{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/h98z894807/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Bonner, H. Demetrius "]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/548/original/OHA_Mark_2.0_Transp._copy.png?1752767076","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Narrator(s)"]},"value":{"en":["H. Demetrius Bonner (Full Name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Refer to as"]},"value":{"en":["H. Demetrius Bonner"]}},{"label":{"en":["Narrator Pronouns"]},"value":{"en":["he/him"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interview Summary"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eIn this oral history Demetrius describes himself as an historian sharing memories of his grandfather fighting in World War II, as well as the problems occurring in the community that influenced the Black power movement. \u003c/p\u003e (general)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Public Housing Affiliation"]},"value":{"en":["Former Resident"]}},{"label":{"en":["Public Housing Locations"]},"value":{"en":["Stateway Gardens"]}},{"label":{"en":["Content Warnings"]},"value":{"en":["Childhood Trauma","Chronic and/or Fatal Illness","Colorism","Death","Demolition and/or Displacement","Enslavement","White Terror","Gangs","Gentrification","Misogyny","Physical Violence","Police Interactions"]}},{"label":{"en":["Themes/Topics"]},"value":{"en":["Classical Civil Rights Movement","Community Activism/Organizing","Displacement","Education","Entrepreneurship","Family","Housing and/or Public Policy","Mentorship and/or Role Models","Personal Growth","Racism and White Supremacy","Religion and/or Spirituality","Section 8 and/or Mixed Income Housing","The Great Migration"]}},{"label":{"en":["Decades Covered"]},"value":{"en":["1960s","1970s","1980s","1990s"]}},{"label":{"en":["Life Dates"]},"value":{"en":["1958 (Birth)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Race/Ethnicity"]},"value":{"en":["Black, African American, and/or African Diasporic"]}},{"label":{"en":["Biographical Context"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eH. Demetrius Bonner was born in Stateway Gardens in Chicago, IL, in 1958. Mr. Bonner shares his family history living in different public housing complexes and inadvertently shares history about the building and demise of publicly funded housing. Throughout the oral history, Mr. Bonner offers his life reflections, key events in his spiritual development, and his community activism to maintain his community both in the proper funding for maintenance and residents. There are inputs about Black history as he lived through the end of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, and the Modern Era.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interview materials available"]},"value":{"en":["Audio—.wav","Audio—.mp3","Transcript—polished PDF","Finding aid—polished PDF","Index (in Aviary time-sync)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Oral Historians"]},"value":{"en":["Frank McFadden (Interviewer)","Shakira Johnson (Post-Production by)","Nedra Deadwyler (Post-Production by)","cosmo (Post-Production by)","Shakira Johnson (Transcriptionist)","Nedra Deadwyler (Transcriptionist)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interview Date"]},"value":{"en":["2017-07-31 (Recorded)","2025-10-26 (finding aid last updated)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Method of Interview"]},"value":{"en":["in-person"]}},{"label":{"en":["Recording Location(s)"]},"value":{"en":["Chicago, IL (Both)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Audio Quality Notes"]},"value":{"en":["None"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eEach oral history interview is considered to be co-created, ‘joint work’ among the oral historian, narrator, and, in this case, the Museum. In joint works, the creators are considered joint copyright owners, who have “an equal right to register and enforce the copyright” (Rich Stim, Stanford Libraries, “Copyright Ownership: Who Owns What?”). Standard copyright law grants a number of exclusive rights to each of the copyright owners, including: the rights toreproduce, distribute, adapt, perform, and displaythe work(s), privately and publicly. NPHM manages these components using Creative Commons Licenses. All interviews are shared withAttribution and Non-Commercial 4.0 International licenses (CC BY-NC 4.0 Deed), meaning that they can be reproduced, distributed, performed, and displayed for the general public if the user credits the co-creators (Attribution) and does not make money from the usage (Non-Commercial).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlease contact the NPHM Oral History Programs Manager if you'd like to download a copy of any of the interview materials (audio file, transcript, or finding aid contents).\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eWhen using an interview from the NPHM Oral History Archive, use the narrator's full name the first time you reference them. Use the narrator's \"Refer to As\" name in additional mentions of their name.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlease use the following formatting when citing the interview in academic settings:\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBibliography Example\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePegues, Janetta Sue. Interviewed by Francesco De Salvatore. National Public Housing Museum Oral History Archive, [insert URL/DOI], recorded June 18, 2018, accessed June 2, 2024: pp. 10-15.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBibliography Format\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[NarratorFullName in Last First Middle order]. Interviewed by [InterviewerFullName in First Middle Last Order]. National Public Housing Museum Oral History Archive, [insert URL], recorded [write out full date of interview], accessed [write out full date of most recent access]: pp. [pages of transcript cited].\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFootnote Example\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJanetta Sue Pegues, interviewed by Francesco De Salvatore, National Public Housing Museum Oral History Archive, [insert URL], recorded June 18, 2018, accessed June 2, 2024: pp. 10-15.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFootnote Form\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[NarratorFullName in First Middle Last Order], interviewed by [InterviewerFullName in First Middle Last Order] National Public Housing Museum Oral History Archive, [insert URL], recorded [write out full date of interview], accessed [write out full date of most recent access]: pp. [pages of transcript cited].\u003c/p\u003e"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eIn this oral history Demetrius describes himself as an historian sharing memories of his grandfather fighting in World War II, as well as the problems occurring in the community that influenced the Black power movement.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eEach oral history interview is considered to be co-created, \u0026lsquo;joint work\u0026rsquo; among the oral historian, narrator, and, in this case, the Museum. In joint works, the creators are considered joint copyright owners, who have \u0026ldquo;an equal right to register and enforce the copyright\u0026rdquo; (Rich Stim, Stanford Libraries, \u0026ldquo;Copyright Ownership: Who Owns What?\u0026rdquo;). Standard copyright law grants a number of exclusive rights to each of the copyright owners, including: the rights toreproduce, distribute, adapt, perform, and displaythe work(s), privately and publicly. NPHM manages these components using Creative Commons Licenses. All interviews are shared withAttribution and Non-Commercial 4.0 International licenses (CC BY-NC 4.0 Deed), meaning that they can be reproduced, distributed, performed, and displayed for the general public if the user credits the co-creators (Attribution) and does not make money from the usage (Non-Commercial).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr /\u003ePlease contact the NPHM Oral History Programs Manager if you'd like to download a copy of any of the interview materials (audio file, transcript, or finding aid contents).\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["National Public Housing Museum"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["National Public Housing Museum"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/548/original/OHA_Mark_2.0_Transp._copy.png?1752767076","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/297/629/small/httpsdrive.google.comfiled1ooGPztZIZIqIASNzH2LKK1ZbyayzPdgpviewusp_drive_link_%281%29.jpg?1763751379","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Bonner__H._Demetrius_Interview_Audio_2017.WAV"]},"duration":5531.508,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/297/629/small/httpsdrive.google.comfiled1ooGPztZIZIqIASNzH2LKK1ZbyayzPdgpviewusp_drive_link_%281%29.jpg?1763751379","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-nphm.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/297/629/original/Bonner__H._Demetrius_Interview_Audio_2017.WAV?1763682019","type":"Audio","format":"audio/wav","duration":5531.508,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Demetrius Bonner Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Oral History Interview with H. Demetrius Bonner\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOral History Archive\n\nThe National Public Housing Museum\n\nConducted 2017, Processed 2023\n\n\nThe following oral history is the result of a recorded interview with H. Demetrius Bonner conducted by Frank McFadden. This interview was conducted in one session on July 31, 2017, and is part of The National Public Housing Museum’s Oral History Archive. Readers should keep in mind they are reading a transcript of the spoken word, rather than written prose and are encouraged to refer directly to the original audio when possible. The following transcript was started by Shakira Johnson and completed by Nedra Deadwyler. The Narrator, H. Demetrius Bonner. Readers should also bear in mind that the beliefs or opinions of the Narrator do not represent The National Public Housing Museum.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=0.0,4.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN Good afternoon. This is Frank McFadden. Today is July 31, 2017. I'm here with my oral history summer school class. And we're doing a project for the National Public Housing Museum. Now I'm here with the astute, Mr. Herman Bonner. And how are you sir?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=4.0,32.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  I'm wonderful. How are you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=32.0,33.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  I'm good. I'm here. So, Mr. Bonner, is it alright to call you Mr. Bonner? Or how would you like ... Yes, it is. Alright, tell me. Give me your little brief story about how you, where you from?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=33.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay, originally from I was born in Stateway Gardens. One of the first tenants to live there. 1958.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=53.0,63.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Okay, before you were, where's Stateway located?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=63.0,67.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Well my address was 3617 South Federal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=67.0,73.