I had a profitable visit to East St. Louis today, perhaps making up for last Friday’s nightmare. I delivered some school supplies to the Christian Activities Center from my local church and started walking around the neighborhood a little bit. It was unbelievable hot today, and I was about to fry after walking for 20 minutes. I ran into some nice fellas that lived in the Samuel L. Gompers Housing Complex, and talked to them for a couple of hours. They were very gracious and welcoming, although they beat me several times in checkers. I swear I’ve never heard of any of the rules they were playing with. I will be posting photos as soon as I get them back from the lab and get a chance to scan them.
I also managed to run across this great audio program from NPR’s All Things Considered from July 20, 2005. All Things Considered did a story on East St. Louis and interviewed people from the housing project that I am documenting. I encourage you to listen, it is only about 10 minutes long and sheds some light into many of the problems that are plaguing East St. Louis.