Cleveland legend Fannie Lewis delivers Geller Lecture

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Fannie M. Lewis, legendary
Cleveland City Councilwoman
representing historic Hough neighborhood,
delivers Albert & Norma Geller lecture

Albert and Norma Geller, patrons of the annual lecture series, and this year's speaker, Fannie Lewis

The elderly African-American lady was bent over as she made her way to the podium last night. But when she got there she straightened up and for more than an hour held the audience in the palm of her hand as she delivered a first-person account of race relations in the 20th Century.

"Forty Years after the Hough Riots" was the title of the Geller Lecture, but Cleveland City Councilwoman Fannie M. Lewis went back even farther, to Memphis in 1930 when, at age 4, she watched as a Ku Klux Klan member held a gun to her grandfather's head in the middle of the night.

"To this day," she said, "I've never had a white sheet in my house."

Nightmares like that plus countless humiliating incidents ("I remember the time I saw tears in the eyes of my husband, a Marine veteran of World War II") finally drove her north.

"When I came to Cleveland I was full of hate," she confessed, and the conditions she found in her Hough Avenue neighborhood made it hard to get rid of the hate. "I don't know how many of you here have anger in your heart," she said, "but you have to learn how to get rid of it."

With the help of her Church Fannie Lewis got rid of her hate, replacing it with a burning desire to improve conditions for herself and her community. The fire was evident last night as she proudly traced the rise in income levels, educational levels and housing values in Hough. "I came to rebuild a neighborhood and rebuild a people," she said.

Fannie Lewis has become a living legend in Cleveland and beyond, and her value was not lost on the mostly youthful audience.

"I didn't know what to expect when I came here tonight," declared one student during the Q&A period, "but I want to thank you for what you've told us. I for one appreciate it."

Fannie Lewis: Advice to the young

"Grown up" isn't when you're 21. "Grown up"
is when you can pay your own bills.

The clearer you can see your dreams,
the more likely you'll make your dreams come true.

You grow in stages of 20. The first 20 -- you mess up.
The next 20 -- you try to straighten out the things
you messed up in the first 20. The next 20 -- well,
if you haven't learned any sense by then,
you'll probably die crazy.

Life is a classroom. I don't have a college degree,
but I do have a Hough Avenue degree.

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