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  And that's in Chicago.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=73.0,74.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  That's in Chicago, Illinois. The zip was, if I remember correctly, 60609.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=74.0,80.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=80.0,81.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER \n\nIt .. for a long time, I thought that was the whole city Chicago zip code because everywhere you went everywhere I went in those days had 60609. But anyway, this apartment that I was born in was given to us. Because my grandfather, one of my grandfathers was a locksmith. And he owned a gas station and a locksmith on 35th in Cottage Grove during the time of the development of the Stateway Garden public housing. And so they gave us an apartment. Lifetime apartment with the CHA. So for very, very little rent. And you hear these great stories, but this didn't include us. And sadly, some of these depressions because my grandfather lived with us. But we have more than just that place we had from what I know is that during that time, they were redeveloping where his gas station was. And they were developing that Cottage Grove corridor. So they gave him a unit. And he did the first he was contracted to do the first three tall buildings, high rise buildings, from 35th Street to 37th Street. He did the locks on every unit. The first three tall buildings in Stateway Gardens, was named Fred Hardy. \n\nAnd, but we didn't necessarily have to live in public housing. We had a farm. So my, during my school time. During my school time, I had to go to school, but summer came, there were three places I was destined to go. That was our farm, St. Louis, Missouri, Jackson, Mississippi, because that's just the St. Louis and the Jackson Mississippi trip was just a backwards migration where they always took me back to where we originated from, which was Canton, Mississippi, by way of Jackson, Mississippi. And St. Louis and then Chicago was where my grandmother, you know, because on the way up, my aunts and uncles stopped in St. Louis. And stayed with my uncle, my grandmother's brother never left Jackson never left Jackson, Mississippi. So, and his backyard was adjacent to Medger Evers' backyard. So as a kid, I used to play in this backyard Medgar Evers but anyway, back to the public housing venture.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=81.0,257.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  We'll get to the public housing venture. I'm really interested in what made you. You know what, what brought you up, when I hear about the grandfather.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=257.0,268.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=268.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  And it sounds like he had a work ethic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=269.0,273.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  He had a great work ethic. He was... a little bit more about my granddad and his name was Fred Hardy. But my grandmother was married to Monroe Savier and we pronounced it \"Severe\". But it's \"Savier\". Because after doing my homework found out that his dad, my great grandfather, came from France. So he's a Frenchman. And it made me feel good to know that I had, you know, because they teach us enslavement, and that's all we know is enslavement. \n\nBut I didn't actually grow up learning that stuff. I grew up... even though it was present and prominent, you know what I mean? So I grew up at the end of the Jim Crow era, and the beginning of the Black Power era grew up in the Medgar Evers era before the Dr. King era, you know. And so during that time, they just taught work ethics. You know, my grandfather gave me his shoeshine kit, little gray shoeshine kit and some some of the older gentleman was like my grandmother's mother's age, would remember, as a little boy, I would sit out in front of this building 3737 State Street, which was not public housing. But it was where everybody hung out, they had a lounge down there called Mustang Lounge, and we live directly over. And so as a little kid, three, four years old, I was out there shining shoes and had the protection of the men in the community. These were big, tough guys, you know, and they all worked. But they took care of the community, you know, and didn't let anybody you know, because the whole structure is to remember that in those days, the Caucasians were taking children and snatching folks off the street black folk, off the street, and","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=273.0,401.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  I'm sorry, you probably said it before, but what year about around, what era we talking about?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=401.0,406.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Now in the 60s, I was born in 1958. So we talking about I'm about three years old, it's like 62, 61, 62 when I'm shining shoes, you know what I mean? And I'm shining shoes, because my mom is outside that everybody's outside. It's like a, you know, this building was like, I think it was like 10 stories high. They could have like 20 some apartments on every floor. It was in the building owned by the Knights of Pythias. You've probably never heard of those guys.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=406.0,438.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Please elaborate, because I've never heard of them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=438.0,440.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So Knights of Pythias is another one of those Shriner organizations. And but they were great organizations because we had a bowling alley in the building. We had a boxing gym in the building, a billiard place in a building. We had our scout meetings in the building. So these are the things that we used to do in our neighborhood growing up. We had scouting we had everything that any other typical community had throughout the city. This is what I, if I can give Richard J. Daley, the first Daley, a thumbs up, he made sure inside of the segregation that people were taking care of well enough in their community that they didn't want to live in his community. So we had things like swimming pools, basketball courts, gyms, boys clubs. YMCAs. So there was no need for you to stay on the street. During the Panther era, we get introduced to lunches, you know, hot lunches in the morning. Well, you when you see this story. \n\nYou think that in most communities, black kids weren't eating. And from where I come from, that was not the case. Because my grandmother was the candy lady, right? She was the candy lady. And remember I told you about the farm. Working as a kid in the farm, I would have to pick you know, corn, greens, peas, you name it. Watermelons, you name it. Butternut Squash, okra, string beans, pinto beans, you name it, we had it! And we would pick so much of it. We bring it home. And my grandmother would make me go distributed to people who are less fortunate than us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=440.0,547.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  How old were you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=547.0,548.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  About 5, 6... 6","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=548.0,552.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  That work ethic was in you from you say three you was","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=552.0,555.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. Because I was a kid and I didn't understand that they were putting this thing in me about sharing, about sharing and I was one of them kids that did not like to share you got to understand where I was. I was the first grandson of a woman who has predominantly chil... females, you know women run in my family. So I have one uncle who has five sisters. My grandmother's brother had five sisters, one boy. I myself as a father. I have five girls, one son. And my only son has at this time has three girls and one boy. Right? And my eldest daughter, she has five girls. And she had one son for a long, she just had a baby a couple years ago, which now is two sons. But it's very far and in between girls run in my family. So with that, I was pretty much a spoiled brat. You know, I just looked at grandma and said, I wanted it and I get it, you know, just look at what and I get it. So going to the country was one of the things that's what we call the farm. We go to the country. And so we had this, had this Pastor Hayes Perkins. And when I got to be a little older, I think I'm moving a little bit too fast.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=555.0,640.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  No, you're not. I want you to go at your pace. You know what I’m saying? So this whatever you want to touch on, if there's something I'm gone bring you back to it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=640.0,650.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay. All right. All right. So, so growing up","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=650.0,655.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Hayes what was it... Hayes","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=655.0,656.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Reverend Hayes Perkins, who was a–love that guy taught me a lot of things took me to the North Shore, he was like, you know, now you have these homecare providers, right guys to come and clean up your house, male and female. He was doing this back in the 60s. And he would, he was a busboy, hustler. Like he was just a hustler. And I come from I think he hails from Kentucky. But anyway, he used to take me to work with him. Right. And I was a kid, we would go play because Ms. Stearns had her own swimming pool. And her all she owned a portion of the lake, she had a private lake and she lived on a hill like when you walked down this hill, there is lake there. So she had her own private lake where they used to do their private things, their private events that she had a huge house. And then she had a never forget this poodle, this black poodle dog that went to school on Saturdays when we would go out there. And it just something that pondered my mind for a long time. Why would you send a dog to school and not just train him? But this dog had manners. And strangely, might seem strange to you. But this dog kind of understood us we felt you know, when we run to go play, he played protected us too big dog big ol'. Anyway, that was one of the things that I was experiencing. \n\nSee, what you have to understand is that growing up in that era- the thing was to be proud of Blackness so proud of who you are. We didn't know what poor was. I didn't anyway, because if you need it, you got it. Some people were less fortunate. But the public housing I grew up in see my grandmother was the candy lady. And if you had an issue, your mother would come talk to the candy lady, and my grandmother would try to help them work it out. She wasn't the only one there was Miss Lee, who lived downstairs and we knew their people and so it was a lot of candy ladies around. But if you didn't have oatmeal cookies, and banana splits and mint juleps, then you wouldn't you know you had to deal with the people who just did–my grandmother lived on the 15th floor. So you must really like coming to Ms. Rose's house. And besides she made ho cake. And most kids didn't have their parents didn't know how to make biscuit bread and ho cake and stuff like that. So we'll go back to that ho cake stuff later. And","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=656.0,828.