E8: First and Only

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In January of 2020, Bloomberg CityLab published an article about a new study from Pittsburgh researchers naming the best and worst cities for black women. Among cities with at least 100,000 black women, Cleveland came in dead last in terms of livability. In this city with a nearly 50% black population, this news drops like a bomb, and reactions were mixed.

[Music Playing]

Do you think Cleveland is really the worst for black women? And what do you say?

Female:

“I say …

Female:

“It depends on the person they ask.”

Female:

“When I dropped it in one of my black girl group chats, the emojis were just eye rolls.”

Female:

“I'm not surprised. Not even a little.”

Female:

“It’s heartbreaking and also embarrassing.”

Female:

“Is it like this everywhere? Is it me? Like …

Female:

“This city will make or break you.”

Female:

“City of black women that are looking around at their outcomes, their future, their past, and saying, this city makes me anxious.”

Female:

“If anybody's out there listening in Cleveland, please get out.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On Living For We, we talk to Cleveland's black women from all walks of life, from the CEO of one of our major healthcare systems to self-starting entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, students, and mothers who've experienced loss.

We share stories from these women as change makers and architects of their own futures, celebrating their victories, challenges, and personal growth along the way.

So, is it really true what they say? Is Cleveland deserving of the least livable title? And what can we do to make lasting improvements for black women in our city?

I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor. And this is Living For We, a project of Connecting the Dots between Race and Health, from Ideastream Public Media.

When you see old movies or documentaries, it seems like black people living in the South, picking cotton all day in the hot sun for white landowners was a long, long time ago. But for our first guest, 94-year-old Ms. Arnell Hendricks, it's like it was yesterday.

Arnell Hendricks:

I picked 400 pounds of cotton a day.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wow. I've heard stories about picking cotton. Was it as awful as I've heard, picking cotton?

Arnell Hendricks:

Yes. It was just as bad as you heard. It was on your back, your fingers. You get those nails on your fingers from picking in the — and the hot sun is like 110 degrees sun. And at the end of the row there was the trees. And we go on the tree for a little while to cool off.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Get some shade.

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). For shade.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Miss Arnell is a former nurse. She's lived her entire adult life in the Cleveland area. She moved from a small Southern town in 1948 during the great migration of black people from the South to Northern cities.

I was introduced to this wonderful woman by my mother. They both grew up in Eudora, Arkansas. Current population, 1600 people, if I'm being generous.

My mother and Ms. Arnell went to school together.

Arnell Hendricks:

I just wanted to leave Eudora, because there was nothing there. We had one grocery store, two drug stores, and that was the size of it. So, it was no job for you to do anything. So, and I wanted to go to school, and I got they call her like a scholarship, like a $250 scholarship.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

To assess the current state of livability for black women in Cleveland, we thought it would be interesting to hear the perspective of someone who's seen a lot of changes. She came here at a time when opportunities were very limited for black women.

So, we packed up our equipment and went to visit Ms. Arnell at her home in Warrensville Heights on a rainy afternoon.

Okay. And I'm going to call you Ms. Arnell, because that's what I call you.

Arnell Hendricks:

That's okay. Yeah, I know you do.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You know that's how we are. With our elders, we say Ms. Arnell. Right?

Arnell Hendricks:

Right, right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Her mind is still very sharp. But a recent fall has created challenges including learning to interact with her Alexa smart speaker.

[Alexa speaking]

Oh, it's time for brunch. You need to stop and eat.

Arnell Hendricks:

Say what?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's your reminder that it’s time for brunch. Do you need to stop and take a snack or anything?

Arnell Hendricks:

What did she say?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The machine was saying, it's time for you to have brunch. Are you hungry?

Arnell Hendricks:

No, I just ate-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Okay. You good?

Arnell Hendricks:

Yeah. She reminds you. She really — shut up, shut up.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Just an average day at Ms. Arnell's house. After moving to Cleveland with that $250 scholarship, she enrolled in nursing school and lived in the historic Phyllis Wheatley home in Cleveland.

Arnell Hendricks:

Phyllis Wheatley was supposed been a home away from home for black girls. It was kind of like home where you had your bedroom, your bedroom was upstairs, and they had a nice living room downstairs for you to receive your company.

And after 11 o'clock, you're supposed to be in, before 11 o'clock at night. So, my mother kind of enjoyed that. I'd be having some kind of strict … like should be in at 11 o'clock.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

She felt comfortable.

Arnell Hendricks:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Knowing you were staying there where they had-

Arnell Hendricks:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Some restrictions.

Arnell Hendricks:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Now, how did things go at nursing school?

Arnell Hendricks:

Oh, at nursing school. I went to Metro.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

To Metro Health?

