The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 2

by Rosemary Reeves

If you missed part 1 of this story about a Liddonfield kid attending St. Dominic parochial school, click on the link below:

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 1

St. Dominic School

At the time I attended St. Dominic Elementary School the inside was painted Pepto Bismol pink, a drab and institutional contradiction to the beautiful adjacent church with its stained-glass windows and magnificent artistic renderings of Biblical figures.  It was here my classmates and I learned the essence of orderly conduct such as silently walking in single file as we exited the building at the end of each school day.  The nuns would be at our sides herding us like sheep lest one of us break from the fold, urging us all the while to mind our posture.  “Remember children, so long as you are wearing that uniform you are representing St. Dominic,” we were told during this daily march off school property straight to the street where the crossing guard stood, awaiting our arrival.  It was a public demonstration of school excellence, a parade of discipline for all the world to see and admire.  People driving by smiled in approval.  St. Dominic sure knew how to advertise, for here was proof positive that their students were children of quality, much better behaved than the rowdy public school hooligans prancing about the streets after school let out for the day, causing mayhem and annoyance to the general public.  Oh, how I ached to bolt and run as is natural when it’s time for play.  I could barely contain myself.  It was a painful lesson in patience but it helped me acquire poise and grace, two profoundly important affectations normally attributed to the well-to-do. 

But I had a long way to go.  As I grew bored in the classroom one day, I slumped further and further down in my seat, yawning all the while.  I yawned so loud that it was heard over Sister M as she was speaking.  Then I was in for it.  She came toward me down the aisle holding a ruler and stopped in front of my desk.  “Are you planning to do some wash?” Sister M said. 

I could feel all the eyes in the classroom staring right at me as the other students turned in their seats to get a bird’s eye view of my scolding.  Sister M looked none too pleased with me.  “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Your sleeves are rolled up,” she replied, “For a moment there I thought you were a washer woman!”  She had a stern look on her face that was a stark contradiction to the humorous remark.  When the others giggled, she told them to be quiet.  All of a sudden, she struck my desk with the ruler.  “Stop slouching and put your sleeves down, child!”

I sat up straight and hurriedly tried to fix my sleeves.  “Little ladies don’t slouch,” Sister M added, “Little ladies don't yawn like a mooing cow in the field and they don’t roll up their sleeves like washer women!”   

When the recess bell rang, I was glad to be going out into the fresh air.  All of the students had to line up first and proceed in single file, of course.  Once outside, we stood quietly before the American flag which was waving high up on a flag pole.  We put our hands over our hearts while gazing with wonder at it.  We were told to repeat the words Sister M recited and that’s how we first graders learned the Pledge of Allegiance.  I was very proud to be American.

“All right, children.  Now, you may play until the bell rings again,” Sister M instructed us.  This was the best time of the day.  We were allowed to hop, skip and even jump rope if we wanted to.  The air was alive with the sound of children’s voices.  I tried to make friends with two girls from my class, Sally and June.  They were nice.  Sally came up with the idea for each of us to sing a song and then we’d sing it all together.  Sally sang Mary Had a Little Lamb.  That was easy.  The three of us knew that song by heart and when Sally finished singing it by herself,  we sang it as a group.

“That was fun!” I said.  

The others agreed.  It was June’s turn next.  She sang Happy Birthday.  When she was done she said, “All together, now.  Ready?”  Then all three of us sang Happy Birthday together and we complimented ourselves on what a great singing group we made.  “Your turn!” June declared.

“Okay,” I said.  “How about this?”  I belted out a tune about Irish civil war from the Clancy Brothers album.

Armored cars and tanks and guns

Came to take away our sons

But every man must stand behind

The men behind the wire

June and Sally both made faces.  “I never heard that song before!” said June.

“Me, neither,” replied Sally.

“It’s about the bloody British!” I remarked.

“Bloody what? Eew! I don’t think I like it very much,” Sally told me.

June and Sally looked at each other.  Sally added, “We like songs like, you know, Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“Okay,” I said, “What about this one?”  I started singing one of the Clancy Brothers’ odes to whiskey but they said they didn’t like that song, either.  

“I’m telling!” June remarked.  

“Where’s she goin’?” I asked Sally. 

“I don’t know,” she replied, “See you later!”  Sally left me standing by myself and the next thing I knew, Sister M was talking with June.  

Sister M came walking toward me.  I thought, uh oh, what did I do now?  “Child,” she said, “Sing the song you were just singing a few moments ago.  I want to hear it.”  

