Nevada. International operations include the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi hospital in the United Arab Emirates and Cleveland Clinic Canada, which has two executive health and sports medicine clinics in Toronto. Another hospital campus in the United Kingdom, Cleveland Clinic London, opened to outpatients in 2021 and fully opened in 2022. Tomislav Mihaljevic is the president and CEO.
Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City. Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, the theaters became a major entertainment hub for the city for much of the 20th century. However, by the late 1960s, the district had fallen into decline and its theaters had closed down. In the 1970s, the district was revived through a grassroots effort that helped usher in a new era of downtown revitalization. For this reason, the revival of Playhouse Square is often locally referred to as being "one of the top ten successes in Cleveland history."
Squire's Castle is a shell of a building located in the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks in Willoughby Hills, Ohio.
Public Square is the central plaza of Downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Based on an 18th-century New England model, it was part of the original 1796 town plat overseen by city founder General Moses Cleaveland of the Connecticut Land Company. The historical center of the city's downtown, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Cleveland, Ohio.
The HealthLine is a bus rapid transit (BRT) line run by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority in Cleveland and East Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The line runs along Euclid Avenue from Public Square in downtown Cleveland to the Louis Stokes Station at Windermere in East Cleveland. It began operation on October 24, 2008. Its current name was the result of a naming rights deal with the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland. The HealthLine is denoted with a silver color and abbreviated simply as HL on most RTA publications.
The Jazz Temple was a coffeehouse/nightclub located in the University Circle area of Cleveland, Ohio. The club's name was chosen by the owner, Winston E. Willis, to symbolize a devout gathering place dedicated to the icons of the jazz world where these artists would be collectively enjoyed and appreciated. During its brief history, with frequent headlining appearances by jazz greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, and Cannonball Adderley among others, the popular nightspot was more successful than any other similar venue in the region.
University Circle Properties Development, Inc. was a commercial property development corporation established in 1968 in Cleveland Ohio. Located in the University Circle area at the famous intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street, the area came to be known colloquially during the 1960s and 1970s as "105 and Euclid" and "The Block". Founded by a young African-American businessman, Winston E. Willis, UCPD, Inc. was the umbrella organization for a number of thriving businesses on the lower East side. After operating successfully for over fifteen years, and following decades of courtroom confrontations and legal battles over property rights, UCPD, Inc. and all of its popular 105th and Euclid businesses were demolished in 1982 to make way for the continuing expansion of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and numerous government sponsored redevelopment projects.
East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue was at one time the most famous intersection in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. The legendary commercial junction consists of several blocks from East to West between 107th Street and 105th Street.
Hough is a neighborhood situated on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. Roughly two square miles, the neighborhood is bounded to Superior and Euclid Avenue between East 55th and East 105th streets. Placed between Downtown Cleveland and University Circle, Hough borders Fairfax and Cedar–Central to the South and Glenville and St. Clair–Superior to the North. The neighborhood became a target for revitalization during the mid-20th century, after the 1966 Hough Riots.
Lake View Cemetery is a privately owned, nonprofit garden cemetery located in the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and East Cleveland in the U.S. state of Ohio. Founded in 1869, the cemetery was favored by wealthy families during the Gilded Age, and today the cemetery is known for its numerous lavish funerary monuments and mausoleums. The extensive early monument building at Lake View helped give rise to the Little Italy neighborhood, but over-expansion nearly bankrupted the burial ground in 1888. Financial recovery only began in 1893, and took several years. Lake View grew and modernized significantly from 1896 to 1915 under the leadership of president Henry R. Hatch. The cemetery's cautious management allowed it to avoid retrenchment and financial problems during the Great Depression.
The Wade Park District is an historic district on the National Register of Historic Places, located in the University Circle neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. The district, which covers roughly 650 acres, is bounded by Chester Avenue and Euclid Avenue on the south, East Boulevard to the east and E. 105th Street to the west. The district, which includes seven separate buildings, features several of the city's cultural institutions, as well as the park of the same name.
Fairfax is a neighborhood on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. It is roughly bounded between Euclid Avenue to the north, Woodland Avenue to the south, E. 71st Street to the west and E. 105th Street to the east. Fairfax is located on the edge of University Circle, an area containing Cleveland's major educational institutions and museums. The Karamu House is on the National Register of Historic places and is the nation's oldest African-American theater. The northeastern quadrant of Fairfax, along Euclid Avenue to 105th Street, is dominated by the Cleveland Clinic.
The Call and Post is an African-American weekly newspaper, based in Cleveland, Ohio and is owned by world famous boxing promoter Don King.
The Cedar Glen Apartments is a historic apartment building located in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Designed by prominent local architect Samuel H. Weis and completed in 1927, the building originally contained luxury apartments and served as a gateway to the more exclusive neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, on whose border the building is located. Threatened with demolition in 1992, the building was purchased by new owners and converted into condominiums.
Samuel Augustus Fuller Sr. was an American steel industry executive during the Gilded Age in the United States. A resident of Cleveland, Ohio, he founded the Union Iron Works and Condit-Fuller & Co., which later became the Bourne-Fuller Company. Cyrus S. Eaton combined this company with two others to form the Republic Steel Company which became the third largest steel company in the U.S., trailing only U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel in size.
Henry Chisholm was a Scottish American businessman and steel industry executive during the Gilded Age in the United States. A resident of Cleveland, Ohio, he purchased a small, struggling iron foundry which became the Cleveland Rolling Mill, one of the largest steel firms in the nation. He is known as the "father of the Cleveland steel trade".