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I Didn’t Know a Woman Couldn’t Buy a House

Writer's picture: Stacey RuthStacey Ruth



As an eighteen-year-old leaving Daddy’s Alabama cotton patch, my entry into Ohio was thrilling, dynamic, an introduction to women’s rights and liberation. In the 1970s, I benefitted from feminist wars at a time when women burned their bras rather than be denied their rights.


Hello, this blog is also found in EPISODE ONE of My Cotton Patch Moment, a podcast. In it I share the journey of buying my first home as a young, newly divorced, single mother, back when a woman could be fired for being pregnant.


The day my divorce was final, I went house-hunting. Four years after telling a preacher, “I do,” I had stood before a judge and said, “I don’t.” I pulled the plug on a marriage that had limped along, too fragile to survive youth, financial woes, and irreconcilable differences. Still, I was heartbroken, felt like a failure, and needed something to lift my spirits.


So, that day when I picked my five-year-old up from daycare, rather than our daily trip to the park where she squealed through the air, pumping her legs to the rhythm of squeaky chains with me urging her to swing higher, we rode through Upper Dayton View, a ritzy neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. I gazed at custom brick homes in a community where teachers, the undertaker, musicians, and other successful professionals lived. How could I, a single mother, afford one of those places when my greatest asset was a dream? It was mid-June 1976. I was twenty-five. 


For years, while rushing to work, daycare, and church, I had driven up and down Philadelphia, Princeton, and Cornell, the main streets surrounding that dreamy community. I was curious but too busy juggling life to explore. But that day, I ventured onto the roads, driving slowly down each one, mindful of children pedaling tricycles on the sidewalks. I absorbed the quiet neighborhood and uniqueness of each house nestled between those busy thoroughfares.


Custom brick homes with manicured lawns, wide driveways, and detached two-car garages stood majestically on the quiet, tree-lined streets. Each month, after I had paid my rent and utility bills and bought groceries, with barely enough money to make it to the end of the month, I dared to envision myself living in one of those places and my baby with her own swing set in the back yard.


As I drove down the last street in the neighborhood, daydreaming about someday living in such a place, a for sale sign planted on the front lawn of the next-to-last house caught my attention. I hit the brakes, cranked my yellow Opel GT into reverse, parked at the curb in front of the house, and stared at the number 1408 on a concrete plaque carved into a brick column. The realtor’s name and number were like beacons, signaling me to do something. “Why not,” I thought. I grabbed a pencil and paper and jotted down his information. Then I drove to the intersection, stopped, and committed the street name, Ruskin Road, to memory.


Two weeks after spotting the two-bedroom brick English Tudor with a basement, driving past it numerous times, and pestering the realtor with every question imaginable, I was going to tour that beautiful home. I parked at the curb beneath an oak tree, excited to hustle inside. I grabbed my daughter’s hand, hurried up the sidewalk with a broad smile, and saw the realtor, a short black man with a clipboard, studying me from the front porch. As I came closer to the porch, I stopped, astonished, when I recognized the man. He was a short, stout deacon from my church whose name I’ve now lost through the years. He gazed at me for several seconds before finding his voice. “Mildred, I can’t believe it’s you I been speaking with all this time. On the phone, I thought you were an old white woman.” We both laughed, surprised at such a chance meeting.


A dainty, gray-haired lady, I’ll call Mrs. Cohen, greeted us at the front door, wearing rimless eyeglasses and a blue cotton dress with a white ruffled collar. I gazed past her into a spacious living room. Over her shoulder, I could see a formal dining room with a bay window and a small, bright kitchen with a sink overlooking the neighbor’s backyard. She nervously rubbed her hands up and down the pressed and ironed light blue dress, as she walked us through the immaculate home, beginning in the living room. Mrs. Cohen gently stroked parts of a wood-burning fireplace where colorful fish and other creatures made of precious stone were woven into its hearth. As we walked past the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen, in my mind I imagined my own furniture in that home and where I might place each piece.