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Yeah, I might need a recipe. [laughter]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=828.0,831.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  The thing is the thing is the story of the ho cake what she told me I asked her why do you call it a ho cake? And I have fun with that term today I have fun with this today. Because I can ask some ladies. Have you ever heard of a ho cake? And they will come up with Yeah, I or heard of it. What is it? It's a ho cooking the cake. No, no, no no. So for your clarity sake I'll say that a ho cake was invented by the slaves. The field workers they didn't have a stove. So in order to make their bread they needed flour and water which they had. They would put the hoes together. You ever seen a tool hoe which has a sharp edge but it's iron, right? They start to fire and make them a griddle with the hoe. Put the hoe to get so you have big hoes, little hoes and you just make it into a griddle and makes your bread and butter fried on top of it, the ho hence ho cake. Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=831.0,884.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=884.0,904.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So that was good information for me because I'm a historian about things about my life and who I am. So moving forward. I knew my birth grandfather Monroe Savier, we pronounce his name \"Severe\". But like I told you, it's \"Savier\". Right. And he served in the Navy in World War Two both grandfathers did. Fred Hardy was a 555 paratrooper who captured a small German village with my senior military instructor, Sergeant Preston Helms, Jr, who I didn't meet til when I was in high school, but he showed me a newspaper clipping that he kept himself all of those years. And while we were in class, I'm talking to him about who my grandfather was. And he said, Son, I got something to show you. And he pulled this out. And lo and behold, my grandfather's mentioning him, and he remembered Fred Hardy. And he remembered how great of a shot he was, you know, and he just gave me a lot of information that those two guys captured a small German village alone themselves during World War Two. And so like I said, he was the 555 Paratrooper. Now, my my lineage grandfather, all I know was he served in the Navy. Right? And so growing up, though, we was around a lot of people, historical people, like I'm telling you about Mrs. Stern. I knew she was wealthy, but I never knew how she gained her wealth. You know, I mean, who owns a portion of the lake? I mean, the privately owned section of the lake you know. And, but, and who has enough money to send dogs to school?  Right, [crosstalk] [laughter] right. Right. Right,  So you got too much money if you could- \n\nAnd so the other thing is that in the neighborhood that I grew up with, the most interesting thing is there was public schools around me, right. And the public schools around me were very close. Crispus Atticus was two blocks to the south, Raymond School was across the street, two blocks on Wabash. Right? But I couldn't go to any of those schools. As a matter of fact, my mother tried to sneak me into the school. And my aunt got me kicked out of kindergarten. So now today, when you're all here, sit down, we talk about stuff I say, Well, hey, you guys, you know, I was kicked out of kindergarten. Oh man you must have really been bad. But they didn't realize at the time, the schools were zip coded and zoned out, right. So even though in my mother's house 3737, state, Crispus Atticus was directly across the street. I couldn't go there. Raymond School was two blocks to the north, I couldn't go there. So I had to go to William H. and Charles H. Mayo School, which was about a mile away.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=904.0,1086.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So I want to know, what did you think? I mean, what did you think then? Why you couldn't go to these certain schools? Or did someone?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1086.0,1096.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So as a child in those days, you didn't think you just obeyed. You just obeyed. The mom says, you do this. You did it. You didn't question her because that could cost your life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1096.0,1107.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Aight! So But alright, so I'm pretty sure it's all in the same neighborhood. Of course, you have friends that stayed across the street, that you probably hung out with?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1107.0,1118.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1118.0,1119.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So how did it feel that you couldn’t participate in what they had going on at their school and vice versa?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1119.0,1126.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay, I get I get what you're saying. So, the school that I ended up going to Mayo was the best school that I could have ever went to. All right.  in those days. So Crispus Atticus was a good school and I wanted to go there because I knew the importance of that guy that an early age. One thing I like about the time I grew up is they made sure you knew cultural experiences about key figures, Right? That's what they did in Mayo School. They did not do that at Raymond and Crispus Atticus. You know, what I mean, in Mayo School, they taught you they taught us to wear suits. I wore a suit school, practically every day if I could, you know, and but they taught us to walk three squares away from the wall. They taught us never to put your hands on the wall. Only caveman write on walls. You know, and we, we wouldn't as hard as this generation is on the elderly. You know, I mean, we've made fun of, but we wouldn't dare do it in front of them. You know, and it was about respect. You know, there was a and I would say those are the years where we were progressively aggressively doing better as a people despite the segregation. I've grown to learn that segregation is good in some cases, especially in the city of Chicago. So I don't want to move.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1126.0,1211.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  I do want to get into that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1211.0,1213.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1213.0,1213.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  But I also want to go back to, well not even go back to, but before we had to recorder on, we had a discussion about your name. And I think that is really important. So, just give me the history of your name.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1213.0,1230.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay. Okay, so","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1230.0,1232.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  What you went by and what you go by, and why.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1232.0,1234.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay, so I was born, Herman Demetrius Bonner. So the conversation is from my aunts and grandmother and mother and father too. Is I hated the name Herman not because it was, you know, it was because I had to deal with things we had Herman the Monster. You know, and I'm short, like, imagine how much shorter I was back then. So had to fight a lot about that name, you know, and, but I was pretty good boxer, you know, didn't lose too many of those. But the deal was for myself, right? It was my father's name. And my mother named, I'm his first child first born child. And so she named me after him. I don't know what happened, they separated, but I'm stuck with his name. Right? Didn't know the guy didn't meet him. Well knew of him. Of course, you know, he was friends with my older cousins, my mother's cousins. And they were all buddies together. And so I just my used to always tell me, boy, you look just like your daddy. And when I finally met him, I looked nothing like him. You know what I mean? They would just prods us like that. And so but he never claimed me or anything like that. So we began to talk about my name, because I always hated it. \n\nWell, my grandmother, and my aunt never ever called me Herman. So I found out that my Aunt Daisy wanted to name me, Demetrius. And my grandmother liked it that name, Demetrius. So they named me Demetrius, by the way, my grandmother raised me. And so since she was the one who raising me, that was the name around the house. So that was the name around the house. But going to school, I had to be called Herman. So met my father, we got to be friends when I was 40 years old. Yet I'd seen them before a couple of times. My sister got married when she was 16. He came to the wedding, we had very little conversation, he then owned a couple businesses, and tried to go get a job after I've failed in school at first, you know, our first failed in school, but my mother put this rigorous training on me, which made me go back. So anyway, the name Herman was his name. So when we got to be good chums, I asked him what's up with this name Herman? What you name me that for? He says, I really tried not to get your mother to name you that because he himself didn't like the name. And the name came from his mother, who was in love with an actor, a Caucasian actor, who was a cowboy, and his mother, loved this actor. Understand that they're Muslims. My father's name is Herman Bey. So you know, if you heard Moore-Beys then this is the lineage that I have. And so anyway, this was his story. So I says, hey, well, I'm gonna get rid of the name. And he says, Well, are you going to get rid of your last name? says no, he says, Your last name is not yours either. And so while they gave me something to think about, you know what I mean? But then understanding the last name versus the first name, right? So the first name identify me with my father, who doesn't identify with the name, because his mother was in love with an actor, not in love, infatuated, she knew she would know she wouldn't ever see him. But he was a white actor that she was just very fond of and named her son. And he said, if he could, he would have changed it. I said, Well, I can and I am. \n\nAnd so we transferred when I left Mayo school, moving on 41st in Lake Park, that was in 1968. I moved to 4155 South Lake Park Apartments 1302. My mother moved there and hated the place. When I went to the school there Oakenwald South. To me it was the penitentiary for children. Right? The worst collected program you can ever see, when I came to that school in sixth grade, they went back to teaching me something that I learned in second grade. And but I gotta say I was fond of a few of those teachers. Especially Miss Worthy, I have to mention Miss Worthy because she created a group called the Dancers of the Zodiac, which I was one of the lead dancers in. And that's a group that you will never hear of, because it was exploited. You know, I