How many days do I have to drive past the boarded up, damn-near, almost-ready-for-re-development Ida B. Wells Housing Project gone wrong on King Drive and see my students’ grandfathers, uncles, fathers, cousins, mothers, and brothers chilling in the middle of the boulevard? I mean how many afternoons do I have to look at their intense games of chess, checkers, horseshoes, and spades at 3:00 in the afternoon? I look at them from a healthy distance. I catch their jovial laughs and long swigs from the brown-paper-bag-liquid-beverages while sitting in the thick of summer air waiting for the light to signal green so I can peel out and unleash my anger on the car in front of me that isn’t driving away fast enough from this Bizarro-World, fifth-demension of reality. I look at these people, my people with bewilderment, disappointment and anger. Some days I catch myself rubbing my eyes and pinching my forearm trying in vain to awaken from this nightmare of complacency unfolding before me.
I watch their children file out of the high school after sitting in my classroom for three 90 minute class periods. I watch them Monday-Friday struggle. They struggle to read and count. They struggle to return my “Good Morning” greetings. They simply don’t respond to a simple “How are you doing today?” They struggle to create and maintain functional, respectful relationships with their peers and other authority figures. They litter the halls with with cold stares, sagging pants, and tissue thin white baby tee’s with red bras. There are many days when they are so overcome with fear, embarrassment, and anger they don’t even bother to come.
Like Darryl who wrote in his journal that he missed two days of school last week because he was at his mother’s house and had no clothes there . His father wouldn’t pick him up so he could prepare for school the next day. He writes, “after I was at my mama’s fo to days I caled my uncle and he got me so I could get some mo cloths.” Really?
I guess school isn’t a priority or maybe his parents are still beefing about the father’s infidelity when she was pregnant with Darryl back in ‘92.
Certainly, it isn’t Darryl’s fault that he can’t spell or that he doesn’t care to spell the word clothes correctly in his journal. Maybe when C-L-O-T-H-E-S was on the spelling list in the second grade when Darryl was unable to make it to school because his father refused to take him home to his mother so she could prepare him for school the following day. Maybe his uncle was busy and didn’t have the time to take pity on him. At some point (or at many points) mom, dad or somebody failed to sit him at the kitchen table after his school day was done or before it started to help him practice writing his letters on lined paper.
Now it’s 2008 and he’s a freshman and his letters still crawl up and down the lined paper like it’s still 1996 and he’s still a student in Miss Jones’ Head-Start class. And, before we go blaming the teacher, Miss Jones, she had about 9-10 other Darryl’s in her class all needy, ashy, hungry, dirty, and deficient at the same time.
I am not mad at Darryl. I cry for Darryl every night. I work for Darryl everyday. I’m mad at those jovial, happy-go-lucky zombies who drink and play childish games to avoid dealing with the dry ass realities of our world . These slackers who relinquish responsibility and give their flesh and blood to the state of Illinois and to the Department of Corrections depress my spirit. I’m hurt. I give a damn. They don’t give a damn, they said fuck it and threw the towel in the middle of 39th and King Dr. long before I stopped at this traffic light. They ceded their power to the needle, pipe, poverty, low-expectations, and the enttitlement programs that lulled them into a false sense of being. I guess some of us can deal with the racism, sexism, poverty, double-standards, and sub-par educational facilities. I guess others refuse and grab a pack of Newports, find a corner, and talk about what should’ve, could’ve or would’ve been between drags of the cigarette and sips of the brew.
Filed under: Education, Rants, Urban America | Tagged: Come On People, Education, Entitlement Programs, Frustraton, Ida B. Wells Housing Projects, Inner-City, Inner-City Ills, King Drive, Low Expectations, Newports, Poverty, urban education
The neighborhood I work in is absolutely filthy. Chicken bones, sunflower seeds, empty soda cans and the like decorate the streets so frequently and with such intensity you’d think a dump truck unloaded there. My gut reaction is to lecture my students on the importance of cleaning up after themselves and being aware of how their actions impact their environment.
Turns out the adults of the community need lecturing. I wait for the bus and watch them cuss and toss mess onto the ground with such disregard that it makes me angry. Because for all of the funding towards youth development and education it seems to go to waste when Jamal goes home and sees everything Im telling him not to be…
can someone put a picture of ida b wells housing projeects from 1942
Amen! It is so sad to see kids without souls being born to the crack daughters of aphasic drunks, but it is even sadder when one comes along who still has a heart to try to get past the only thing they know only to be slammed down again and again by the very people who should be pushing them up.
I often think these dead have died in vain:
1 Louis Allen–A farmer shot Jan. 31, 1964, in Liberty, Miss., after witnessing the murder of Herbert Lee, a civil rights worker.
