(Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper Online Photo www.cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND,Ohio-A controversial custody-adoption trial that began last Nov. between a poor Black Cleveland family and an affluent White couple with the popular judicial surname of Gallagher that were handed two new born Black children taken involuntarily from their teen mothers continues.
Taken within months of their births and precluded from being cared for by extended family members as state law requires, the celebrated trial to get back three year-olds Jamela and Jamyla Barringer is center stage at the new Juvenile Court Justice Center on Quincy Ave. in Cleveland before Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Nelson Floyd, who is Black.
"Children and Family Services have a modern day slave plantation by stealing Black children and we want our children back," said Angelique Cunningham, the 39-year-old grandmother of the three-year-old cousin toddlers of two of Cunningham's daughters, one 20 and the other 17, but both teens when their daughters Jamela and Jamyla were taken from them at two and four months old, respectively. "They have harassed us at every turn because we are Black and not middle class or rich."
The Gallagher's, educated and upper middle class residents of Solon, Oh, a suburb of Cleveland, are accused of making Jamela and Jamyla call them mom and dad to confuse them about their cultural identity, and then seeking legal custody, though Floyd denied the custody petition and the couple have hired a lawyer to appeal that decision.
Trial to try to get Jamela returned home to her biological mother continues before Floyd on March 22, and the trial on whether Jamyla will return to hers starts before the judge on Feb. 7.
Cleveland is a municipality of Cuyahoga County, the largest among Ohio's 88 counties, and the county with the most Blacks, a figure roughly at 30 percent.
Cunningham, who resides with her family in the Buckeye- Woodland neighborhood of the predominantly Black city's east side, said that the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family services has harassed her family repeatedly to try to justify stealing the kids though she, the children's grandfather, Cunningham's mother, the paternal great grandmother of the stolen three- year- old girls, a great uncle and a host of cousins, many qualified under state law to have temporary custody of the children, were overlooked because the agency said that the White couple could pay for a college education for the children. She said also that since no drugs or neglect occurred, the stolen grandchildren were allegedly taken because of a racially insensitive new trend of Whites adopting or stealing Black babies at birth to seek to appear pro-Black and hip.
The grassroots and religious communities are upset too, and have held energetic protests for Jamela and Jamyla in front of the county children and family services building at the Jane Edna Hunter Center for Children and Family Services in Cleveland, one of several countywide agency locations.
"We were at trial last week and we will continue to monitor this case," said Community Activist Ada Averyhart, 77, a member of the grassroots groups The Carl Stokes Brigade and The Imperial Women, groups that helped organize the protests along with other groups like Black on Black Crime, Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, The Family Connection Center, The Oppressed People's Nation , The Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for The Imperial Act and Organize Ohio. "I think Judge Floyd will be fair."
"They have been merchandising Black and poor children and we must fight against it" said the Rev. Ray Parker, Assistant Pastor of Faith Pentecostal Church in Cleveland.
And Nancy Rolfe, who leads Govabuse LLC and holds annual national protests spearheaded in Cuyahoga County on governmental mistreatment by children and family services agencies across the country, agrees that abuse by the agency exists, but she says that agency officials are harassing families across racial and ethic lines.
The Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family services, which is led by agency director Patricia Rideout, is under the realm of Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald and the 11-member county council. They came into power last year pursuant to a voter adopted revised form of county government that scrapped the three-member Board of Commissioners for a county council and chief executive.
Though FitzGerald touched on such issues as foreclosures, fiscal accountability, county contracts and responsible government, children and family services concerns were not highlighted during his City Club State of the County address today at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland.