mean, we were had a grammar school students Miss Worthy, and I can't think of her name, and I'm looking at her face, but her and her assistant, were beautiful. And they just pick kids out that had these talents. And we danced our butts off, you know, and I recently saw her. IHOP on 87th street, she goes boy you kids were some dancers, you know. And we really dancing all over the country man doing dances and parents got to get upset about it because the teachers were making money and the kids weren't making anything. \n\nSo after leaving Oakenwald, graduated with the King High School, Oakenwald South went to ML King High School believe we were the first freshman class 1973 first freshman class there, I believe. And went first went to that school thought I was in the penitentiary, simply because of the bars, the blueness. I had been visiting people in Stateville and different stuff like that I never want to go visit them but had to go visit them in force to go visit a man when I went to King High School would look like a penitentiary to me, I was like, this is a huge jail. Compared to me being in Phillips High School, where my mother, uncle, a whole his.. my grandmother went to Philips, well, I didn't want to go to the same school that my relatives went in, you know, I just didn't want to be there. Because we already knew most most of them would have been people I grew up in Stateway with, you know, so then you have the the project corridor battle. In other words the folks from the [Harold L.] Ickes [Homes], the Dearborn [Homes] were smaller projects, so there was fighting projects like Robert Taylor and Stateway, where the real tough guys was, the guys on Lake Park didn't come over there. \n\nAnd we didn't go over there, you know, but when I moved over there, so I couldn't let my name Herman be known over there because lived Stateway. Everybody knew who Herman was. Guys, my age, changed my name, went over so the teacher even asked me, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris, and he was an art teacher and he was flamboyant. He was a soul brother in the 60s wore that tight jeans, bell bottoms, huge afro, you know what I mean? And so he asked me he says, Before we even got in the class, he says, What would you like to be called? I see your name is Herman Demetrius said you don't like Herman? And I said, No, he said, we'll call you Demetrius. So everybody that grew up in 4155, or went to Oakenwald, knew my name is Demetrius, because when he introduced me to the says, class, let's welcome my new classmate, Demetrius Bonner. Well, when graduation time came, and they said, Herman Bonner, and everybody's standing around looking for Herman and even the guys that were sitting next to me, and I'm walking up there Demetrius sit down, they not talking to you, I say nothing I walked up to get it. Your name Herman. Naw, my name is Demetrius, they just messed it up and told me to come up with a call Herman it just come up because they messed it up on the thing. \n\nSo my classmates fell for that. so we got out of that with the King High School. Get there and like I said, I thought it was a jail and but it was a wonderful school. We had wonderful teachers. The problem was, they too, tried to teach me something I learned in third grade, like the metric system. Well, it didn't give me any energy. So growing up, the thing was, some people have short attention span, and they, the educators misdiagnosed that it's not being able to learn. Where at Mayo School, Mayo School thought that you just need harder work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1234.0,1796.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So I want to get into that like so what was the d.. the difference. The mean like as far as everything I want to know, what were the definite differences between, say King","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1796.0,1810.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Oakenwald and Mayo.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1810.0,1811.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1811.0,1812.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Mayo was more involved, you got to remember and that night in 1960s, we had the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, we were still learning about Medgar Evers. We were listening to Malcolm X, right? We were listening to the Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And we had other preachers. A flamboyant preacher who was rich, and they always talked about him. I can see him right. And I can't think–Reverend lke, we have Reverend Ike, and my grandmother's loved this other white preacher and I was learning not to follow that path. You know, I mean, even though I was going to church with Reverend Perkins ever since I can remember I went to this Slaters Chapel Primitive Baptist Church, and first pastor was Reverend Anderson then took a vote for who should be the second pastor. And I wasn't there that day, because I would not have voted for Reverend Perkins, I would have voted for Reverend Rouse, who was to me, not that I didn't love Reverend Perkins. But Reverend Reynolds was more of a spiritual person, he would shout and just take off, we would have to snatch him up, they literally snatched him out the air. So I thought he was more spiritual. But anyway, the difference between those three were, that Mayo School talked about you, they empowered you about you until and didn't use books, because we understood that the books that we had, only told one person story, right? \n\nIt didn't speak of all of the things, right. And Mayo School was about teaching us about our culture and about us. This was the greatness that came out of there. They taught us discipline at a very early age, and they could discipline you. And would do so frequently. And it was no, you know, you we talk about the timidness in women and the nurturing factor that women have. And this is what makes them prey to certain things. Well, there was, even though they had these nurturing women and educators in Mayo School, they were very much disciplinarian, and could have worked in any child disciplinaries facility in the country. And by when they get done, what you won't have no bad kids. And I tell you, if they had them type of women in Hardy Homes, it wouldn't be no such thing as bad kids today, you know, but the taking away of disciplinary practices in our community. I've heard some great leaders today say discipline physical whoopings is, is a practice of slavery. Well, you could look at it like that. But I tell you what, if there's no discipline, or consequences of actions, our society is just going to be worse and worse and worse, til wipe each other out, we will need nobody else to wipe each other we already have those issues. \n\nSo Mayo School taught us about ourselves and entranced us on how important it is to remember that you're Black. And the struggles that your people had went through before you became Black. But see you before we became Black. We were Negros. And we were all other kinds of names. Before we there was a conversation about what we wanted to choose to be called. Right. And it was a form we filled out in high school where we wanted to be called Negro, Black, Colored. You know, I mean, the majority chose Black. Even at that early age, I knew to be called human. You see? And so instead of being proud, of Blackness, which I am, because now, as an older statesman, I would say that that's what God is in darkness, and Blackness. And if he made us in His own image, he must be the deepest of black, the darkest of black. Right? So as I was ordained a deacon at 12, so even in Sunday School when I was younger, I had these questions from my pastors, and my teachers that they couldn't answer, you know, like, Genesis one says, God made man and woman and like at the same time, Genesis two says, God put man into deep sleep and made a woman from his ribs. So, you know, these kinds of questions bother me at early age. \n\nSo when I went to Oakenwald, right? I'm the only guy in the whole School in a suit. Standing three squares away from the wall. Like I was taught in Mayo School, this guy runs up behind me and knocks me out completely cold. Right? His name was James Square God rest his soul. So James Beam we called. And I was gonna fight this kid. And my other friend, Johnny Key says, you can't fight him. It's like why same height as me, kinda fat, he say he a grown man. And I said, it's sixth grade. We like 12. Well, you know, at 12 years old a guy 16 is a grown man. So we thought he was that old. Oh, but he really wasn't. He was a couple years. He failed like maybe two times. He's probably like 15 finna turn 16. You know, he's grown though we considered him grown. So I still wasn't afraid, still wasn't afraid, but I asked him in the principal's office came, Mr. Campbell came and got us and I asked him. why'd you hit me for man, he said, Ion know. What!?! And I didn't know what high looked like. But he was. He was high. And I don't know what from what, because we weren't introduced to drugs, anything. So we went to high school together, and we got to be friends. He was my biology partner. And he was having a tough learning the metric system this something I learned in third grade in Mayo school, here we are freshmen in ninth grade, they teaching us the metric system this let me know that one part of the community was still being treated like slaves, were another part of the community teachers were avidly teaching children betterment, and betterment and self and selfishness in how to be how to be respectful to you first. You can't give it if you don't have it. So you need to get respect. Where do you get it from, from your parents in your not necessarily your parents, but older folk. So it was important to know that we had different levels of understanding right in different ways of climbing these mountains of excellence. \n\nSo then we go to after I come back from that first summer, and I'm looking for Bean, James Square, I'm looking for him. Found out that he got high and falling down the stairs and broken his neck. You know. And so the difference in neighborhoods, were not that different, right. But like I said, the first tragedy I saw was in Stateway Gardens, a man jumped off the top of the building on a Saturday morning. And I couldn't listen to this song for over 30 years. They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. That song was playing when this guy jumped off the top of the building. And I was a small kid. And that traumatize me for over 30 years. I couldn't listen to that song. So but in between the good and the bad, right? Stateway we had, we didn't you know, like, you have to go to the store and stuff like, Well, we had juice, milk and sausage and news. I was a paperboy. I was a Patrol Boy. These are the things that this generation and these kids have lost.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=1812.0,2345.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  That's where I wanted to go next. I wanted to connect it all  right,  you connected for us. Because, you know, it's not about me, it's definitely not about me. But like I said, I'm trying to find his commonality so that other people could Oh, wow. You know, so, um, before we get to today's aspect of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2345.0,2365.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2365.0,2367.