The Plain Dealer, August 26, 1971

1968: Another Long Hot Summer

During the racially explosive, turbulent, riot-torn summer of 1968, in an atmosphere of assassinations, national mourning, anti-war protests, political upheaval, and racial turmoil, Winston won over half-a-million dollars in cash in a three-day craps shooting marathon against a group of slick, notorious master gamblers. A veritable career criminal cartel. Entering the game with a mere $423.51 in his pocket, the confidence that he could win at this game that he had been perfecting since adolescence, and outrageous luck on his side, he skillfully out shot the seasoned group of high rollers and walked away with several industrial size black garbage bags filled with crumpled cold hard cash.

When the group of exhausted men finally emerged after being sealed and sequestered for three days and nights in the secret gamblers’ bunker in the rear of Winston’s Hot Potato restaurant, they were completely unaware of the explosive events that had overtaken the entire East side of Cleveland.

July 23 — July 28: The Glenville Shootout

The Glenville Shootout and subsequent Glenville Riots had exploded around them, and the National Guard was policing the city. Realizing that it would be virtually impossible, but above all, risky to navigate their way through the armored trucks and rifle brigades, the defeated, broken gamblers cartel went back inside the restaurant to wait them out. Winston, on the other hand, decided to take the risk and try to make his way home. Declining the other gamblers’ invitation to start another game, he replied:

“Nah, I’ll catch you later. I’m going to buy me some real estate!”

After making his exit from the craps-shooting marathon in his white Jaguar convertible, Winston began navigating his way through back alleys and side streets, avoiding an army of military tanks and National Guard vehicles. He was able to slip into his apartment unseen, and after he and his girlfriend secured half of his winnings in carefully selected hiding places in the apartment, Winston took the other half of the money to his sister Aundra’s house where he outlined his plans to her for making several bank deposits.

The normal and understandable expectation of a young man his age in sudden possession of such a staggering amount of cash would be that the money would be quickly squandered on narcissistic self-indulgences. But to the contrary, having learned the value of land ownership from all the males in his family, young Winston had something else in mind.

Shortly after the Hough and Glenville riots and the subsequent explosive Glenville Shootout, widespread fear took hold of the city of Cleveland and white business owners began leaving the East side area in record numbers. Stunned and shaken by the eruption of racial violence, their boarded-up storefronts and abandoned buildings signaled the mass exodus toward the safety of more ethnically controlled neighborhoods. Having been convinced in November of 1967 that the election of a black mayor, Carl B. Stokes, would be their in-house protection against such violent uprisings, and fearing an all-out race war, previously successful white business owners abandoned the inner city in droves and never looked back.

Heading for the safety of the suburbs and the West side.

With increasing white flight exacerbating the already bitterly polarized Cleveland communities, business owners continued exiting the inner-city at warp speed, triggering a mass exodus to the West side and the suburbs and rapidly dwindling patronage of businesses on Euclid Avenue. The area between 107th Street and 105th Street was now a ghost town. Deserted, crime-ridden and no longer viable.

Riots, Desertion and Martial Law in a Racially Polarized City

Cleveland Riots and Marshal Law.

Ohio National Guard in the streets of Cleveland. 1968

ENTER WINSTON E. WILLIS: One Man’s Wilderness Is Another Man’s Theme Park

Wisely parlaying his recent staggering cash winnings into capital, assessing the needs of the black community and taking advantage of the white flight epidemic, Winston was ready, cash in hand, to deal and purchase the Euclid Avenue properties. Fully prepared for the typical racial road blocks, and after several unsuccessful attempts, he engaged in several clever legal moves of his own creation, and soon his acquisitions were completed and the building of his business empire was off to a running start. At a time when very little prospect for economic advancement was open for local black Americans in the inner-city of Cleveland, Winston’s 105th and Euclid offered jobs and a path to the road to prosperity. He purchased valuable parcels of real estate, lands and buildings up, down and around Euclid Avenue, with properties straddling between Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic.

