Miss Norma, as she is affectionately known by the people in her inner-city neighborhood, joined Baptist Mid-Missions in 1960. Norma established Faith Baptist Community Center as a lighthouse for the Lord in an underprivileged area of Cleveland, Ohio. The center now has its own church and medical ministry and is overseen by Norma and her missionary colleagues.
The Hough neighborhood in Cleveland was one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city during the 1960s. Housing was poor and rat-infested. Absentee landlords didn’t make repairs. Unemployment was high and education was inferior. One out of every four families in Hough had their children enrolled in the Aid to Dependent Children program, which provided federal funds to families whose head of the household could not provide an income.
Racial tensions were also high in the neighborhood. The area had formerly been a middle-class Jewish community. But the whites had long since moved out and had been replaced predominately by poor blacks. However, many of the small shops, bars, and markets were still owned by whites. These white businessmen charged high prices for inferior products. Residents of the area were frustrated and edgy. The crime rate in the Hough neighborhood had tripled since the 1950s. Family instability was more prevalent there than anywhere else in the city.
It was to the children in Hough that the Lord called me—a single, white 30-year-old woman. I could identify with the children in the Hough area. I had grown up in a very small town in rural, western Pennsylvania. I was the third of six children. My family was poor because my father was a clay miner. When I was young, I never heard or felt expressions of love from my family … something that led to a great hatred in my life. As a result, I became tough … I fought in school, associated with a negative group of friends, and began to smoke. Then the Lord Jesus saved me and delivered me from hatred and a fear of dying.
I wanted to reach the children in the Hough area for Jesus Christ and show them how Jesus could turn their lives around just like he had done for me. I was able to rent a storefront building next to a pool hall. It had big glass windows in the front.
I didn’t have much money, but the Lord always provided. A lady invited me to live in her home, and so I could afford to rent the building in the Hough neighborhood. The Lord provided the money to turn on the gas and the electricity. Every month the Lord provided for the rent and utilities.
I started having children’s classes. There would be 30-40 kids per class. I would take the kids on picnics and to camp. I was there about three years working with the children before that fateful day in the summer of 1966.
That summer, it seemed everyone in Hough was angry with everyone else. The young men especially seemed frustrated. Most did not have jobs and had no hope for anything better. The trouble began at the Seventy-Niners Café that stood at the corner of East 79th Street and Hough Avenue, the geographical center of the neighborhood. The owners had not had a good relationship with the people of the area. When a black customer requested a pitcher of ice water and a glass, one of the owners refused to serve him. The outraged customer shouted to his friends that he had been denied a drink of water. A crowd quickly gathered. The white bar owners called the police.
The simmering tensions boiled over. The crowd began to throw rocks and bricks at police. A riot broke out. Stores were looted and torched. Two blocks between E. 84th and E. 86th Streets suffered the heaviest damage. Snipers began to shoot from apartment buildings. Firefighters could not reach the riot zone because of the crowds. When they did get in, they were assaulted with bottles and rocks. Fire hoses were cut.
The mayhem that first night continued until about 4 a.m. One young woman was shot and killed as she tried to get permission to leave a building to get home to her children.
The next day the National Guard was called in, but they didn’t arrive until about 11 p.m. Tuesday. The National Guard with their big trucks blocked the whole area. I tried to get into the neighborhood to protect my building, but the National Guard wouldn’t let me in. They said, “No, you’re a white lady. You can’t go in there.” I couldn’t get into the area for a whole week. I knew the Lord was taking care of it. All I could do was watch it on TV.
The rioting continued each night for five days. Four people lost their lives, many others were injured, and the damage to the neighborhood was impossible to calculate.
On Monday, a week after the riots had broken out, I went down to the neighborhood. I got out of my car, and there were five men from the pool hall guarding my storefront meeting place.
The men ran up to me and said, “Miss Norma, we saved your building. You take care of our kids. You teach our kids about Jesus, so we didn’t let anyone mess with your building.” In gratitude for the message of Christ that I had been giving to their children, these unsaved men had courageously guarded the building day and night for an entire week while violence raged through the neighborhood. Our faithful Lord had preserved my building and the ministry that went on inside it, including that huge plate glass window. The mighty love of God had gloriously triumphed over hate and anger.
This story, originally titled "Hough Riots," was taken from the book Amazed by His Glory (p. 55), published by Baptist Mid-Missions. For ordering information, contact Tim Fry at tfry@bmm.org or click on the book title.