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  I'm gonna look back here. Schooling, because this is fascinating to me. Besides the student body and I'm talking about the school, the upper echelon, how did the faces look from the different schools like the the top the ones running it the principles that the race changed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2367.0,2394.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2394.0,2395.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Yell me what it meant to you and how did it look to you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2395.0,2397.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay, growing up So the first school I went to was Mayo School, there was no thing. No such thing as Headstart. No Headstart, you had kindergarten couldn't go there to you and five. I never seen mothers so happy when they kids turn five to kicking them out the house like going to school, but they were going into a mechanism of higher learning in a parent's mind and not dumbing it down. But that's what the educational system you know, it didn't dumb you down. It just kept you from the important information of who you were. Right? So at Mayo School, it was a Black principal. Well, the first principle was a white principle. But it later became Mr. Walker, who was one of the most disciplinary guys I've ever seen in my life. Ended up being my oldest daughter's teacher. And my daughter was a little rough. And she grew up in Ida B Wells. And so she was a little rough around the edges. So he knew that I was her father is that Oh, I gotcha. So got my daughter straight. But in terms of responding to your question, most of the schools, principals were led by Caucasian people, right? To we got to high school til I got to King. And it was a Black principal with white principles, if you understand what I'm saying.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2397.0,2495.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  I may understand.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2495.0,2496.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Right, so you want general public to understand?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2496.0,2498.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2498.0,2499.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So we had a Black principal who had Caucasians practices, but he believed in discipline. So in some ways, he was accurate, and firm. In other ways, he was selective in who he would like to help. So say if you had light skin and dark skinned students, and they both doing about the same, he would reach out more to the dark, light skinned student and he would to the dark skinned students. We systematically and we do this, we systematically think lighter is best. You know, I mean, look at that children a day they like to girls like to have long blonde hair.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2499.0,2548.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So we the viewer can't where the listener can't see you. You're a dark skinned man. What was that to you? Did it make you feel? [crosstalk]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2548.0,2556.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  I have five sisters. I have five sisters and our family wrapped around Black pride, African pride, Soulful pride. Well, it wasn't two years later to my 30s that I realized that everything came from the Motherland. And every ethnic group comes from the Motherland from our seed. So to be proud of the color that I am very essential to me. And I made it essential to my sisters, who by the way, I used to tease my sisters about our mother birthed the United Nations. For here you have an African king, my sister Bea, you have an African princess. My sister, Natalie, looks Asian with red skin. My sister Priscilla looks Caucasian, very fair skinned, like my mother and my sister Tawanda and Jolanda. Well, their father was from what was Joe, he was oh, I think of it in the second. He's creole. He's Cuban. He was Cuban. And Killer Joe DJ but anyway. \n\nSo us knowing who we were, was essential this what made us identify with the fact that how important women were, right, because the scriptures, uplift men, so high, but don't reveal the role of women as much. So you have to dig a little deeper to find out that from a woman's womb comes the birth of a nation. Right, but understanding the role that she must play in her role, you know, so this is what I do now. Moving too fast again? So, to answer your question, I think I've kind of broaden that. To answer your question. It was an issue in terms of ethnicity over the higher echelon in in our educational system, right? When you find a man teacher, he was doing things like science, gym, sports, he wasn't teaching stuff like English, you know, so most of the time we ran into women teachers. Well, you had to have some man teachers around the discipline the boys and they had the disciplinarian jobs. Even in King we had the janitor who was very, he supported us a lot. Right? We were swimmers, I was a swimmer. And rank very high. You know, and I want to I want to try to keep this on point because one topic takes me to the next right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2556.0,2744.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So that's fine. Just keep keep it going. Because I'm on this, we fine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2744.0,2748.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Okay. Okay, so. So I want to pick back up with transferring from one school to the next and why I even stopped going to King High School stopped going because they weren't teaching me nothing. And had no mentor to say, if it's so easy, please do it then. So that's what I do to my grandkids. Now, when they find things that are why should I do this? Grand dad, it's just too simple. Well, if It’s so simple, do it. Don't make the terrible mistake of not doing it and fail. And then say, well, why did I fail? I know this stuff. Well, you didn't pass the necessary tests to advance. So just because you know it, don't do it. I mean, it doesn't make it successful for you. It hurts on you. Well, that has to happen through trial and error for me to be able to. \n\nSo once again, I go back to the Blacklist and that goes back to Sankofa I don't know if you've heard that term before. So Sankofa means it's not taboo to go back to teach the past to get the past to teach the future. For we do not know where we're going if we don't understand where we've been. And the reason why we are in this situation as a people is because we do not practice Sankofa we do not go back to the past we've been milked along and thinking Don't worry about the past. But yet they teach you everybody else past but your own but they study telling you don't worry about slavery, because you're still in it. You see? \n\nSo the the whole idea of understanding the educational platform between the three municipality or the higher echelon is at Mayo school, we learned about who we were and the greatness in us. And that thrives with me today. Right? In Oakenwald I had to learn to be defensive. Because this is the way I mean, we had to run the school while the gangs was shooting over the top of our heads over at Stateway that wouldn't be allowed. Right? And then when you go to school with these different people from different communities, then you have different conflicts. So when you go from school, to school to school that's in different communities. You find that one school is grounded well, smart story. \n\nOne school Mayo School, very good. We had some issues there. But I thought it was the greatest school on the planet for black folk, descendants of enslaved Africans. When I went to Oakenwald, I thought it was the penitentiary of schools. But I learned I met some of the greatest people in the world and that school, the Cooke and Evans family, the Norwoods, the Keys, I just go on and on. Miss Redmond, The Browns. I just go on and on and on. Even the people who I didn't like, had something about them that you'd liked in them, you know? So I've had had this guy named Freddie Gissette, testosterone from hell, right? He's just had so much energy. Today he's a cop and that's where he's supposed to be. You know, that's right where he was supposed to be because he had this energy, just extra energy. And so it was just those kinds of people that you grew up with and you had these different. I know Renzo Willer, who was like where I was, he came from someplace else, but this guy could play the piano, like Mozart. You know, but when in public school, lived in public housing. So just growing up in that area with these different identities and these different people that you meet with these different personalities is a whole learning experience growing up in that time. You see for like I mentioned by Mayor Daley earlier how he knew how important segregation was. Well, he made sure that we had summer jobs. And NYC... I don't know if you're old enough to remember NYC jobs.  you don't, wow.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2748.0,2819.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  No, well, um, because I know we had some jobs, summer programs for CHA so I, but we never cared about where we","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=2819.0,3021.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  came from","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3021.0,3021.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  where it came from, as long as we mama had us out the house for the four five hours, it was fine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3021.0,3027.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  We'll see i the NYC job was it was another program where they gave kids jobs. My first job was a tutor. First NYC job I got was a tutor. So you spent the summer helping kids learn. Now how you gonna get somebody with bad grades to to to someone who get worse grades, right? Well, the idea was to get somebody that you liked, and you could study with, and maybe you would learn together, you see, and it worked out a lot. It worked out when you found somebody who's just doing a little bit better than you. And not that you dumb or you just don't you know, I mean, it's the fact that it's not interesting, it's not challenging. \n\nSo when, as black folk or descendants of enslaved Africans, we're thinking all the time. And if when it doesn't challenges, when it doesn't challenge us, it pushes us to another challenge. So instead of enhancing or embracing this ability for us to be educated on a whole different level, instead of doing that, what they do is sub teach you and make you say, Who I'm doing this for? Right. So it makes you self defeatable. You know, you destroy yourself. And then they'll say, Look, they're not going to school. What we got this school, let's tear them all down. Right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3027.0,3113.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Because that was my question like schools like Mayo, are there schools like that today? And are they that because when you told you said that it wasn't that accessible, depending on where you stay,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3113.0,3127.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3127.0,3128.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN But what happened to that school, and schools similar to that, from that area?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3128.0,3134.