He established numerous businesses, one after another. Restaurants, movie theaters, office buildings, penny arcades, liquor stores, clothing stores, hotels and pawn shops; bars, adult bookstores, and beauty and barber shops, employing more blacks than any other organization in the entire State, creating a first-of-its-kind black business empire. All under the resentful watch and scrutiny of the local white establishment community. In a very short time, he took the blighted area of town and revitalized it with brightly lit colorful buildings, well-run stores, and 24-hour security, and created an “inner-city Disneyland”. Transforming the deserted 105th Street and Euclid Avenue corner block and bringing renewed prosperity to the black community. Through his well-run umbrella organization, University Circle Properties Development, Inc. (UCPD), Willis employed hundreds of people.

He also amassed a fortune in commercial and real property in the upscale University Circle area, thereby creating a lot of powerful enemies in the white establishment community. In doing so, he unwittingly set into motion a sustained and well-funded effort to remove him, his twenty-eight businesses and hundreds of black employees from the area, and to set a judicial bear trap for himself from which there would be no escape.

Willis properties at 105th & Euclid.

Loyal Friends in High Places Could Not Help

The mayor and Winston were old friends from their pool hall days down on Quincy Avenue. And although Stokes secretly kept his friend apprised of what was being said about him at City Hall, the two were careful not to be seen or photographed together in public, due to young Winston’s contentious relationship with local government and city officials.

Mr. Walker, a well-respected Civil Rights leader and titan of the community, and publisher of the local black newspaper, the Call and Post, was a trusted mentor and supporter of Winston’s as well. His paper focused on the positive aspects of Winston’s contributions to the black community and published scathing editorials exposing the police harassment and unjust treatment young Winston was enduring in the local courts. However, even these two highly influential men were powerless to hold off the raging racist posse that was hell bent on destruction.

After objecting through the court system, without success, to numerous bogus fire inspections, police harassment, and impromptu raids on his businesses, young Winston realized the severity of the judicial corruption he was up against. Not one judge ever ruled in his favor, no matter how ironclad the law. The levying of these bogus inspections became a blood sport, and local law enforcement was given a free hand to do as they pleased. It was obvious to the entire community what was being done, and the Call and Post printed a scathing editorial entitled “Fire Inspections As Weapons”, criticizing the city for their blatant, racially-motivated harassment and repeated targeting of young Winston’s businesses.

Over time, his numerous and contentious courtroom battles with the city began to attract attention. They were like theater and received widespread media coverage within the community. Eventually, finding no fair treatment or equal justice available to him in the local courts, and taking full advantage of his First Amendment privileges, he mounted a very public forum upon which to voice his objections. His very own social network.

Utilizing his skillful in-house construction crew and collaborating with a skillful and talented artist, Mike Kirkpatrick, he erected a large, very visible billboard on the side of his building overlooking Euclid Avenue. Posting provocative statements, he exposed the racist activities of the local judiciary and city government officials. These billboard statements reflected a fierce intellect and revealed tremendous racial pride. He made statements in defense of downtrodden blacks in his community, and he also addressed global issues. His initial posted comments were bold, fierce, astute, and provocative. Soon the billboard became the talk of the town, a tourist attraction, receiving folklore status. But this type of attention was considered an embarrassment to the staid University Circle community.

Whose Freedom? Whose Speech?

America has long boasted that freedom of speech is among the first of several ironclad principles of liberty set forth by our founding fathers. But the right of free speech also includes the right to offend. From this country’s duplicitous history however, one could rightfully conclude that there is an unwritten codicil to this amendment. “Unless you are outspoken while black.” So many outspoken black ’60s “radicals” — disciples of “free speech” to the core, learned the hard way that freedom of speech and the age-old American principle of “innocent until proven guilty” have no meaning when it comes to their ilk and that of other outspoken blacks who challenged and confronted racism. While certain questionable behaviors and acts of influential whites are routinely dismissed as “youthful indiscretions”, they have been held to a completely different standard. A painful lesson learned.

