The Mission

I grew up in Glenville, once its own little east-side village, just a short walk from the roaring expanse of Lake Erie, before the city of Cleveland, Ohio, claimed it. Over time, Glenville changed. It grew into a lively Black community, cradled beneath a canopy of trees so lush and green they seemed to hold the world still, softening the edges of time.

It was the late 1960s and early 1970s, and though signs of segregation no longer appeared on fountains and doors, you could still feel it. Redlining, scarce jobs, and quiet city policies guided Black families into certain corners of town—not by force, but by design. And that design shaped everything.

The houses — including the one where I grew up on Drexel — were a hundred years old or more, grand Victorian homes with wide front porches, creaking staircases, and basements anchored by heavy furnaces. They stood beneath trees that lined the streets like elders, shoulder to shoulder under the green watch of willows, maples, oaks, and sycamores — and, of course, Buckeye trees.

Cleveland, Ohio, had a few nicknames back then — the Plum City, the Forest City — and in Glenville, Forest City made perfect sense. In autumn, leaves tumbled through the air like confetti, filling the streets with a potpourri of earth, memory, and color. We were just a couple of miles from mighty Lake Erie, and on certain days, if the wind was right, you could catch its scent. Sometimes a fog would roll across the water from Canada and settle in our streets like a soft blanket, making the neighborhood feel even more tucked away — almost dreamlike.

Summers were hot and muggy...

Stolen Inheritance on the Mississippi

There are stories a family carries quietly—folded into drawers, tucked into Bibles, passed hand to hand. This is one of ours. It begins with a young Black woman in Mississippi named Ida Jolliff, born into the shadow of slavery but never built for small places. She left Grenada for the Mississippi River, where she worked on a riverboat and crossed paths with Turnbow, an oilman who kept her close and sold her a share of his company—an extraordinary act in the Deep South. When that company merged into Gulf, Standard Oil, and then Exxon, Ida’s share vanished from the record. But she kept the certificate. It was the one document she preserved, and the one that began everything.

Ida passed the certificate to her son Horace, who carried it north to Cleveland during the Great Migration. He became the first true keeper of the papers—collecting letters, research, lawyer correspondence, and a decades-long trail tracing the corporate mergers that swallowed Ida’s stake. He passed the responsibility to his son, Spi, the family’s enforcer, who pushed the case as far as he could, even receiving a written response from Exxon in 1973. Before he died, Spi gave the charge to his own son Joey, telling him simply: “Give it to Antwone.”

When I found my father’s family as a grown man, I wasn’t searching for any inheritance. But when Joey handed me the worn manila envelope—filled with Ida’s legacy and a century of persistence—I understood what Spi had seen. He believed I was the one the world would hear. And during the filming of Antwone Fisher in Glenville, Spi gave me his final blessing. He stopped on the sidewalk, looked at me with a pride I’ll never forget, and said, “Man… your granddaddy would sure be proud of you.”

This story is about restoration—of a woman erased from a table where she rightfully held a seat, and of a family who refused to let her be forgotten. Ida’s share was taken, but her story wasn’t. I carry it now. And through this page, so will the world.