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So I'll tell you this, I had always thought that and my one of my younger daughters, Demetria, I had her Mother promise that this is what the school that my daughter was going to because it was better than Doolittle. She could have went to Doolittle because she lived in Ida B. Wells. I don't want it to go to Doolittle. Right? She has too many cousins and family members there. And they just not that they're bad family members, but they get legacy there you know, my daughter and nephew cousin nephew held their class for hostage. You know, it was it was really, really funny story. But they did that. And I just didn't want my younger daughter to embrace that right to go there. Talking about, yeah, Taniquea my sister and Boo, my cousin, you know, you better not mess with me, you know. And so she went to Mayo. But when I went up to the school to check on it. I knew she's going to be very bright and moving on up, right? Go to the school. It's nothing like I remember. Well, first thing is the teachers are not there the same teachers are not there. So you can't get the same thing, right. But the groundwork has already been laid. They destroyed that groundwork and redeveloped something else. So when you ask me where's Mayo those schools like it was in my day. It's no more, we have to reinvent that. \n\nSo we have a program called NADEA organization called the National Alliance of the Descendants of Enslaved Africans. And what we do is we try to take over the schools that have been closed down in our communities and we educate people on true history. And not just his story. Right? The real story, the truth about our past, this is going to be so empowering. Right? But to ask what those schools are, they're gone. I give you example, but I live on 44th and Drexel. Now, right across the street from King High School where I grew up and when I went there, I couldn't even be on that side of the street right because of gang activity. But anyway, there's a grammar school on that campus called Price School and Grammar School. When the gentrification started, they took and made the children get out of that school, but then they start training dogs in that school. The hurting part for me is my youngest kids are either in college are working. Right? My youngest daughter is 25. At that time, she was 19 in college. And I'm out here marching, fighting, for them not to close the school. But every day I'm walking these watching these women walking their children to the bus to be bused out of their own community to go to schools and in somebody else community. And I'm so upset, that I'm screaming at them. Do you understand the struggle of your people? Do you understand we're going backwards in time? Schools were placed strategically in these different neighborhoods to protect children. You got to remember there was rapists, robbers, and then the Ku Klux Klan was snatching Black folks off the street killing them on top of the police killings, you know, hence, we had to have the police come from our own community. Because our men were fed up, they were big, bulky man, and they wasn't having it no more. \n\nSo the police had to come from somebody that you knew, you know, it couldn't be white police in the white police usually was a tough police. Right. And they just got beat up when the young guys got older. You know what transferred, you know, some white cops, I'm not saying all cops are bad. But here's my question. If there are some good cops, where they at when the bad cops around? And why aren't they pointing out who the bad cops are? If they’re so good, right? That has nothing that has not what has changed in time is the color barrier. See, we don't understand that police come from slave catchers. That's where they first originated from. Right. So to say, Where's those schools, those schools are left in us, inside of us at this age, the baby boomers who went to those different schools, you know, you can you can have the same story from all over the country, all over the city rather. And you just go on the west side, and you can hear some thing about my brother in law's from the west side. And he can tell you the same thing. He went to one school that was pretty good. And then we transferred to another school is like going to hell, you know. \n\nSo the whole thing is about aggressively understanding. Growing up in Chicago, especially in public housing, like I said, we had a conversation coming here and from my eyes and from my story, public housing weren't built for poor people. Public housing was built for World War Two veterans who didn't come back here because of the oppression. How would you like to go fight for somebody and then they come back and because the nigger and spit at and laughed at mocked a lot of brothers didn't come back here, not just Black men a lot of white men understood the oppression that had happened to him and they ideas flipped. You know, I have some colleagues who were former Klan members who now want to work to pay back for the damages that they've done, you know, and even one married a black woman. And to me, that's just not good enough. Definitely the last thing you should have did as a klan member was to marry a black woman. Right? \n\nBut anyway, so I'm trying to oo I got so much information in here. So but in the school system, I'll say this, I'll say this, that we must teach our own to elevate growing up in public housing if I've never learned anything else. I learned that we cannot depend on nobody else, to educate our next generation, to empower them. To get them to understand the greatness that they bear for I lived in the most, in my opinion, the best public housing the city of Chicago ever seen. Stateway was the condominium of public housing. Right? We had our own porches, we had indoor elevators we had indoor mailboxes. We didn't have to go outside. I never forget the summer of 1960–The Winter of 1967 Blizzard. Never forget that. Because it was a very strange day. We went to school in the morning, it was snowing just a little bit. At lunchtime we saw it accumulate a little bit when we came out at 3:15. Snow had covered the cars. Buses was stuck","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3134.0,3586.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN The Midwest!","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3586.0,3587.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  We had about ran home and got my sled it was a hill right outside my house. Get home and all the other kids were out Raymond and Crispus Atticus school the didn't let out til 3:15. Well they were right there, Crispus Atticus, the field is right there. Raymond School, the school is on Wabash, get to State Street walk a block down there is the field. Male school, I'm walking from Giles to State Street. And then I gotta go through this place we call Dogtown. It's row houses and everybody in their had dogs. The trip was everybody had little fences like this, like three, two feet two and a half feet fence, then had the nerve to have Great Danes and stuff, dogs that can just step over, right. But it was a challenge for us. We would run through there, man, and I don't ever remember anybody get caught. Somebody must have gotten caught sometime but not with us. Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3587.0,3652.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Okay, because we got to wrap up. Okay. But before we wrap it up, I want to make sure we get to these parts. I'm go get to who you are now. But I want to know, not so much as the saying often well, I guess the obstacles, but what would what would be your advice to kids, not just kids, grown folks today? And if you want to get specific to a certain community, and or be general, what would be your advice to conquering these obstacles? \n\nI'm hearing yours when you were younger? You didn't, your–you're ob– I think when you have a strong background, family members, your obstacles are not as poignant. And but you know, you have some of us that I've been out here doing what we want to do, but we have we create those obstacles.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3652.0,3715.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Right! So let me let me just say this. And in growing up in, in the spiritual world, right? My whole family spiritual. But growing up in that world, we believe and we teach that you can't give something away that you don't first possess, right. So you have to possess the knowledge of yourself on where you came from. The ideology that's going to make the next generation better is that they look back at the past. And don't make the mistakes that were made down the road. If you have anything that you really want to know about, then you, it's up to you. And it's up to the people who came before you. See the thing about basketball is you got to keep dribbling. Once you stop dribbling, you can't move. When you stop dribbling, it is death. Now you got to pass the ball to somebody else because you can't move anymore. And they won't come back around to you. So while you live, take the opportunity to learn. If you do that, then you can teach. After you be a teacher, then it takes you to a wisdom point. So now you're a consultant. Right? So it's a continuation of information about oneself, no matter what ethnic background that you're from. The thing is to understand yourself, how can I help you and I can't help me? \n\nThis system has been designed for God's chosen people I don't want to go spiritual but for God chosen people. It's for God chosen people to identify why we're in this situation. See negotiations are not going to change anything. Sitting down to these big meetings that I've been through in the last 15 years has shook up some stuff. But when other people are in the office, then I gotta go fight that same thing again. Right? So the thing is about preparing your kids or the next generation for a bigger battle than they can even imagine. We thinking is this this this world is so evil and so corrupt, because this is just how it is. Or the white man or the Caucasian is this way because it's just how it is. The reality is you haven't been around but 7,000 years. So how can a species that’s only been around 7,000 years come break a relationship with us and our God for over 700 million years? This just seems to tell us that they will put here for our oppression and what our oppression why we're being oppressed, because not because nothing that they did. It's our fault. It's disobedience is turning away from our true God. Then if you look at it, it talks about who he really is. So what's the first thing they took from the slave? His name and His God which left him with no identity. So they have to cling to theirs. Right. So in this day and age, we're waking up, we're becoming people of wisdom and, and the spiritual is dealing with us on the spiritual basis and Spiritual things are happening to us and we've going, Wow! Did this really happened to us? When we identify the fact we have to educate our children, on the fact that how great they are. \n\nIf you look at the great inventions of the world, who invented them? Even the small inventions of the world, even today, we thanking Patricia Bath for her creation for the machine to cure cataracts, are we even doing that? There's a man that is sitting in the penitentiary right now and he invented, the black man, he invented the plastic that goes around the toilet seat. But he's in jail because the white man