Byron Dickens shares his story of growing up in Chicago during the 1960s:
Well I mean by I mean you know where like I said when my Mama was growing up down south, you know ‘yes sir’ ‘yes ma'am’ you don't look a white person in the eyes. Then when that thing happened with my grandfather, with Emmett Till, they kind of put fear for your family, it was like something can happen to your child, nothing can be done about it. So she was very fearful of don't stay out too late, be careful, don’t go down Taylor Street, be careful. We felt that, so at that time, if you called me black, I got offended you know what you mean, it was a negro or colored person growing up. So if we walked, sometime we would go, we were kind of trapped, Maxwell Street ‘Jew town’ if we early we’d go down Taylor Street, we wouldn't go down Taylor at night going east towards East of Racine. We would go to Racine and hit Roosevelt, then we’d have to be careful of going through the buildings in cuz we weren’t from there, so a lot of the stuff we had to do in the daytime. Whether it was on Taylor Street or in the building. So there was definitely some tension.
Recorded by Francesco De Salvatore on July 3, 2018. Audio courtesy of the National Public Housing Museum, Chicago.