I started belting out Mary Had a Little Lamb.  “Not that one,” she said, “The other one.”

“Oh,” I said and broke into a rendition of Whiskey You’re the Devil.

Whiskey, you're the devil, you're leadin' me astray
Over hills and mountains and to Americay
You're sweeter, stronger, decent-er, you're spunkier than tea
O whiskey, you're me darlin' drunk or sober

Sister M looked horrified.  Her eyes were as big as bug’s eyes. “Little girl,” she asked, “Where on earth did you hear that song?”

“From the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem album my mother always plays,” I told her.  “It’s fun.  We dance to it, like this.”  I started doing the Irish jig.

“That’s enough, child!” said Sister M.  Then she sighed and shook her head.  “I’m going to have to write a note to your mother.” 

At the end of the school day I went back to Liddonfield Housing Project with a note for my mom that said I was singing songs about armored cars and drunkenness.  Sister M added that she wasn’t sure if ‘bloody’ was a curse word, but I was saying it and to be on the safe side I ought not to say it any longer.  Furthermore, the hem of my uniform was coming undone and needed mending.

“Well, she can’t be Irish,” said Mom, “If she was, she’d bloody well know who the Clancy brothers are.  I’m too tired to sew this hem right now.”  Mom put a safety pin through my uniform to hold the hem up.  “I bet she’s Italian,” Mom remarked, “Those Italian nuns don’t keep up with our Irish culture.”

Dad chimed in.  “Why would they, Eileen?” 

“And she certainly doesn’t watch the Lawrence Welk Show or else she would have seen them every St. Patty’s Day on the television.  That’s the biggest day of the year for that program and he always has the Clancy Brothers perform.  I wonder what Mr. Welk would say if he knew the sisters at the convent didn’t care for his television show!”

I watched my mother put another safety pin in the hem.  “Mommy, she said to sew it.  That’s not sewing.”

“You can tell her that I’m too tired from working all day and safety pins will have to do,” Mom replied.  Then she said to Dad, “I didn’t think Rosie would know what the words mean or that she’d even pay any attention to them.  She’s only a little girl.  What does she know about whiskey and revolution?”

Mom made me promise not to sing those songs in the school yard anymore.  Then she said the Italians are Catholic like us so they’re our brethren and we should love them, even though they don’t understand the Irish.  Also, let us not forget that the Pope is in Rome.  

Part 3 of this true story will be posted on Monday,  December 5, 2011.  Next, I have a fight with a boy!

Related Stories:  

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 1

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 2

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 3

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 4

TheTaming of a Public Housing Child Part 5
The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 6 
The Taming of a Public Housing Child Conclusion

The Liddonfielders, Part 1

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 1

by Rosemary Reeves

Ever since I took my first baby steps upon the sidewalk along Megargee Street, Liddonfield Housing Project has defined my identity.  Liddonfield is synonymous with what I am today, all I was before and all I ever will be.  I was unaware of its significance until I went to first grade, when I was obliged to pass by the Welcome to Liddonfield sign every day on the way home from school.  Each time I saw it, I had the vague perception that I belonged to a class of outsiders.  Because I was young it was not so much a realization as a feeling, like being on the visiting team at an away game of baseball.  For as long as I could remember, there was intense rivalry between the regular citizens of Upper Holmesburg and the project dwellers.  They did not like us and we did not like them.  When I was little I took it for granted that people picked sides.  I knew I was on the unpopular side, but there was something wonderful about being united against a stronger opponent to the boos of a jeering crowd loyal to the home team.

It was at school where that vague perception began to assume clarity because it was there I had to deal with the world beyond the public housing fence.  My mother had returned to work after many years.  Most of her children were nearly grown.  Born long after my siblings, I was the littlest and my enrollment in St. Dominic left her at last with time to dedicate to employment.  The extra money she made paid the Catholic school tuition.  Almost all of the kids from the housing project went to public school, making me an anomaly, of sorts.  

I was a rough and tumble girl in a school that revered gentility, order, sameness and unquestioning obedience to authority.  The staff at St. Dominic was charged with transforming me from a wild child to a little lady, which is what my mother wanted.  She knew quite well that the benefit I would receive from such training would give me a leg up in life.  It was her hope that I would work in an office someday where I would meet a wealthy executive and marry him.  That was what every mother wanted for her daughter in 1965.