his lawyer stole his invention and he killed him. So now this white man's  son is gonna get the inheritance from this invention and never his son. You see, so we have to moving forward, what we have to do is understand the relationship between a man and a woman. And before you get together and have fun, let's look at longevity. Let's look at what's going to come out of this how it's going to affect this particular child from this point on or what could be a child, you know, and quit giving yourself up for a little of nothing when you worth so much more. Right? And that works men and women both. And then because you live in the place, don't let that place be where you live. You know what I mean? You got to make a home out of wherever you at. \n\nYou know the difference between I asked this question to people who live in condominiums downtown Chicago, I asked him this. What's the difference between my house and public housing? I mean, public housing where I used to live and this high rise Sears Tower where, some other guy named now Willis Tower, or Presidential Tower, what's the difference between me living in public housing and you living here? Still stacked up on each other? Well, the difference is, Chicago public housing was built to last long as the pyramids. The true fact of it is that it wasn't built for us anyway. And because it answered, the Great Migration, you see, during the Great Migration, people were living in people's basement, relatives basement that wasn't finished and just terrible places, you know? Like the Pruitt Igo, I don't know if you ever heard of Pruitt Igo was the first public housing that was demolished in the United States in St. Louis, Missouri, that my uncle grew up in. And the same technique that they use to destroy them, they used to go through Chicago. And demolish that, and that was just don't repair anything. And when you don't repair for so long, then it's going to become too costly to repair. And there's only one solution. And that's demolition. So but they didn't keep their promise. And this is what's happening with Chicago and throughout the city, but primarily Chicago. See, they can't remember this. \n\nI remember we lived on Lake 4155 Lake Park and I was just about to leave my mother right before I left my mother's home. They came and made my mother had a conversation we then said look, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna move you out for a little while. We just got fixed, the whole area we moving everybody out over here to a whole nother neighborhood. We're gonna fix this place up. Y'all go love it when you come back here. When they moved them kind of all out officially. On down, they blew them up. They started blowing them up because it was costing him too much money to tear him down. Those wrecking balls were being destroyed by the buildings. So they use dynamite after that because it was costing too much money to keep buying new wrecking balls, right. But the failure failed when they told those people, when I say they I mean City Council officials, alderman, all these people who are in control of our lives in such a way that they control where we live, right? They dictate how we move. And that's only because of the lack of passing on the torch. You understand? \n\nSay the same thing about as much as I honor Dr. King and I respect him and I respect his movement but Dr. King never experienced poverty. So you can't expect a rich person to give him a impoverished person's explanation or plight. So Megar Evers, on the other hand, was all about his people. Why had to be killed? But then you replace him with a watered down version such as Dr. King. You Not to say that he was a watered down man. But the issue was inclusive. When he stood on that bridge in Selma, and said, everybody that believes in God come this way. Come support me, come help us. Come fight with us. Well, what happened? They did, everybody came, but what happened to the Black plight, it was put on the Black Panther. And every other ethnic group in the world benefited from the civil rights movement, but the people that it was intended for. So we didn't need to be on the civil rights movement, like Malcolm was saying, we need to be on the human rights movement. So today natives pushes for not just a human, right, a little bit more than the human right. See, we are the original man. And we have to accept that right? We have to keep saying it to ourself so our children can realize the fact that you are the original man, and every other race comes from you. This is the kind of stuff I learned in Mayo school. I would never learnt that at Okenwald or King. You understand. \n\nSo now, fast forward to today. We ready to get to that? Okay, so a little bit about me. I was a lifeguard lifeguard for a long time. 26 years in Chicago. Yeah, well teaching swimming, so I won't have to save. Right? But what other jobs could you get at the time? Were you sitting in a pool watching ladies in swimming suits and getting paid for it. For big money back then it was nice money. $6.35 was a lot of money in 1976. Some people would even think, Wow, that's a lot of money today.  [crosstalk] That's that's another story. So I lifeguard and like I said, I did some farming. And we studied, we have, like I said, we have a lot of facilities. We have boys club, the King Center, a 43rd. And King 47th and King Drive right to the next to the Met theater was where we went to go study karate. $10 a year. Right. And Ben, and all these guys taught us great martial arts. Then we went from one level to the next. Well, then we had this thing. This is one of the things that I don't like about this generation and the generation before it probably four generations, three generations anyway, that they don't include children in anything. Right? \n\nSo when we were going to school that was patrol boys, and we took well, weren't patrol girls at first, I believe the first patrol girl that ever happened in Mayo school, took my place. We go to summer camp, you had to find substitutes for you, right? So I found a girl who happened to be a friend of mine, and I let her be my substitute. And you just gotta remember in the 1960s girls couldn't do nothing but have babies and you know, cook housewife. That's all you learn economics. They taught them home economics in grammar school. Taught you how to sew, cook. So this is what women was expected to be you know, baby pushers, house providers, clothes maker, tender, man healer, you know, all of these things was expected out of the great Black woman. So so that's something that happened then, but I was–went from that to working at Curved Glass, 16th and West didn't like that Job didn't like being inside. \n\nFinally I landed a job at the railroad 1989 work for Sue Line Railroad. But then I found out that 91. So I was wondering, in the 80s, I was wondering why I was passing out going to school but I was always blacking out on the L, waking up with my pockets took and found out I had sinusitis, chronic sinusitis, and I had to have brain surgery. And in 1991, March 15th, 91, I had brain surgery. And I heard the guy tell my mother, and I'm drugged up not supposed to wake up or anything like that. I heard him Dr. Benjamin Gruber tell my mother, that she needed to prepare for a funeral because I wasn't gonna make it but the next 30 days I'll be dead for sure, almost guaranteed her. Then he says, well, even if he survives, he's going to be a vegetable. So this 1991 Go back to sleep woke up and he's sticking me with a pen. So I says \"I'm okay Doctor, can I get up? So I go back to work next week and probably the week off rest.\" And he laughs and says You will be with us a long, long time. But he didn't know that I heard him say that to my mother just a day earlier. And so you can't trust them. And on this instance, is probably was for my best for me because when I did instantly start working on my right side that was paralyzed that he predicted would be paralyzed, while I asked him am I going to be paralyzed forever, he says, No, you're not paralyzed at all. We had to turn you on your side because your brain was in a bowl, and you kept trying to get up off to the operating table. And the fact we lost you four times on the table. So then clicked in me while he told her mother that, but he's a good friend today. And because he still doesn't believe I'm–he was an atheist, he is no longer an atheist. Because he's admitted it had to be a higher power to pull me out of my body. The surgery happened because my body creates too much potassium for itself. \n\nI'm in the one percentile of the population of the planet, where I'm allergic to peanuts, peanut butter, bananas, watermelons, oranges, anything that has potassium in it, I'm allergic to it. Seafood and peanut butter and bananas could kill me. So I'm always walking around watching what I cook at home. And I don't eat out too much, because most people cook with peanut oil and stuff like that. And it's healthier. It really is. However, if you have what nobody else has. I'm not saying I'm the only one that has this. I know people who are allergic to fish, but they can eat peanut butter. I know people who are allergic to peanut butter, but they can eat bananas or fish. But I haven't met not one person that's allergic to all seafood. I mean, all sea foods. I can't if you somebody in that room started cooking fish right now I'd have to leave or I pass out. So I've never met anybody like me. My hands sweat profusely. Because my body creates too much potassium for itself, you understand? So with that I had to have a brain surgery which made me lose my job. \n\nSo I've lived on the high end housing and low end housing and homeless did everything but live in a trailer park spent a few nights in one, but never called that my home. But because of that, I was forced to move out of my home in Lake Meadows. And I was living where I live now, 44th and Drexel. After being homeless for a year, my friend saw that I was homeless and just come fill out this application I filled it out and got the apartment. And so I was just living there happy go lucky doing my thing. And 2006 They had a meeting at King High School about turning my building into a condominium and all four scattered sites into condominiums which was owned by Near North Properties at a time. Well I was furious. How are you having a meeting about putting me out and didn't say nothing to me? So I went to the meeting. Angry black man out of control. I just knocked everything and Tony Pratt was in there. And you have all of these other great leaders in there. And I was calling them sellouts at the time. But they were moving towards and Betterment they thought so I was like this. On the front cover of the magazine is the picture of my building. Beautiful courtyard beautiful man and the most beautiful on the block. Used to win awards for the flowers. Well, they want to turn this building in a condominium. This was not acceptable by me. \n\nI didn't care about the other tenants in the building. I just wanted to save my place. Well, I found out at that meeting that I couldn't do that. No organization would accept me except for KOCO, the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization when I met Shannon Bennett, who said Mr. Bonner calm down brother, you really go blow a gasket. We don't want you to have a heart attack and he says there's a way to fight this. So he took me to the side he says you got to get 51% of the signatures of the tenants to have a tenant council. That's the first step I went right away across the street, going door to door got help with Tracy Rutledge, Linda Green, and we went–and Ros, I can't remember Ros last name. But we all went to the 60 units in our building. And we were looking for 51% I told them, when you get 51% Come back. So lets meet back up. When we all met back up, we got 99% of the signatures, and we then operated and then we turned on, that was June 6th on June 10. We incorporated. \n\nSo now we're recognized by the state and federal government. So now, I became part, I was invited to a conference, the National Alliance of HUD Tenants. The first time I went there, and I spoke a little bit about my downfall. I was elected vice president, the first year I was there. And the executive director says you have a real story to be told. So, two years, three years later, 2009, I was elected president. From 2009 to 2011. I was elected president of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants. At that particular time, I was on the Housing Committee of the Cook- Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, I had was part of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization subcommittee. I was one of the lead tenants there. Not to mention that I had founded the Drexel Core Tenants Association, in 2006. And so from that, we saw that it was too many other people profiting off our plights. So we tried to organize another group, which was called the Section Eight Coalition–a Coalition of Section Eight Tenants, which is now the Chicago Housing Initiative, which is very well known. One of the last remaining co founders who still sits on the committee inside CHA. Now I'm the vice president of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=3715.0,4849.