Gliding down the steps to a full basement, I smelled fresh paint on the smooth gray concrete floor. The cinderblock walls reminded me of my home and family in Alabama.

But that Maytag washer and dryer standing side-by-side near the bottom of the steps made me long to make this house my home and laundromats a thing of the past. I studied every part of that house and tucked away memories while I continued to dream.


“My husband and I traveled the world, collecting precious pieces for our home,” Mrs. Cohen told me. Her beautiful brown eyes traveled every corner of that immaculate space as she held on to me and strolled through the home. “When we built our home in 1941, we wove treasures into every room, reminding us of places we traveled together. I shall never forget our trip to Auschwitz, Germany,” she told me.


I recognized the pain in the lady’s eyes when she walked me out the front door, pointed to the keystone at the home’s highest point, and described having it shipped to Dayton from some faraway place. When I turned to leave, she gently touched my hand. “Will you join me for tea this Saturday morning?” I gladly accepted.


That Saturday, I returned to Ruskin Road. I drove slowly down the five-block street, longing to know who else lived in such homes and wondered if they’d soon become my neighbors. When I rang the bell at 1408, Mrs. Cohen greeted me at the front door, wearing a frilly apron. The sweet smell of cinnamon filled the room. She grabbed my hand and ushered me to the dining room table, where cups of hot Lipton Tea awaited us. Mrs. Cohen sat at the head of the rectangular table; I sat close by at the corner to her left. She sandwiched my right hand between her warm frail ones with blue veins and stroked it lovingly as a mother would a child.


“I don’t want to leave my home,” she told me. “My husband died last year; I’m in my seventies and can no longer care for the yard. Now, my children are forcing me to sell.”

I sat quietly, unsure what to say to a mother who felt diminished, old, and whose children threatened to withhold support unless she bowed to their will.


Suddenly, I was racked with guilt, embarrassed, and ashamed of myself for invading her home. I started to speak, apologize for being there, and bid her farewell. But, then, she lowered her head, a tiny gesture that broke my heart when she told me it was time to let the cherished memories of her home and her late husband go. Goose flesh raced down my arms when she squeezed my hand and said, “I want you to have my home. I can tell you’ll take care of it.” She told me how so many people were stomping through her house. Mrs. Cohen said she knew those folks would never appreciate what she and her husband had built.


We sipped our tea, ate the sweet cakes she had baked, and she reminisced about the joy of raising children in such a beautiful neighborhood. She recounted how most of her friends were now gone, either dead or had moved to the suburbs.


 I told her about my divorce, my large family, and how I grew up picking cotton on my father’s farm. She asked me about my job and applauded my bravery to strike out on my own. For the first time since I had met her, Mrs. Cohen smiled. “Come; I must show you my beautiful gardens.” 


She rose from the table and hustled me out the back door, down four concrete steps to a large asphalt parking area. I studied the detached, two-car brick garage with a freshly painted brown door and small windows. I imagined my 1970 Opel GT parked in that garage and me never again having to scrape snow and ice from the windows in winter. We strolled down the steep asphalt driveway, and Mrs. Cohen pointed out the newly restored blacktop.

The backyard was as magical as a botanical garden. A giant oak tree hung over the garage, and the sweet smell of lavender filled the air. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, but Mrs. Cohen pointed to a blossom-filled lavender tree behind the garage. Even more stunning was a garden full of deep pink peonies, another unfamiliar flower. The plants, propped up and supported by a wire fence, stood more than two feet tall with blooms like little heads of cabbage. At the bottom of the long-sloping yard was a ditch with a rippling brook that separated her property from the adjoining neighborhood. I had no idea how to purchase a home. But as I walked down the sloping driveway back to my car, I dared dream of wrapping Christmas lights around the massive blue spruce tree at the corner of the front yard.


