Encountering A Neighbor

By Edwina Barron

Two years ago, research librarian Edwina Barron, 46, rented a condo in Euclid, a mostly white Cleveland suburb. Just a month later, she fled to a bungalow in a quiet, racially mixed neighborhood in Cleveland. Here she describes an encounter with a white neighbor who had been drinking that occurred just one night after she moved into the Euclid condo. The incident persuaded her to get out.

"At about 10 p.m., just as I was pulling into the parking lot, I heard a car alarm go off, in another lot off to the side. I pulled into my designated spot, and the gentleman whose home faced the spot where I parked came to the door and very abruptly made the statement 'Do we have to put up with this kind of racket every night?' The only thing I could say was 'That wasn't my car. I don't have an auto alarm.'

"Less than half an hour later, there was a knock at the door. I cracked the door, and at that point he was opening the screen door and coming in and saying 'I have to talk to you.' It was the same man. His attitude was 'We don't want you here.' He commented that he had been shot by a black once. Then he started going into 'black trash' and so on and so forth. He let me know that if I decided to stay there, I would have to look forward to whatever happened and he would not be responsible. He said some of the neighbors had had a discussion about it, and in essence, if I stayed there, I would be taking my chances.

"I had mixed emotions: hostility, hatred, anger. At that point, it was just welling up in me. I felt like I was in a pressure cooker. To be truthful, if I had had a gun -- and I'm scared to death of them -- I would probably have blown his brains out because I felt 'You have no right to come to me like this. I've done nothing to anyone.' If the people around me had ignored me, acted like I didn't exist, that would not have disturbed me one bit because I've been black all my life and run into situations like this. But I resented someone coming at me like that. "