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  Like I was telling them earlier that we had historically I was the president in 2011, when we had the first eyes and ears Chicago, the first and last, eyes and ears Chicago had ever had. In the history of the city of Chicago, first time the federal government HUD officials I came down to hear what the tenants had to say. And it was led by me and other tenants from Detroit, D Davis, then I can't forget the Larry Davidson, Cleveland. So we hoist people from those cities. I called each one on one by one and took me over, took us like five months to get it together, and they just didn't think it was gonna happen. Then at the last minute it came through, we get funding from everywhere and get people coming in town and made it happen. In that meeting, we got the bed bug policy passed, we got the right tenants organizing passed, we got the structure or how owners can come in and out of the unit, you know, it's regulated that they have to give you a 48 hour notice. And then after they give you the notice, they could just come in. Well, that's not true. After you give me the 48 hour notice, you still can't come in if I don't want you in there, unless there's an emergency within the emergency then gotta tell me. But if you want respect, you gotta give it don't just kick in my door, talkin’ bout, but you come in and tells me that you got to give them a key. Well, if you've been stealing from me when I'm gonna give you the key for? Don't makes sense. So the owner is not allowed to come into your house when he feels like it. Women have been given reports, they wake up in the middle of the night and find man in the bed with him. Even today, you know, it wasn't unheard of back in the 40s and 50s in the 60s, but it is unheard of this is unacceptable today, maybe not be unheard of. But it's unacceptable. Right? \n\nSo now, we founded NADEA, the National Alliance of Descendants of Enslaved Africans, and in August, October, I will be stepping off the board of NADEA and I'm now the director of the Housing Resource Network, which is the one group that represents the preservation of homes if housing is a basic human right then there shouldn't be one homeless person in America. And how initiative is defined that slated my homes is going to be demolished that's already slated for demolition, rehab them and put these people in there. And we started with veterans first see homeless veterans and women who are veterans that are homeless with children. Let's address those people first. Let's address mothers with single children's second but most of all, most of our without forgetting this at all. One thing that we do is get older. Let's plan something for our elderly people that they can have a decent living in their golden years, you know, they shouldn't want for, in my opinion, they shouldn't want for anything, they shouldn't have these obstructions in the way, our current government is attacking our most vulnerable citizens. \n\nIf you could talk to any senior, any senior, that you would like to get Social Security or some type of government funding, that even under Barack Obama our President Barack Obama, he stopped the cost of living, of people with disabilities and on social security and SSI. For he said two years, but the first one was three years, when I bought it to the super chair, it came back on for just a year, then you cut us off again. So people on Social Security and disability hadn't have a cost of living increase for at least four years. But the cost of living hasn't stopped not one year. So how do you expect people to maintain? So what we plan to do as the housing resource network is provide a community of elders who run by elders and voted by elders and judged by elders. You know, we have to teach our children in terms of moving forward, you listen to the law, but you don't pay attention to it. If you are supposed to be if you're governed by or judged by your peers, then why don't you get to know peers in jury duty? Because they don't go to jury duty. \n\nWe got to get our, people start going places where they included themselves, you're excluded, because you're excluded yourself. Now you have to re include yourself and find out where you fit in your niche. And you can't start with it. You got to start with you. You got to show this is why there was an attack on our community because we were growing so well. We were doing so much better. Just look at the bomber in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Right, you know what I'm talking about? Well, the country bombed itself, American bombed Americans. Didn’tnobody come from any place else. This was the first bombing in United States history. And they did it all, a community that had elevators and stuff. And it was all because the white man didn't have it in his community and didn't know how to do it, and didn't know how to get there. \n\nSo our job as black men is to teach our own, it's up to us to elevate our own. We can't look for the oppressor to relinquish his oppression. You can't expect that Donald Trump is proving that to us all the time. So what we have to do is understand where we came from, and make where we came from where we want it to be initially, right? Understanding that every all of us weren't bought over here and shapes, slave ships. You know, some of us were here, and was in Native American communities like the Blackfoot. So in understanding that today, we are now fighting for the preservation of equality and human life, and to have the Constitution altered to reveal the fact that not only are black people human, but we are the original people, which all races come from, you know. \n\nLet's start being truthful about the history of this country who founded what? How can Christopher Columbus find someone who was people already here? Let's tell the truth that he was brought they was about to throw him over the ship, they was about to kill him, because they believe they led him to damnation. They just wanted running round in water, you know, for years. And he make it seem like that. George Washington was the first president, when it's impossible for him to have been the first president because he was a general, how could you ever be a general? You a general by being appointed by the Chief Executive Officer. So it had to be a president to even make him a general? Who was that and that only the first? He's probably the first Caucasian president. Right. But in terms of the country, he was like, the sixth or seventh president. And let's understand, you know, in grammar school, they teach kids that George Washington's teeth was wood. That is not the truth. His teeth were pulled out of black folks mouth and formed his teeth, you know, and then he had concubines, he had slaves. They weren't considered concubines, because he had no respect for'em but who knows how many babies George Washington in made with Black folks? You know?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=4849.0,5369.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  So, cuz the powers that be only gave me so much time. And I went way past, because it's not your fault. It's my fault. And I'll take the blame for it because you educated me. I feel like I'm so much better right now. And I appreciate that. \n\nAnd I want to thank you for the time that you've given. And I'm praying that somebody comes to me and says, I want you to talk to him again. Because and even after this, I would love to continue our conversation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=5369.0,5398.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BONNER  So you're more than welcome. Call me anytime you have my contact information. I really didn't get into to the public because I thought I was supposed to talk about the public housing. But it's so much more, you know, so much more. So yeah. Like I said, it just turned 59 Tuesday on the 18th. And another young guy tells me and I keep calling him young. He's 45. And he says, Mr. B, feel free to call me young, you know me because I am compared to you. But the thing is, man, and just a short 59 years the thing that I've seen and experienced could not have been designed any better. \n\nFor me to be able to, I'm glad that I'm here to be able to tell somebody some of these stories, you know, because we have to learn that if we don't learn from the past, were doomed to repeat it. And every generations is 10 years worse than the one before it. So we're in a generation of I don't care, I don't care, I'm going to die anyway. I rather die now than wait forever to die, I'm suffer and then die. That's what most of the kids so we want you to think higher of yourself and better of yourself. And not only find a reason to stay alive, but find reason to continue your life for your life is just the continuation of somebody else's life. Right. And if you love your mother and your father, like you say you do like you're supposed to, no matter what they've done to you in the past, you or them combined, they get together and meet you. You have to get together and make yourself being somebody else. And feel free to reach out to me anytime you want. You have my contact information.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=5398.0,5508.0"},{"id":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629/transcript/92527/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MCFADDEN  Alright, so that's it. Unfortunately, again, I'm Frank McFadden with oral history summer school. And this is in conjunction with National Public Housing Museum. Here again, I'm going to H. Demetrius Bonner, you should feel smarter I certainly do. So thank you.\n\n[##]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://nphm.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2733/collection_resources/163531/file/297629#t=5508.0,5531.508"}]}]}]}