In order to assimilate into this institution of learning, it was necessary for me to adopt the prevailing notion that middle-class norms and values were superior to those of my own kind.  Once that certainty was established I ran with it as far away from my humble beginnings as I could manage.  I learned to mimic every nuance of the middle-class and when I grew up, it opened many doors.  In my twenties, I even worked as a legal secretary in a couple of law firms, my impoverished public housing background undetected by co-workers.  But pretending to be an insider was not the same as being one.  In the end, the transformation was only skin deep and carried with it a life-long aching to be genuine. 

It should be said that because the students wore uniforms and my family paid tuition, most of the teachers at St. Dominic did not know that I lived in Liddonfield Housing Project.  They assumed I was a poorly raised middle-class child and responded accordingly to every deviation from the middle-class norm I exhibited.  That some of those deviations were the manifestation of a housing project subculture did not occur to them.  Even if it did, it is doubtful that in that era they knew much about child psychology, particularly as it pertained to social class transitioning.

But functionality was my first challenge.  I remember sitting in the classroom, waiting with great anticipation for the lesson to begin.  Sister M had told us we were going to learn to write.  I gazed at the big letters that were painted high up on the wall.  I knew some of them.  A, B, C, etc.  But I had never attended preschool so I had not learned to put them together into words.  I couldn’t wait.  My mother read books all the time.  Her favorite ones were about English kings and queens, many who oppressed the Irish.  Mom was born in Scotland to an Irish mother who had gone there to teach the children of Scottish coal miners and ended up marrying a coal miner herself.  Mom told me stories all about the bloody British since I was born.  I wanted to read the books my mother read.  “All right, children, open your notebooks,” Sister M remarked.

Sister M was young and had a pretty face.  She wore a long, flowing blue robe down to her ankles.  On her feet were big, black clod hoppers, a cross between sneakers and those wooden Dutch shoes.  Her hair was covered with a white hat-like contraption that went past her ears and settled into a semi-circle on her clavicle.  I opened my ruled notebook.  The pages were blank, just waiting for me to write words on the lines.  Sister M showed us a picture of a hand holding a pencil and told us to hold the pencil that way.  Then she came down each aisle and made sure we were doing it right.  When she came my way, she had a strange look on her face.  “You’re left-handed,” she remarked as she adjusted the pencil between my fingers.  Then she said, as if to herself, “The left hand of the devil.”  

“Huh?” I replied.

“It’s an old fashioned notion, child.  The Church considers the left hand the hand of the devil.  You’re lucky.  We used to make children like you sit on that hand to force them to use the right.  We stopped that last year.”  She smiled and added, “We decided to become more modern.” Sister M moved on to another student.  I looked around the room and realized the desks were made for right-handed children and so was the notebook.  It suddenly flashed in my mind that this reading and writing stuff wasn’t as grand as I thought it would it be.  I did my best to manage this handicap because I longed to read.  After the lesson, there was no way to describe how excited I felt to have written my first words. 

At home in the housing project, I proudly displayed the smudged letters on the lines of the ruled notebook to Mom and my older siblings, from whom I received due praise.  Mom said, “This calls for a celebration.  Let’s put on the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem!”  

“There she goes with that Irish music again!” replied my sister Jean.  Jean was a teenager and much preferred rock n’ roll.  Mom took the Clancy Brothers album out of its sleeve and placed it into the record player.  

Whiskey, you're the devil, you're leadin' me astray
Over hills and mountains and to Americay
You're sweeter, stronger, decent-er, you're spunkier than tea
O whiskey, you're me darlin' drunk or sober

Jean clapped along to the beat while Mom danced the Irish jig as best she could on her swollen, varicose legs.  I joined in, hopping and jumping and twirling about the place.  We knew we weren’t doing it right, but we didn’t care.  The Clancy Brothers made the devil seem like great fun.  Maybe that’s why I was left-handed.  

All of a sudden, Dad opened the door and stepped inside.  He had come home from his job as a maintenance man.  “What the hell is all this noise?” he yelled, “Shut that damn record player off!”

Mom and I stopped dancing.  “The hell I will!” she said.  “You can spoil all the fun around here like you always do, but not the Clancy Brothers, Jim!  Not the Clancy Brothers!”  It was one of the rare showdowns between Mom and Dad.  Almost always, Mom caved in to his tyranny to keep the peace because Dad was so prone to violence.  But every once in a while, she showed him what she was really made of.  “You go ahead and dance, little one,” she told me, “You wrote your first words today.”  I hesitated.  “It’s all right,” she added, “Go ahead.”  The mood had evaporated but I danced a defiant Irish jig to the chagrin of my father, the way a rebel would defy the bloody British.  Mom looked at Dad.  “If you don’t like the music, Jim, then you can leave the room!”