For the seemingly harmless exercise in youthful verbal joie de vivre and outspoken, militant insolence during the ’60s and ’70s, Winston has paid a heavy price for his own version of black financial power. Why? Because he courageously exposed, challenged and criticized the rampant practice of racism by local government officials and the local judiciary in his community.

THE FRAMING OF MISCHIEFS

Over the next few years, by way of a continuing pattern of courtroom manipulations, automatic stay violations, illegal seizures, and gun-point evictions reminiscent of Rosewood and Tulsa Oklahoma, and as if driven by a private re-screening of Birth of a Nation, each one of his vast number of properties and/or business enterprise, as well as private property were illegally seized, taken or destroyed. Without any payment whatsoever. The assault was vicious and relentless. And six successive Cleveland mayoral administrations, with one singular and notable exception, Mayor Carl B. Stokes, either sanctioned, approved, allowed, or actively participated in judicially-sanctioned racially motivated and illegal land takings and property thefts.

But to his credit, Mayor Stokes deflected every take-over attempt against Willis’ properties that came to his attention, holding firm to well-settled Fifth Amendment laws of just compensation. During the years from 1968–1972, the Willis organization continued its growth. But the hatred for Young Winston Willis was so intense and the desire to remove him so imperative, that the end of the Stokes administration was the only signal the corrupt avenging posse had been waiting for to declare open season on him again.

“ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY!”

CLEVELAND CITY HALL

It is commonly known in Cleveland that for decades, Cleveland’s City Hall has been an ethnically controlled cesspool of cronyism and corruption, and very recently, stunning newspaper headlines quote FBI officials as stating that the on-going FBI investigation of public corruption in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Ohio is “…the largest investigation of its kind in agency’s history.” It is also widely known that the city is run by specific ethnic groups who exist above the law. But most of these groups take orders from and are headed by one powerful hierarchical organization, the multi-billion-dollar earning Cleveland Clinic . This corruption apparatus extended to and permeated the Cleveland Police Department as noted by former Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes in his biography.

Carl B. Stokes, first black Mayor of an urban major city.

Recent FBI Cuyahoga County Corruption Probe

Even after spending his formative years in the Jim Crow South, and after experiencing rank corruption as he built his business empire, Winston still believed strongly in America’s judicial system. But after countless courtroom face-offs with corrupt judges and lawyers, he soon learned that a civil killing was in progress and that a judicial bear trap was being set for him. One that he would never be able to escape. In legal parlance: “They Framed A Mischief and Called It Law”

The long paper trail of violations of the law included: Foreclosure Fraud; Phantom Foreclosures; Property Theft Proceedings Disguised as Foreclosure Proceedings; Fraud upon the court; Fraud by the court; Falsification of Proceedings; Grand theft.

For countless years, in Cuyahoga County courtrooms, the wrongful, illegal and fake “foreclosure”s were rampant. Following each and every illegal seizure of his properties, Winston, in courtroom after courtroom presented irrefutable evidence that the action was illegal and in violation of the law.

“How can there be a foreclosure when there was no mortgage?” he asked.

No judge ever ruled in his favor, and the properties were taken under illegal proceeding, time after time.

“Since it is a mortgage that gives rise to the right to foreclose in a court of law, what then, was foreclosed, and what titles passed, from a mortgage that does not exist?” ~ Winston E. Willis

Each and every attempt at reporting the corruption and federal crimes associated with a massive series of illegal property seizures and gun-point evictions that he endured fell on deaf ears and were completely ignored all the way to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The fact is, judicial corruption is very common and endemic in the United States. This abhorrent conduct by government officials has been tolerated for so long that it has almost become normalized. For far too many years, sworn officers of the court, judges and lawyers and magistrates have blatantly ignored the rule of law, and knowingly and willfully manipulated court proceedings. Nowhere is this more evident than in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland Ohio, where there is presently being conducted, an on-going and far-reaching federal investigation of Cuyahoga County government officials as reported in the press — the largest investigation of public corruption in the history of this nation.

