Roger,   
      
   Wow... this is the first time I have posted anything on a BBS since   
   before my son was born.  I have something to share and it comes from   
   my life.   
      
   I grew up in the housing projects in the West End of Louisville and   
   there were many of them.  Park Duvalle, California, Beecher Terrace,   
   Shepherd Square... there were others but those were the four we were   
   moved to and fro as mama had more children.   
      
   Mom and Dad wer on again off again.  I know housing projects are seen as   
   crime ridden communities... and I know that some see them as drug dens.   
   This wasn't so prevalent back in the 1970s and 1980s.  One thing I can   
   say as more kids arrived we were moved to bigger units to accommodate   
   our family.   
      
   Daddy wasn't a deadbeat... not at all, he worked two jobs until he got   
   hurt.  You see he was a "disposable negro" and he became unable to work.   
   That's how we ended up in the projects as I am the oldest of my brothers   
   and sisters who did not know the nice house we once rented.   
      
   You can't say that we were on the tit of the government milking it for   
   all we can get because Mama worked for the white folk cooking and   
   housecleaning.  In the 1970's there just wasn't that many jobs that paid   
   well for a black woman with a 4th grade education.  Everyone told her   
   that she needed to go get her GED but at the time of Daddy's injry they   
   had three kids and we were in the California housing project.  It was a   
   cesspool even back then and it was the first housing project that was   
   torn down.  It was a sore spot because this housing project actually had   
   signs and lettring painted on the building that said "Negro Housing" and   
   they were nothing but ugly cinder block and concrete buildings.  Even   
   the walls were cinder block no drywall it was gold in the winter them   
   old buildings seemed to radiate the cold in the winter and the heat in   
   the summer.   
      
   We were only there temporarily and the city moved us to Park Duvalle   
   which was a nicer project.  It too has been torn down and replaced with   
   nice HUD townhomes... people pay some rent to live there and they have   
   poor white, black, and now mostly mexican and muslim people there.  Park   
   Duvalle also houses a lot of disabled as it has a fully functional   
   public health clinic there.  I guess it is a blessing there too.   
      
   The city had us set up nice... there were two girls and one boy.  I was   
   so happy to be out of the California neighborhood.  I was five, my   
   sister was two and my brother just a baby not even one at this time.   
      
   We didn't have the best of everything but we were no longer in the   
   cinder block building.  This place reminded me much of the military base   
   housing for the enlisted.  Everyone had the same apartment... tiny   
   kitchen with an area to the side to eat in.  Tiny sitting room where we   
   watched TV and upstairs were two beddrooms one for mom and Dad and the   
   baby and another for us two girls.  We knew we would eventually outgrow   
   it and move when my brother got older because the social workers would   
   not allow him to stay in with mom and dad past two years... nor would   
   they allow us to bunk with a boy in our room.   
      
   Right before Jimmy turned two we were moved to the best place... Beecher   
   Terrace which was the newest and the only housing project downtown that   
   still stands in Louisville.  Jimmy was slow, he was a special needs   
   child.  Mama said they used forcepts to pull him out and damaged him...   
   he is still disabled today and lives in the disabled housing tower   
   called Dosker manor.   That is the place of nightmares, but he is   
   independant and not institutionalized.   
      
   I guess Mama could have had a lawsuit if she knew better.   
      
   Beecher terrace was like living in a small park like community like the   
   apartment complexes the white peopel live in.  It was the late 1970's   
   and the school system decided to bus all the black kids from downtown to   
   dozens of schools in the suburbs and then bus all the white kids from   
   the suburbs to the black schools downtown.  It is sad but I guess   
   necessary.  I went to a differnet elementary school forty miles away   
   than my sister who went to one forty miles away in the other direction.   
   None of our friends in the community went to the same school.   
      
   The white kids got bussed downtown on a lottery system.  Some of us   
   black kids were allowed to stay in our neighborhood schools so that they   
   were appropriately "mixed" but not many.  The white kids were just as   
   confused as we were.  This practice still happens today even though the   
   suburbs now have black people living in them.  Our schools are insane   
   bussing kids all over the city to keep some calculated racial balance.   
   The politicians holler "climate change" yet we are bussing kids   
   thousands of miles around the city every day when most of us really   
   could walk to the neighborhood schools.  That's how I was told it was   
   done in the 1950's.   
      
   Mama worked, but we managed to always have food on our table... and it   
   was good food.  It wasn't the best of food, but it was good food usually   
   fried chicken, chitterlings (or chitlin's or shitlins depending on how   
   you called it) and the cheaper roasts and cuts of meat.  Then there was   
   the free government cheese.  We were thankfull for it, now people get it   
   and don't really appreciate it or think it is good enough but it kept us   
   from starving.   
      
   I worked hard to get my education. I'm ashamed of black kids now day for   
   not taking advantage of the opportunities they have before them.  They   
   worship their hip hop idols and not the Lord.  They care nothing about   
   their elders, yet in my day it was mama and the old folk in the   
   community that helped us young folk get through.   
      