Dad backed down.  He knew what Mom was like when she got that way.  I guess for once Dad wasn’t in a fighting mood, because he headed upstairs.  On his way up, Mom continued the chorus just to annoy him.

Me rikes fall tour a laddie oh
There's whiskey in the jar. Hey!

Next, a horrified nun hears me singing about whiskey in the school yard and then I have a fight with a boy!  This true story about the taming of a public housing child continues.  Part 2 of this series will be posted on Monday, November 28, 2011.

Related Stories:

The Taming of a Public Housing Child Part 2
The Liddonfielders Part One:  War of the Haves and the Have-Nots
Part one of The Liddonfielders illustrates the rivalry between housing project kids and middle-class kids in the Upper Holmesburg section of northeast Philadelphia, where Liddonfield stood.

Hear it for yourself: 


The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem singing "Whiskey You're the Devil"

Housing Project Homecoming.

While recovering from cancer, I revisited the housing project where I lived as a child.


Related stories: 

Liddonfield Housing Project Goodbye 
Breaking a Housing Authority Rule
Liddonfield Housing Project a Test to Humanity 

The First Black Family in Liddonfield Project

 Leofil Coleman, Rhada Coleman Thomas,

Dolores Coleman Jennings, Tineta Coleman Bowes,

Claire Coleman, Mother Dolores Coleman

by Rosemary Reeves

The United States Housing Act of 1937 created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order to house the poor.  This government program mandated redlining, whereby housing projects for whites were to be built in white neighborhoods and those for blacks were to be built in black neighborhoods.  This caused the racial segregation of housing projects across the United States. 

   

Not long after, WWII raged in Europe.  By 1945, America and its allies had won the war.  Then a new decade was on the horizon.  A tract of land in northeast Philadelphia became the domain of the local housing authority.   Plans were made to construct a public housing development which would be known as Liddonfield.  Built in the early 1950s, this northeast Philadelphia housing project came into existence at a time when legal challenges to racial segregation would test America's claim of "equality for all."

In 1954 Eisenhower was President, gas was 21 cents a gallon and the highly publicized case of Brown vs. Board of Education marked the end of racial segregation in public schools.  The Upper Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia was about to quietly distinguish itself in the advancement of civil rights.  A little-known fact not found in history books, it was the year the Philadelphia Housing Authority made an initial bold step toward integrating the white-dominated Liddonfield Housing Project.  Five black families were to move in.  The first among them was the Coleman family.  I interviewed Dolores Coleman Jennings about her family’s contribution to public housing history. 

You moved into Liddonfield in 1954.   Where did you come from originally?

“My family has lived in Holmesburg for over 200 yrs.  My father Leofil Coleman was born July 7, 1924 to Alice Woodson Coleman and Leon Coleman, although his mother and father moved to Germantown to raise their family.  My great-grandmother still lived in Holmesburg. When my father returned home from the navy, he moved in with his grandmother who resided at 8063 Erdrick Street. When my father met my mother and they married, he brought her to live at his grandmother’s home.”

What were the circumstances that led you to Liddonfield?

“When my father’s family started growing he applied for housing at the Liddonfield Homes. Service men who served in the war were offered first choice. When Mom and Dad moved into Liddonfield they had three children.  My sister Rhada was two, I was one and Leofil, whom we called little Pete, was only a month old.”  

What do you recall about the housing project as far as its design? 

“The design had the look of a community.  Most housing projects don’t have lawns so that was a nice touch…I thought that the only difference our house had that other houses didn’t have were the heating pipes that ran through each house.  We had a living room that was a nice size and the kitchen was also big enough.  There were three bedrooms and a bath. We also had a playground and lots of land to play.”

What was it like to be the first African American family to move into the white-dominated housing project?

“We never felt any danger or not accepted by our neighbors.  I think because everyone was at the same income level that color wasn’t a factor.  Yes, of course there were people who were prejudice but they were older and I didn’t know them. I don’t think my parents even noticed that they were the first of five black families to reside there.  It’s not like they only befriended the other black families.”

Dolores (Toy) said there wasn’t any difficulty adapting to any racial dynamics. “We were well-rooted there (in Holmesburg) and everyone knew who the Coleman’s were, since there were only about six black families who resided in Holmesburg.  We never thought of ourselves as ‘the black family’ and I would say that most of our neighbors didn’t either. The only place that we felt racial tension was outside of the project.  I don’t ever remember being called the ‘n’ word in the project as being called the ‘n’ word while walking down Frankford Avenue.  If we were with our friends outside of the project, our friends would always come to our defense.”