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Here in Cleveland?

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was called City Hospital at that time. I was the only black person in the class.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You were? What was that like?

Arnell Hendricks:

Oh, it was terrible. Yeah. Always she … they call, like she did this. Some of those girls was prejudiced. I guess that's all they knew. But they always called me she.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

They wouldn't call you by your name.

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (negative). But so, happened, I did real well in school. I mean, I did real well. I made A's and B's in class and I worked real hard to get what I had, what I got. There was two of us. They put the other girl out. I don't know why they put her out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

There was another young lady who was black?

Arnell Hendricks:

Black, uh-huh. But they put her out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Well, that must have been disappointing because if I would've been in your shoes, I would've been like happy to see-

Arnell Hendricks:

Black person, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

One other person. Right. And were you disappointed when you heard they put her out?

Arnell Hendricks:

I really was. I was hurt. Then we always sit together.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That must have been like a real, what's the word I'm looking for? Culture shock. Because here you're coming from Eudora and I'm assuming you went to high school with mostly black kids. Right?

Arnell Hendricks:

All black.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

All black. And then you come to Cleveland and then you go to nursing school and now you're the only black person.

Arnell Hendricks:

Only black person in the room.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That must have been-

Arnell Hendricks:

It’s frightening. It is in a way.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was frightening?

Arnell Hendricks:

In a way. They look at you like they wonder what you're made out of. During that time, kids was really — I guess they didn't know anything else but to be prejudiced. The parents, they were prejudiced, so-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Did you befriend anybody? Did you make any friends with anybody?

Arnell Hendricks:

I tried, yeah, but it seemed like they were scared of me.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

What was it like as a black woman working? I should ask first, what hospital-

Arnell Hendricks:

It was a hospital, Metro. But what we had to do is, there was a white woman in the room. We had wards. They called wards, four beds in the room. And this white lady doesn't want to be in the room with the black woman. So, we had to move the black woman out of that room to satisfy her.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, if there were two patients in the room and one was black and one was white, if the white person didn't want the black person in there-

Arnell Hendricks:

We moved the black woman. Even with the patients, they would turn their light on, they want to use the bathroom and they would call … they want you to put them on the bedpan or whatever they needed.

But they didn't think the white nurse should be doing it. So, they would ask you for it. “Can I have a bedpan?” The white woman just passed you and you didn't ask her. Why didn't you ask her for one? But they thought this is your job.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, you had to deal with some patients who were not exactly open-minded.

Arnell Hendricks:

A lot. Most of them was not open-minded.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, Ms. Arnell, some people would look at you, look at your life, you came here from Arkansas, you became a nurse. And I don't know, would you say your life has been pretty good here in Cleveland?

Arnell Hendricks:

I would say not really.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Because a lot of people talk about the discrimination that was going on in the South back then. But they talk as though the Northern cities, that, that wasn't going on.

Arnell Hendricks:

It was, it was. Living condition, living area, it has always been that way. It really has. What do I want? I want justice and to be treated just like you are being treated. Why should we have separate schools, separate area where we live? You can tell that white folk living in some areas. Black folk living in the other area. And it's not that some of us wouldn't take care of our property. It's just … that got us that way.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Cleveland is notorious for being racially segregated. Even today, most black families are clustered on the East side. So, imagine how bad it was back in Ms. Arnell’s day.

Some suburban neighborhoods like Shaker Heights are proud about being diverse now. But black middle-class families suffered explicit discrimination while trying to move from the city to the suburbs for a better life like so many other racial groups had done when they gained upward mobility.

Did you ever have any trouble when you were buying your house? You and your husband?

Arnell Hendricks:

We had problems.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

What kind of problems?

Arnell Hendricks:

Getting a loan and the percentage that they want us to have. At that time, loan was like 4% and they want us to pay 6%. 6%.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Which house was that for? The first house. For the house at Shaker.

Arnell Hendricks:

The one in Shaker.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, they wanted you to pay above the interest rate?

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Did you have to end up having to do that in the end?

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (negative).

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

What did you do?

Arnell Hendricks:

One of my husband's friends was white and he got the house in his name.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, your husband's white friend had to get the house-

Arnell Hendricks:

In his name.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In his name for you guys?

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Then we had transferred back in our name after he got the house.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And that was an order, so you didn't get stuck paying extra interest. Wow.

Arnell Hendricks:

Yeah, yeah. That is true.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's crazy. So, what do you think when you hear that that study named Cleveland the worst city for black women?

Arnell Hendricks:

I think Cleveland is a bad place for black women. And it shouldn't be that the first black woman did so and so and so, it shouldn't be the first. It should been happening all the time.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We should be past that. Yeah.

