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Winston Earl Willis (born October 21, 1939) is a formerly successful American real estate developer who first came to local prominence in Cleveland, Ohio during the early 1960s. At the time, one of the most successful business owner/operators in the country, he created and controlled a corporation, University Circle Properties Development, Inc. (UCPD, Inc.) that owned one of the most strategic and valuable real estate parcels in Cleveland and was the largest employer of blacks in that part of the country. Under his solely-owned UCPD corporation at East 105th and Euclid, upwards of 23 successful businesses were running simultaneously and exhibiting tremendous success. Frequently referred to as “The Black Rockefeller” and “The Black Howard Hughes”, Willis was the first African-American to appear in a front page headline story of the city’s largest newspaper,〔(【引用サイトリンク】date=August 26, 1971 )〕 that was not political or crime related. But his prolific business prowess and radical outspokenness clashed with the city’s politically powerful entities and hierarchical organization and set into motion an enmity that would lead to his eventual economic destruction. His ongoing legal battles with the city of Cleveland over ownership of his lands spans several decades, including his 2007 Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, and continues to this day. Often described as "unique to the annals of American economic history", Willis’ place among notable Cleveland entrepreneurs has been greatly obscured by years of animosity and discord with city officials. He is one of several largely forgotten figures from the turbulent bygone era, an environment created by the explosive racial politics of America during the ’60s. American historian and author, David J. Garrow, (1987 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Biography: ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'') commented: In a staff meeting with her ''Club Date Magazine'' photojournalists who had witnessed and photographed the wrecking ball demolition of Willis’ Euclid Avenue properties, prominent local community leader/publisher, Madelyne Blunt〔(【引用サイトリンク】last=Blunt )〕 had this to say: ==Family background== Willis was born in pre-Civil Rights Movement Montgomery, Alabama, the third of the five children of Clarence C. Willis and his wife, Alberta Frazier Willis, both natives of Montgomery. His formative years included a Southern boyhood of strict parental rules, traditional values and obligatory racial boundaries. Boundaries of propriety, but more importantly, boundaries for his personal safety. But even as a male Negro child living under the legalized racial restrictions of the day, he was raised to see himself as equal to any other human being. Every adult male in his large extended family owned land and operated his own business, and he was strongly influenced by the drive and work ethic of these men in his life. They ignited in him an entrepreneurial spirit and impressed upon him the enduring value of economic independence and land ownership. The close-knit, self-sufficient black community was composed of businessmen, farmers, lawyers, domestic workers, teachers, nurses, and day-laborers who shared a unique connection and alliance that bound them together. From this group, a number of courageous individuals would be launched toward the social movement that would change history.〔African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)〕 Among them, Mrs. Rosa Parks a former classmate and friend of his mother’s at ''Miss White’s School for Girls'', (aka ''Montgomery Industrial School'')〔Parks, Rosa, My Story, Puffin Books (1999) ISBN 0-14-130120-1〕 and a cousin, Bernard Scott Lee,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The King Papers: MLK And The Global Freedom Struggle )〕 a student leader of the Alabama Sit-In Movement, who was later chosen by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to become his personal assistant and road manager. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Winston E. Willis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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