Although Winston Willis held these violators of the law off for decades, utilizing expert attorneys and shelling out millions of dollars in attorney fees, he was faced with the reality of case after case of blatant racially motivated judicial corruption, and knowing full well the outcome each time he entered a courtroom. So he began representing himself. But the final devastating and inevitable blow that came in 1982 was an atrocity that no one could have foreseen.

A “manifest injustice”…

Faced with monstrous judicial misconduct, ethics and civil rights violations, and numerous fake “foreclosures” his legal battles intensified. In every Cuyahoga County courtroom he entered Winston was confronted with an arrogant, racist and abusive judiciary that created a safe haven for the posse of property thieves who lay in wait for him. After years of constant legal combat, countless courtroom appearances, attempts on his life, and kidnapping threats against his children, the conspirators devised the perfect tool and mechanism to use to take Winston Willis down.

The trap was set-up by corrupt city officials and it was fool-proof. It involved the vulnerable to blackmail and easily “handleable” president of the failing local black bank, First Bank National Association, at which several of Winston’s corporate accounts were held. In an after banking hours sleight of hand the bank president was manipulated into diverting funds from one of Winston’s company checking accounts in order to dishonor a check that his company had written to a local vendor. That company was then manipulated into pressing charges and Winston was arrested and imprisoned on the bogus bad check charge.

Subsequently, six penal institutions refused to accept him for incarceration, as there was no evidence of a crime committed, as Winston had not signed the check. After being transported to the various penal facilities, the final facility, upon a late night phone call from “somewhere high up”, accepted him into a Chillicothe Ohio correctional facility. This was an actual kidnapping. Then, in a plot similar to a 1940s gangster movie, Winston was scurrilously taken from his cell in the pre-dawn darkness and held in solitary confinement for several days without access to his attorneys, without being allowed a phone call, while the city engaged in the massive unlawful taking and the immediate bulldozer/wrecking ball demolition of all of his Euclid Avenue buildings worth millions of dollars. Several of those land parcels were stolen and illegally taken without a penny of payment to the rightful owner, Winston E. Willis, and handed over to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

A Tireless Effort To Save His Last Building

Sign posted on door in anticipation of another illegal property seizure. An army of Cleveland police is nearby.

L to R. The razing of Willis’ last building at 59th & Euclid. Willis back at work preparing legal motions.

Still more illegally seized properties being demolished by the city of Cleveland.

Mar 23, 2010 — Euclid Avenue Congregational Church destroyed by mysterious, late night fire.

Non-stop legal battles in defense of his property rights drained millions of dollars out of Willis’ financial reserves and into the pockets of high profile high priced lawyers, taking him to the brink of financial ruin. But he fought back fiercely for his constitutionally guaranteed property rights in the courts, fending off constant police harassment and straddling and holding back the city of Cleveland, the Clinic and UCI as they attempted to force him out.

Suffering through decades of unimaginable punishment, attempts on his life, and total economic destruction, Winston educated himself in the law. He has been single-mindedly focused and engaged in unfaltering one-man combat against corrupt city government officials and the local judiciary ever since. With the same gritty determination and tenacity that drove his youthful acts of defiance and led to his being treated as an enemy combatant, the now 76 year-old has never given up the fight, and continues to mount fresh legal strategies to get paid for his properties that have taken him all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

105th and Euclid Today

Today, as the city of Cleveland boasts of “…new life and paving the way to economic development”, Cleveland Clinic dominates the Euclid Avenue corridor and continues its massive expansion. But underneath the freshly paved parking lots and the mammoth steel-and-glass superstructures lay the remains of a sizeable piece of the American dream.