 Back at my apartment on Beechnut Street, I dusted, polished, and shined every piece of my modest furniture, including the gold crushed velvet sofa and matching chair and coffee and end tables with crushed gold inlays. I envisioned those pieces set up in a place where the landlord couldn’t raise the rent or ring the doorbell with or without prior notice. And then there was a knock at the door.


At the far end of the peephole, my landlord stood with a hammer, screwdriver, a snake, and a bucket, coming to fix the garbage disposal. I opened the door with a broad smile and followed behind him to the kitchen, him marching ahead of me like he owned the place, which he did. I remember watching him snaking something out of the clogged sink and how excited I felt about applying for a Fannie Mae home loan, something I had never heard of until the week before. “You know, Tim,” I said. “I’m thinking about buying a house.”


That man shut off the running water, jammed one fist on his bony hip, and slung his long blonde hair out of his face. “Nobody’s gonna sell you a house. You’ll never qualify,” he said with finality. He grabbed his tools and continued fixing the garbage disposal. Too stunned to mount a comeback, I stared at the back of his head and remembered how, five years earlier, an old black man had fired me—an unmarried college student—from my work-study job when he learned I was pregnant.


Warring emotions inside me wondered if these men thought my gender, color, or marital status made me less than others. I was insulted, furious, and that hard slap in the face set a fire under me. Never underestimate the power of rejection, I thought. AND, that, my friends, was a Cotton Patch Moment. I started counting down the days to Tim collecting his last rent payment from me.


Beginning in the middle of July, I gathered pay stubs, bank statements, proof of child support, and more documents than I knew existed. I worked all the overtime I could muster at General Motors and saved every extra dime. The day before closing, after I paid my rent and utilities and bought food, I was $500 short, and payday was three days away. I wrote two checks, one to cover the shortage and another that I hustled to the post office and put in the mail box.


Afterward, I called my younger sister, Rachel, my ride-or-die dearest friend, and explained my dilemma. After she got over the shock that I would write a check without funds to cover it, we hollered, laughing like the young, determined women we were. She was even more shocked when I told her I had mailed her a check. “Now, you can cash it soon as you get it,” I told her.


“How did you know I had $500?” she asked. I said I knew if she didn’t have it, she would get it just to make sure I could buy my house. That’s the kind of relationship she and I had. She wired me the money the next day, delaying her rent payment. At the closing, I invited Mrs. Cohen to visit any time. She had sat beside her son with her head bowed like a widow burying her husband once again. Sadly, I never saw or heard from her again.


October 1, 1976, three and a half months after my divorce was final, I moved into my $25,000 two-bedroom home and acquired a $95 per month mortgage payment, which included taxes and insurance. Rachel worked for TWA Airlines and could fly for free, so she was my first visitor.


Two months later, my dearest friend, Squeesta Collier, visited me from California. She walked through the living room door and stopped—speechless. She stared at the dark custom drapes with a floral pattern I had bought for the living room, a few accessories, and the beautiful dining room table Mrs. Cohen had gifted me.


“Mildred, you bought a house?” she asked. “I didn’t know a woman could buy a house.” Then she told me she had been waiting for her Prince Charming to buy her a home.

After noodling on that thought for a few moments, I had another cotton patch moment; “I didn’t know a woman couldn’t buy a house,” I told her.


I now realize that it was only one year before I bought my house that the equal credit opportunity act of 1975, which made it illegal to discriminate against women due to race, sex, age, or marital status, was passed. Only one year before to that, banks required a married woman’s husband to cosign for her and could arbitrarily refuse credit to unmarried women. I might have NEVER applied for a home loan if I had known these facts. I didn’t realize then that I was a trailblazer, testing the edges of newly acquired women’s rights. Two years after I bought my house, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 made it illegal for employers to fire women due to pregnancy, childbirth, or any such female problem.

My friends, buying my first home, motivated by a landlord who dismissed me, and an older woman who championed me, are just two of the many experiences, providing fertile ground for my cotton patch moments.

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