   I was blessed as I got all the new clothes, my poor sister Ruth, God   
   rest her poor soul, never knew what it was like to have anything new.  I   
   remember one easter the year before I graduated high school when I   
   bought her a new pair of shoes for Easter Sunday service, she hardly   
   would wear them because they blistered her feet.  Poor girl never had a   
   pair of shoes that wasn't already broken in.  I was blessed to have a   
   job at 17 at the Indi's Fried Chicken restaraunt. Ruth was murdered by   
   her boyfriend when she was only 17, I was away at college and I was   
   unable to protect her. Since I was gone and poor Ruth was dead my family   
   was moved to their final housing project in Shepherd Square it was small   
   and there was a lot of crime there.  LOTS and LOTS of crime.  Daddy's   
   pain was more than he could bear and he started to self medicate with   
   alcohol.  He didn't live long after the move.   
      
      
   Anyhow kids nowday don't know the struggle, it was the old folk who   
   helped sew up our clothes when they got holes in it.  It was the old   
   folk who were our greatest treasure.  We learned respect from them as if   
   we misbehaved in public we got tole on and sometimes even spanked by   
   them.  Then when we got home we got spanked, sometiems again.  They say   
   spanking makes people have bad self esteem.  I am proud that I was   
   spanked when I needed it.  No one ever lay a hand on me that I didn't   
   deserve it... and I am thankful for it.  I think that's why I did so   
   well in school becuase I know what would be waiting for me at home if I   
   had a bad grade.   
      
   I graduated from college in 1988 as a Registered nurse Jimmy was more   
   than mama could take care of at this point and they institutionalized   
   him for a while.  They moved mama to the old Waverly Hills TB sanitorum   
   which had become a state run nursing home.  No one can hardly ever   
   remember the name of that nursing home but it was the place of   
   nightmares.  It always smelled of urine and old feces.  It was where   
   people were sent to die.  I was fortunate and worked at the Catholic   
   Hospiral St. Mary and Elizabeth.   
      
   Mama died and some law got passed that made it unconstitutional to   
   institutionalize Jimmy, I'm no lawyer so I have no idea how it freed him   
   but in 1999 just before the infamous Y2K they put Jimmy in Dosker Manor   
   and he stayed there until someone beat him to death for being in the   
   wrong place at the wrong time in 2012.   
      
   My employer has changed and it was St. Mary and Elizabeth, then it   
   became Caritas hospital (supposted to be latin for care and love we   
   called it the Carrot Top Hospital).  Then back to St. Marys and the old   
   nuns that owned the hospital sold it to the Jewish Hospital.  There's   
   still a nun there that lives on premesis... she jokes that she now sings   
   Oy Vey Maria for the holidays.  It's not the same hospital that it once   
   was not as clean, and tidy.   
      
   I look back at my time in the projects as I now have a nice home in   
   Lyndon, an upper middle class neighborhood in Louisville.  I shop at   
   Whole foods, and go to the mall, something I didn't know existed when I   
   was a kid.   
      
   All the housing projects are torn down except for Beecher Terrace which   
   has became so bad that if you are a non-resident and accidentally turn   
   into the premises you will be instantly stopped by the police asking   
   what your business is there.  It's where 20% of the murders in our city   
   come from.  Not the place of my childhood....   
      
   But one thing I can say is in those old buildings labled "Negro Housing"   
   there was love... and lots of it.  We learned respect, and learned the   
   value of education.   
      
   Most of my generation pulled ourselves up out of that mess but I look   
   around now and see young folk who aren't even trying.  It makes me   
   ashamed... I'm only 5 years younger than when momma died... and I know I   
   will live longer than she did.  I look at my hands and remember how bony   
   hers were... how her skin was stretched tightly across her bones.  None   
   of us knew at the time that the kids ate first... then Daddy and poor   
   mama often ate what she scraped from the bottom of the pan or what meat   
   that was left on the chicken ones that we didn't eat.   
      
   No the kids of today do not know the struggles we have had to go   
   through... nor do they know what it's like to be hungry... but the   
   saddest thing of all is I really don't believe that any of them know the   
   love we had either.  Love of their mama... ove of their daddy... love of   
   the old people.   
      
   I am so sad... the kids deserve better and I feel like we have failed   
   them in every way possible.  Our government is the problem not the   
   solution... the more that they keep being given to the more that they   
   want.  None of them want to work for anything anymore... none of them   
   care about what they have.  As the post Roger posted they fixed   
   things... we fixed things too... we sewed we made do or did without.   
      
   Kids now days never had to do without.  I am thankful for everything I   
   have.   
      
   I didn't think old BBS systems still exist.  Glad I found this one.   
      
   Delitra Marie Shabazz   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
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    * Origin: Derby City LiveWire - Louisville, KY - livewirebbs.dy (1:2320/100)