He served time; can he serve on the Cleveland city council?
John A. Boyd feels his rehabilitation makes him a model of hope for those struggling as he did.
from the April 21, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
Boyd knows that, just like first impressions of the ward itself, he is more than he seems.
His freshly painted, tidily landscaped home on East 84th Street is one of the nicest in this neighborhood of boarded-up houses and vacant lots. That blight is one reason he's running.
"I was born and raised in this house," he says. "This neighborhood is no reflection of what it was in my childhood. It was a middle-class neighborhood. We would sleep on the front porch in the summertime and leave the doors open year-round."
But his close-knit world was a predominately female one comprised of his great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and two aunts. Young Boyd had no relationship with his father.
"A woman cannot teach a child how to become a man. So a boy will start looking to other men ... for role models," he says.
Like many other inner-city neighborhoods, Boyd's was not short on colorful characters. "There was a lot of hustling going on. Like a lot of young men without fathers we would gravitate toward the guys with the big shiny cars and the pretty women," he says.
His fate took a turn when he and his friends decided to rob a "numbers house," where illegal gambling took place.
"We didn't go there with the intent to hurt anyone," Boyd explains. "But there was a struggle between me and the owner over a gun. It went off.... We left, and I had no knowledge the other guy had died.
"It was an accident. But I accept the responsibility that as a result of my being there a life was lost," he says.
At age 16, Boyd pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He served eight years in the Ohio Penitentiary. When he entered prison, Boyd could barely read or write. "My mom made me promise I would go to school." And, indeed, he earned a high school diploma, associate's degrees in business management and social science, and a bachelor's degree in psychology.
Released from his first prison term in 1980, when he was 23, Boyd struggled to fit in.
"I thought I was an adult now, not a child. Man, was I naive. I was labeled as a convicted murderer and couldn't get a job. I would never even get the interview because they'd read my past conviction on my application. [If I] left it off, employers would find out and I'd get fired.
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