Tell us about where you live now and who you are today.

“I still live in the Holmesburg area.  I couldn’t think of leaving.  My brother and sisters also live in the Holmesburg area.  My mother moved out of Liddonfield  in 2000. She brought her home in 2002 [which is] five blocks from Liddonfield.”

Dolores (Toy) also bought a house in the white middle-class neighborhood near Liddonfield, but experienced racist backlash.  “When I moved into my neighborhood 30 years ago, I wasn’t welcome by some people,” she said.  “In 1979, a neighbor put out a petition for me to leave.  My next door neighbor informed me about the petition and told me who it was.  I thought I need to go and talk with this person.  I told them, “I am here to stay, so I suggest that you pack your bags and go.”  But there was an additional turn of events.  “It was also comforting to know that not one person would sign his petition,” she added.

The Upper Holmesburg section of Philadelphia still remains predominantly white.  Only a handful of minorities lived in Liddonfield until the 1980s.   The housing project was recently demolished.

Is there anything else you think our viewers should know about Liddonfield?

“I want your readers to know that Liddonfield was a community of good people.  When I was growing up in Liddonfield every parent only wanted the best for their children and taught them that hard work and education would be your ticket to a good life.  Just about all of us have our own homes and we have never forgotten where we came from.  I’m glad that I grew up in a community where people had your back and taught you to respect yourself at all times.”

Related Posts:

Public Housing Family Has Bad Experience in Middle-Class Neighborhood
Why Racist Skinheads Try to Recruit Poor Whites
Whites Live in Housing Projects Too

Public Housing Memorabilia: The New Fad

by Rosemary Reeves

The HOPE VI Program has ensured the disappearance of housing projects across the United States and given rise to an unexpected twist in collecibles.  Mandated in 1992, the program calls for the demolition of housing projects, having designated them as antiquated remnants of a bygone era and a failure in social engineering.  But those in power who implemented such a mandate might not have anticipated the birth of a new fad - public housing memorabilia.

Do a search under "housing project" on Ebay, choose "collectibles" in the drop down categories menu of the search bar and a list of public housing memorabilia appears.  The site offers vintage press photos of housing projects as well as personal photos for sale, and more.  Among the most interesting items listed are old newspaper ads placed by the construction companies who built the public housing developments.  From Chicago's Cabrini Green to Philadelphia's Liddonfield, memorabilia from housing projects across the United States is making its way to Ebay.

So, what's the going price for these items?  Most photos are selling for just under $15.  Vintage housing developer ads are generally around $10.  A newspaper clipping dating back to 1950 in which the gas explosion at Vincennes Housing Project in Indianapolis made the headlines, can be bought for $29 as of the date of this article.  The most expensive item listed is a John Hartford Housing Project LP for $160.  Whether the prices will go up as time goes by due to the rapid disappearance of public housing developments, remains to be seen.

Among the photos on Ebay are images dating back to 1961 of homeowners holding up signs and marching in protest against proposed housing projects to be erected in their neighborhoods.   But overwhelmingly, the vintage snapshots of public housing life serve as a reminder of a time when compassion for the poor was viewed as proof that ours was a great and charitable nation.  Indeed, many of the press photos are of the public housing residents themselves shown in a positive light, perhaps to convey that housing projects were a successful social experiment.  In one Baltimore Sun photo, an elderly woman in a wheelchair is photographed about to put food in her oven.  In a different photo, children romping happily in a public housing courtyard are caught on camera by a journalist.  A heartwarming 1940 press photo of a young man slicing bread for his family while a child looks on captures a bygone era  at Jane Addams Housing Project in Chicago.

What is clear is that the press was very interested in public housing as a social experiment in its early years, from 1940 to the early 1960s.  They leaned toward taking pictures that actually appeared staged, if you look closely.  Many portrayals of the residents almost take on an advertising quality.  Whether they were exploited by the press for the purposes of showing public housing as a roaring success is a matter for experts and future generations to decide.

One thing is for certain.  The assertion that housing projects have historical value is becoming more widely accepted.  Public housing memorabilia is fast becoming the new fad.  But how will that change things in terms of the people who actually lived in public housing developments that are now demolished?  Perhaps they will have their place in history at last, their stories told in their own words and with their own photos.  Maybe they'll even make a few bucks, selling their memorabilia.

Related Posts:  Public Housing Pulp Fiction 

Related Sources:  public housing memorabilia on Ebay