Arnell Hendricks:

That's what I'm saying. It should have been like that all the time. It shouldn't have to be said and done that we are the first so and so and so. No.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It would be nice if we were beyond black women still having to be the first. Ms. Arnell was likely one of a few black nurses in Cleveland in the 50s.

Now in 2023, another nurse has broken a glass ceiling. Our next guest, Airica Steed, is the new CEO of Metro Health. And unsurprisingly, the first ever woman, and not just black woman, but any kind of woman to lead a hospital system in Cleveland.

While she's only been on the job a few months, she says her number one goal is to eliminate health inequities, inequities that she's experienced firsthand. And as we've explored on this podcast, that's a huge undertaking.

Airica Steed:

We've been chasing this for centuries. We have yet to even scratch the surface on really what we can say, we've eradicated healthcare disparities. That's something I'm hungry for. I've always been a fan of the work of Metro Health.

But the Pittsburgh study for me came just as part of my overall area of interest and focal point, well before. So, now it's come full circle.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Full circle.

Airica Steed:

Especially being a black woman and landing up dead last on that list, it inflamed me. It really did.

My life story is all about pain. And I've always been fueled by that. I was very young when I lost my mother to a very rare form of leukemia. First, she was misdiagnosed. She was late caught in terms of misinformation, delays, missteps, and ball drops.

And just long story short, my mother didn't end up passing away from the leukemia in and of itself. She ended up passing away from an experiment. And that experiment touched me so deeply because my mother, nor her family were engaged in this process that she was being experimented on.

And at the end of the day, the side effect of that experiment is what took my mother's life.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, my God.

Airica Steed:

Had she recognized the fact that she was being experimented on and in a huge side effect is death, death, death, death, death.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And she didn't know.

Airica Steed:

I think that she would've made a much more informed decision. Her family would've wrapped around her and enjoyed the final moments of her precious life as opposed to going through that pain and torment during the last several months of her life.

This is what truly rocked me to my core. My baby sister, my younger sister, she passed away from breast cancer also. This is where it becomes a statistic, such a significant aspect of what we need to disrupt in this broken system.

It wasn't until I actually went through these personal experiences that it resonated with me that this is an absolute calling. And I was in this place for a reason to disrupt the brokenness, to reverse the centuries of inequity, to actually achieve the fundamental goal of health equity.

And we also need to do a better job of representing those that we serve and start to break down those walls of distrust that has been built up because of all of these various negative experiences.

So, I can honestly tell you from my own personal purview and my own personal experiences, I'm extremely guarded. It takes a lot for me to even share and open up to the various providers that I may seek out just because I've had so many bad experiences. We need to do something about that too because that's part of the problem.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

One of the things that we're exploring with this podcast is when that study first came out, it was a couple years ago now, some people say, we went through a racial reckoning in this country. Has there been some movement? It's kind of what we're exploring, right?

And some people will look at you and say there's an example. So, movement is actually happening. We have the first African-American woman who is running a major healthcare system in this city. So, that's progress.

Airica Steed:

It absolutely is progress. And I'm proud to say that I'm the first black, first female, first nurse in 185 years to run this storied institution. There are only 16% of healthcare systems across the country are ran by women.

And if you peel it back even further, less than 6% are minorities. And that encompasses both men and women. We still have some work to do.

So, where I'm absolutely proud is I represent a signal of hope, momentum, the motivation to continue to break down those chains and break down the barriers and fight through the adversity. And most certainly get comfortable being uncomfortable navigating ourselves through this very windy road. But it's still hard.

But I can honestly tell you that I'm encouraged and very optimistic about the future, given the fact that we've made this groundbreaking, historic, courageous decision to say, I want to influence what that narrative actually looks like.

[Music Playing]

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Often when black women are invited to have a seat at the table, it's because they’re needed to come in and clean up a mess.

Airica Steed:

Now, I'm afraid where are you going to go with this question?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

If you haven't heard, there's been drama at Metro Health over the past few months. Drama that has nothing to do with Ms. Steed.

Female:

“Breaking news. The president and CEO of Metro Health, Akram Boutros has been terminated.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Akram Boutros, Metro Health's former president and CEO with nearly a decade of experience at the organization, was abruptly fired in the lead up to his scheduled retirement last December. It was alleged that he paid himself over 2 million in bonuses without the knowing consent or approval of Metro Health’s board.

Female:

“Suing for wrongful termination, defamation and damages.”

Akram:

“I have never in any way acted on an unethical matter. That is why I went to the High Ethics Commission, and I was eager to go to them so that they can clear my name.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It's been messy to say the least. This case will likely be litigated in the courts for a while. But it was unfortunate that it blew up in the public eye just as Ms. Steed was about to take over.