Cornelius Eady By Clifford Brooks
What are a few highlights from your beginnings? Where did you grow up? How did your teen years shape you? I was born and raised in Rochester, NY, Upstate New York, which is most famous for being the home of Eastman Kodak, the camera and film company, but it was also the city where Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony both lived and worked—at the same time. Both their homes, and Douglas’ newspaper were in walking distance from my parent’s house. Douglas’ famous 4th of July speech was written and read in Rochester, I believe a few blocks away from my elementary school was first located. Growing up, I remember Rochester as a blue, union, working-class town in a red, conservative county. I imagine my parents, who both came from Florida, but didn’t meet until they moved there came up because the word got out that there were good, union jobs, and houses that would be sold to blacks— and maybe the cops wouldn’t have been quite so bad—at least, that’s my guess. I never thought much of home ownership when I was a kid—and totally distained it as a teen—but a dead end block in the inner city where all the homes were black, and almost all of them had a mortgage—that was quite a feat, esp. in 1950’s America. It was a raggedy-ass place, in a beat-up neighborhood, but it was a house. Having nothing to compare it with, I just took it for granted. All the parents on that block are gone, so I’m probably never going to get to find out how they all figured that out. I have my guesses- it may have been the start of white flight—that block had been Italian, before my folks moved in—but giving mortgages to so many black families at once-this was way before fair housing programs—really intrigues me now. 133