By David T. Whitaker
Over the last 50 years, Mother Vassar has lived in several of the row houses, places lost in the shadows of the redbrick high-rises that rose up around them in the mid-50s and of the imposing white high-rises, or William Green Homes, built in the early 60s. But she’s far from the only surviving witness to the birth of Cabrini-Green. Lillian Davis Swope moved to the row houses when she was 17 and eventually raised five children there.
Inez Gamble We had all kind of activities over here for the children and they used to block the streets off for dancing, and this was like the early 50s.
Inez Gamble They even had a $3 fine for littering back then. I remember one time the kids put the garbage out and then later someone found a letter with my name on it lying in the street, and boy I wanted to kill them boys ’cause that was a $3 fine.
Zora Washington I do remember when I was a kid I got on the girls’–it was like a girls’ drill team with Lillian Swope. Her name wasn’t Swope then, but Lillian Davis. She talked my mother into making the little majorette skirts and outfits. My mother was a sewer so she did get involved like that. She also helped out with the block parties. In fact I was talking to my husband not too long ago about those block club parties we used to have when we was kids–dancing in the street. It was usually organized by streets, but of course kids came from all over in the area. Saint Philip’s is no longer there, but it sat at the end of Cambridge and Oak streets where the empty lot is now. They did those summer feasts. That was a good time. It was a parade thing. It went down I think it was Oak Street and around some kind of way–maybe down Oak–and somehow they got to Division and then came down Larrabee. That’s where everything was stationed–the concession stands and the rides and things. The feast was a religious thing, but I wasn’t Catholic so it had no bearing on me whatsoever. It was just a fun time.
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Arzula Ivy There was lots of jobs, but I wasn’t workin’ at the time ’cause I was on public aid and my kids was small. One day I said, “I’m gonna go to school and get my grades up and get me a job and go to work.” There was an aid place, I think at 419 Oak St., and I went up and asked them would they pay for me to go to school, and they said, “Well yes, we’ll pay for you, give you some tokens and different things,” and I started school down on Washington Street. I finished school and then I got me a job at the Playskool factory.
Zora Washington For high school I went to Washburne–it wasn’t Cooley High yet, it was Washburne. It was a mixed school. There were whites, blacks, Hispanics. In fact, children from across the city came to Washburne. It was a trade school. And that’s where you learned, at least that’s where I learned, about prejudice. It was subtle and it included the teachers. I never will forget getting mistaken for a friend I had who didn’t go to school very often. I was tall but I wasn’t fat–I was just a big kid–and my friend was short and heavy. My teacher sent me home one day with a note to my mother asking my mother to come to school. I thought I was going to die, and when my mother came up to school, she told my mother I had been out of school for five consecutive days. I had to convince this woman to go through her records and that’s when she really found out that it wasn’t me who had been absent, but my friend.
