Author: admin

Mary Baggett

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Mary Baggett
Lived at the ABLA rowhouses from 1987 – 1997.

Just seeing our kids on the streets with nothing to do kinda made me want to step up to the plate to see them have a better life. I looked at them and like, we have all the resources to help get these youth off the street, to send them out job hunting, to put them in a program to show them that they can learn different trades to get the job that they need. And I just felt like nothing was getting done. It was time to make a change, stay on top of them, stay on top of CHA, stay on top of management and everybody who’s supposed to deal with this community overall.

Shakira Johnson

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Shakira Johnson
Lived at Henry Horner Homes from 2000–2014.

I remember it was a week before christmas there was snow outside. Not the cold snow that makes you bundle up and grab four jackets if you didn’t have a big coat. It was that light fluffy snow that gently hit the ground or dissolved in your hand without sending chills through your body. This was one of my favorite times of the year. Putting up and decorating trees and snowball fights outside, hot chocolate and hot tea with cookies to soothe the body, all the small things that kids would love were all there in our public housing development, There was barely a reason to leave.

Allen Schwartz

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Allen Schwartz
Lived at Jane Addams Homes from 1943 – 1954.

So I was born in Chicago and my parents were already living at the Jane Addams Projects. We were in the courtyard over there on the first floor, so you know, it seemed okay. it seemed okay. Right around the corner was the Garden Theatre. The Garden was a little local theatre. My sister and I or sometimes the whole family would go at least once a week. People in those days went to the movies, the theatre.

Liz Thompson

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Liz Thompson
Lived at Cabrini Green from 1963-1986.

You would step up into the candy truck, kids would take their nickel and go down and buy five pieces of candy from the candy truck. Oh man, they had bubble gum, and remember the little dots that would come on long sheets of paper and the candy necklaces that you could wear around your neck and eat off a piece and get mosquito bites because of the sugar and all of that.

Raymond McDonald / Shaq

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Raymond McDonald / Shaq
Lived at Cabrini Green from 1993–present.

There’s a lot that I didn’t know growing up about my neighborhood that I was living in, but what I did know it was resilient. We marched. We fought. To see the Black power. Just to see our people have a voice, something to hold on to. It made a difference to me growing up, it gave me a sense of self, seeing in knowing what they wanted. Home stability, stability with itself in life. A community.

H. Demetrius Bonner

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H. Demetrius Bonner
Lived at Stateway Gardens from 1958–1989.

What you have to understand is that growing up in that era the thing was to be proud of blackness, proud of who you are. We didn’t know what poor was. I didn’t anyway. Because if you need it you got it. Some people were less fortunate, but the public housing I grew up in, see my grandmother was the Candy Lady and if you had an issue, your mother would come talk to the Candy Lady and my grandmother would try to help them work it out. She wasn’t the only one — there was a lot of Candy Ladies around.

Francine Washington

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Francine Washington
Lived at Stateway Gardens from 1973-2006.

I sat there one night, “I’m so tired of these green walls, I don’t know what to do, everything’s green throughout the whole apartment. Even the bathroom. So I just had me some, I was going to college, so I got me a magic marker and I just started in the corner and I just started throwing shapes all over the apartment… Everyone said, ooo that’s something nice on your walls, so I went and got 9 gallons of paint and 9 brushes and said, “We are going to have a painting party. And when we finish painting, I’mma feed y’all. Listen to some music and enjoy y’all work.”

Rhoda Jean Hatch

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Rhoda Jean Hatch
Lived at Jane Addams Homes from 1959–1974.

We didn’t know who lived in the project. We didn’t know until we found out much later, that’s where we actually lived, in the Chicago housing authority. Growing up as kids, we didn’t think of it as that. We just thought of it as a beautiful building we lived in, the home, there was ten of us in the apartment that we lived in.

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