CINCINNATI — The kids call her granny. Others know her as Mrs. J. Everyone knows she’s a character.
On one Thursday afternoon, Anna Joiner looks straight into the camera and smiles. She's already been talking for several minutes, but now she’s ready to begin.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask your questions.”
Joiner has been cutting hair in Avondale for decades. She lived through life-altering riots here in the ‘60s, and her salon became a community staple after that.
For close to 50 years, she lived upstairs and cut hair downstairs in her home on Reading Road.
“I love Avondale,” she said.
Joiner also loves to talk. It’s one of the reasons she cut hair for so long because she met people — all kinds of people. And if she could, she tried to help them.
“I can’t tell you how much free hair I’ve done over the years,” she said.
Because her salon was about more than just hair. Over time, it became a gathering place for her neighbors.
“It meant everything,” she said.
Today, you can still see the sign painted on her front porch: “Mrs. J’s Beauty Salon.”
It’s mostly painted over now. Even though downstairs, the salon chairs and hair dryers are still there. And so is Joiner, trying to help her community in any way she can. Even if it’s no longer by cutting hair.
“I love Mrs. J,” said Jennifer Foster, vice president of Avondale’s community council. “Mrs. J has been a pillar of the community for a long time.”
But the 86-year-old uses a cane to get around now. And when she walks down her front steps, it takes a while.
Joiner quit cutting hair during the pandemic. In the years after, she’s turned her home into a different kind of community space.
She essentially gave away her backyard to Avondale’s neighborhood council. And those officials are in the process of making it into a garden for kids, growing everything from watermelon to sweet peas.
But this isn't just another story about a garden. This is a story about the community Joiner continues to grow — even after retirement.
It’s a story about a community that doesn’t give up, even as recent police data shows it’s one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Cincinnati. The garden sits just a few blocks from where a 14-year-old and two other people were shot last month.
On a recent sunny day, a group of kids visit “Granny Anna’s Garden” from the library across the street. They come every week.
A group of girls crouch down around strawberry plants.
“That one’s not ready to pick yet,” one said, holding a small strawberry in her hand. “You have to let it grow.”
A few feet away, Foster watches on. She laughs and hugs Joiner.
“A couple weeks ago, they thought potatoes came from McDonald’s,” Foster said of the kids.
And next to carefully designed wooden garden beds, Crystal Russell makes new space in the ground. The kids always want to plant, she said.
Russell isn’t a gardener. Before taking over this garden, she killed most of what she tried to grow. But Russell wanted to do her part to highlight something other than violence in her neighborhood.
“Fighting violence with violence is stupid,” she said. “So I try to fight it with peace.”
After the kids leave, Russell stays to complete the work they didn’t get to. That’s when she starts crying.
"I'm trying to hold it in,” she said, apologizing and walking away from our interview for a moment. “For me, it means everything to be out here.”
Because she’s helping anyone who visits, just like Joiner has for more than 40 years.
