Palm Beach County residents were asked:
Please tell us about an important moment in your life that would help someone understand what it’s like living in your neighborhood.
The stories and micro-narratives they submitted (as part of the We Are Here SenseMaker project) are listed below. Click ZOOM IN to learn more about the community member and how they interpreted their submission. NOTE: Some stories were partially transcribed by volunteers who shortened the narratives and referred to the storytellers in the third person (e.g., “her experience was” instead of “my experience was”).
We’re I grew up you know a place like it: It’s segregated by race, and associated with poverty, crime, and violence .derogatively called “the ghetto” or “the ‘hood.” It’s the part of town that you have been cautioned to avoid.
My parents were migrant workers and we lived in Okeechobee center Projects. Ive been out here 47 years but moved to NY in 1974. Then moved back t Belle Glade, then I met my husband and now Ive been here for 47 years now. I was a big family everyone showed love. Then my husband died 2016 and I moved into Quiet waters. I remember when there was no Wendy’s, McDonalds or anything here. Just a hospital and one lane road. Now there’s everything. I started work in corn field 1976 and in 1979 I started driving tractors, then my sister got me a custodial job at a school for 5 years. I had a daughter so then I worked for the state driving a school bus, then I got disabled after 17 years. If I had stayed in the corn fields I wouldn’t be here today. You know when we were living in the projects there were kid shelters, and then they were jus stick houses, and then they had labor homes (duplexes kinda), then they built brick projects houses (for rent). Then they threw us out because of my 18 yea r old son. We had a family reunion from the projects, saw children we hadn’t seen in 40 years. We’re having another one next year. We came up a hard way, but we made it.
I remember one night I was at home. Next thing you know I hear gunshots. I thought nothing of it until I went to watch the news the next day and seen somebody was shot and killed by my house. It worried me about my safety.
My neighborhood is quite rough. There are many crimes they are usually by the same people. I speak to the police but I don’t see everything. I remember coming home from work and finding out about the 10 year old that got killed from a drive by. I know there was a lot of witnesses but they wouldn’t speak to the police that was at least 5 years ago and even now the crime hasn’t been solved.
An important moment in my life is when segregation is now continuing again in our community.Many people don’t see how badly people treat us . We are equal and have the rights as everyone else . Growing up here in the 1940s and 1950s, couldn’t visit the public library near My house, but instead had to travel to the “colored” library in the historically black room I attended a school for black children, where we received second-hand books, and where the school day was half the length of that of white schools, because the black school had too many children and not enough funds.
I remember there was an incident of a boy getting shot by my house. The whole city was not so much shocked because we know how it is nowadays. But the thing is everybody in the community was there for the parents and family like we all were family.