Today my friend Ginger Mook and I did an interview in front of the Cozad-Bates house in University Circle. That is the beautiful old red brick house on Mayfield Rd. in University Circle in Cleveland. It sits way back on a deep well kept front lawn, just a block north of Little Italy. It is the only pre Civil war home that still stands in the area. In the summer of 2003 I founded a grass roots organization that began quietly with six women gathered around my dining room table. We named the grass roots organization RESTORE CLEVELAND HOPE based on Cleveland’s UGRR code name HOPE. Ginger is not only one of the founders, she is also a direct descendant of an anti slavery-activist family. Her ancestors’ family home, just down the street from the Cozad’s, no longer exists. There is now a parking lot where the Ford family home used to be.

In RESTORE CLEVELAND HOPE we are working to create something wonderful on this sacred ground. University Circle and all of it amazing institutions was once farm land owned by a group of prominent citizens who were also abolitionist. Our mission is to restore and transform The Cozad-Bates House into an Underground Railroad teaching center, praising the ancestors and honoring Cleveland’s historic anti-slavery past.

Today Ginger and I taped a small bit for next Wednesday’s teleconference in historic Ashtabula. Someday in the not to distant future we will celebrate the Cozads, the Fords, the Malvins and the Browns and all of Cleveland’s heroic UGRR history here on the shore of Lake Erie. We envision Cozad-Bate as a ‘safe house.’ Safe for collaboration and creativity, a heritage connection for all surrounding neighbors and neighborhoods.