2 Willie Brewster–A factory worker died July 16, 1965, in Anniston, Ala., from a nightrider’s bullet.
3 Benjamin Brown–A truck driver and civil rights worker killed May 12, 1967, when police fired on demonstrators in Jackson, Miss.
4 James Chaney–A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range June 21, 1964, by Klan members in Philadelphia, Miss.
5 Addie Mae Collins–A schoolgirl killed Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
6 Vernon Dahmer–A community leader died Jan. 10, 1966, from a firebomb in Hattiesburg, Miss., after volunteering to pay Black voters’ poll taxes.
7 Jonathan Daniels–A white seminary Student shot dead Aug. 14, 1965, by a deputy sheriff in Hayneville, Ala.
8 Henry H. DEE–A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River in Natchez, miss., May 2, 1964, by the Klan.
9 Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr.–A miliary policeman shot to death April 9, 1962, in Taylorsville, after refusing a police order to sit in the back of the bus.
10 Willie Edwards Jr.–Adeliveryman killed Jan. 23, 1957, near Montgomery, Ala., when the Klan forced him to jump from a bridge into the Alabama River.
11 Medgar Evers–A civil rights leader shot June 12, 1963, in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss.
12 Andrew goodman–A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range June 21, 1964, by the Klan in Philadelphia, Miss.
13 Paul Guihard–A French new s reporter shot in the back Sept. 30, 1962, during grace riots at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.
14 Samuel Hammond Jr.–A South Carolina State College student fatally shot Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.
15. Jimmie Lee Jackson–A farmer died Feb. 18, 1965, after being beaten and shot in the stomach by state troopers following a march in Selma, Ala.
16 Wharlest Jackson–Ar NAACP treasurer in NAtches, Miss., killed Feb. 18, 1965, by a bomb after his promotion to a job once reserved for Whites.
17 Martin Luther King Jr.–Famed civil rights leader assasinated April 4, 1968, during an organized compaign by garbage workers in Memphis.
18 Rev. Bruce Klunder–A White minister from Cleveland, Ohio, run over by a bulldozer April 7, 1964, while protesting a segregated school.
19 Rev. George Lee–A minister in Belzoni, Miss., died May 7, 1955, of gunshot wounds after organizing a voter-registration drive.
20 Herbert Lee–A cotton farmer and voter registration organizer shot in the head Sept. 25, 1961, by a White state legislator in Liberty, Miss.
21 Viola Gregg Liuzzo–A White civil rights worker from Detroit fatally shot in the head March 25, 1965, by Klan members near Selma, Ala.
22 Denise McNair–A schoolgirl killed Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
23 Delano H. Middleton–A high school student fatally shot Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.
24 Charles E. Moore–A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River near Natchez, Miss., May 2, 1964, by the Klan.
25 Oneal Moore–A Black deputy sheriff fatally shot after his nightly patrol June 2, 1965, during an ambush by nightriders near Varnado, La.
26 William Moore–A White mail carrier from Baltimore shot April 23, 1963, in Attala, Ala., during his one-man march against segregation.
27 Mack Charles Parker–A truck driver accused of raping a WHite woman was lynched April 25, 1959, by masked White men in Poplarville, Miss.
28 Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn–A U.S. Army reservist fatally shot July 11, 1964, by the Klan while driving near Colbert, Ga.
29 Rev. James Reeb–A White minister from Boston beaten to death Mar. 11, 1965, on the streets of Selma, Ala., during a civil rights march.
30 John Earl Reese–A teenager slain Oct. 22, 1955, by nightriders who opposed improvements on a Black school in Mayflower, Texas.
31 Carole Robertson–A schoolgirl killed Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
32 Michael Schwener–A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range June 21, 1964, by the Klan in Philadelphia, Miss.
33 Henry E. Smith–A South Carolina State College student fatally shot Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired shotguns at demonstrtors in orangeburg, S.C.
34 Lamar Smith–A prominent farmer fatally shot Aug. 13, 1955, in broad dayligh in Brookhaven, Miss., after organizing Black voters.
35 Emmett Louis Till–A chicago teenager lynched Aug. 28, 1955, for allegedly “flirting” with a White woman in Money, Miss.
36 Clarence Triggs–A bricklayer sho in the head July 30, 1966, by nightriders ih Bogalusa, La.
37 Virgil Ware–A youngster fatally shot Sept. 16, 1963, by a White teener while riding his bicycle in Birmingham, Ala.
38 Cynthia Wesley–A schoolgirl killed Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in birmingham.
39 Ben Chester White–A caretaker shot June 10, 1966 by Klan members in Natchez, Miss.
40 Samuel Younge Jr.–A college student shot Jan. 3, 1966, by a Tuskegee, ALA., gas station attendant following a dispute over a ‘Whites-only’ restroom.