Ferguson's Experience Offers Lessons on Integration
Chapter 5
At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level. The room where he had been interrogated by O’Brien was high up near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.
FERGUSON, Mo.----Sharon Golliday grew up in the Pruett-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, a high-rise complex so violent that even the police were afraid to enter.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.
So like many African-Americans, she and her family took advantage of a sea change in federal housing policy in the 1980s and 90s that came to regard projects as part of the problem. Using a government voucher to subsidize the cost, they eventually landed in this suburb.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O’Brien came in.
"We needed to get out," said Ms. Golliday, a 58-year-old teacher. "No one forced us to move----we left."
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