Sat 2/1 @ 6:30PM
Recently, our columnist Mansfield Frazier posted his recollections of the legendary Cleveland businessman Winston Willis. Willis is known to many (especially white) northeast Ohioans as the proprietor of a string of X-rated businesses on Euclid and East 105th that were obliterated by the growing Cleveland Clinic. But he’s known in the black community as a brilliant and wily entrepreneur who built a real estate and entertainment empire, despite the resistance of Cleveland’s white establishment. Mansfield’s piece has all the details.
Local actor/educator/motivational speaker Morris Ervin Jr. will bring Willis to life onstage (actually, Willis is still alive at the age of 80) in a one-man show entitled The King of Cleveland: An American Tragedy, which will be presented for one night only at the Rainey Institute. “Come out to an evening of music, history and powerful dialogue as we reintroduce the remarkable life and Winston Willis and his extraordinary rise to economic power and wealth in the turbulent 60s,” we’re promised. And it is quite a story.
Tickets are $20.
the-king-of-cleveland-an-american-tragedy
Cleveland, OH 44103