The dream of a young black American citizen who, with youthful exuberance, dared to venture into and triumph in a racist community without compromise or apology, believing wholeheartedly that the dream was his to have. Local historians may continue to overlook the facts, but no genuine chronicler of Cleveland history will be able to separate 105th and Euclid from the Winston Willis era. Like it or not, he is forever woven into the city’s tapestry.

A brief perusal through local media coverage of the time uncovers a man who never got his due. Archived front page newspaper headlines, television interviews and magazine profiles and articles colorfully describe Winston Willis as “an anachronism” the “bull-in-the-china-shop native of Montgomery Alabama, who dared to challenge and confront a racially polarized city.” But ultimately his is also a story of triumph and tragedy. A former altar boy from a good home who struck out on his own at the tender age of 19 and went on to become a force in the annals of American entrepreneurship during the turbulent ’60s, only to have it all ripped out of his hands and taken away.

In final analysis, however, even considering the unbelievable bigotry and racism he endured, young Winston was also a lightning rod for controversy. Outspoken, combative, and unflinchingly pro-black. By all accounts, black and white, he was somewhat of a renegade. A bellicose provocateur who confronted and publicly exposed racism at every opportunity. All but daring his powerful enemies to come down on him. Had he been willing to bow submissively to his oppressors, or had he represented himself as a so-called “good Negro who knew his place”, he most certainly would’ve been “handled” differently. But this was a young black man who refused to be “handled” at all.

He bowed before no man, feared no one, and fought back mightily against powerful adversaries, proclaiming his constitutional rights in stentorian tones. Some might reasonably conclude that, as in the fable of the sleeping giant, Young Winston poked the proverbial giant in the eye and suffered the consequences. And in his youthful exuberance, he may very well have underestimated the giant’s power and potential for rage. But in his enemies’ retaliation, laws were clearly broken, and if we are a nation of laws, how is it useful to have laws if those who violate those laws are not held accountable for having done so?

Winston’s storied business career, his success and affluence while still maintaining his racial pride and militancy were to be his eventual undoing. The warnings were dire, and omnipresent. Subsequently, city and government officials, in concert, with the local judiciary and law enforcement devised and mounted an even more elaborate and diabolical covert plan to take him down and get rid of him — once and for all.

Clevelanders who were around during the ’60s and ’70s will remember him and the successful and popular businesses he created on and around Euclid Avenue and 105th Street. Younger ones encountering the bearded, rumpled eccentric today and hearing his claims will question his sanity. In either case, the simple truth is that Winston E. Willis was once a force. But the high price of black financial power coupled with fearless outspokenness was his undoing and would destroy him economically.

Although he fought back mightily for decades with every resource available to him, in the end, as he would come to realize, it never was a fair fight, and his opponents and enemies were entirely too powerful and too racially motivated. As one of the old-time observers said: “Winston may have had millions at one time, but they had billions”, and the vengeful motivation to destroy him economically. This has now been accomplished, and the doors of justice are seemingly closed to Winston Willis.

Another Winston (Churchill) once said: “History is written by the victors.” But even victors bear battle scars. And in careful analysis of the opponents in this conflict, can there be a determination of who was right, or who is left? Perhaps the answer lies in an examination of the defensive wounds of Winston E. Willis’ gallant, decades-long fight.

The Miracle on East 105th: The rise and fall of Winston E. Willis’ opportunity corridor.

http://pressurelife.com/the-miracle-on-east-105th/

Many Others Have Been Torn From Their Land For Generations

READ ALSO: Torn From The Land: http://theauthenticvoice.org/mainstories/tornfromtheland/

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http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obamacare-cleveland-clinic-non-profit-hospital-taxes/

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http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/18/cleveland-clinic-lets-slip-that-the-opportunity-corridor-isnt-about-opportunity-at-all/

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https://www.planetizen.com/node/93812/cleveland-clinic-lacks-prescription-its-community