Rebia Mixon-Clay

Rebia Mixon-Clay remembers her late husband, Frank Mixon. Rebia was pregnant when they first met and he walked over to her and said, “You’re going to be my wife.” A year later they were married at City Hall, and remained together for 17 years before separating.

Originally aired September 21, 2007, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Barb Fuller-Curry and Craig Curry

Barb Fuller-Curry talks with her son Craig Curry about growing up on a farm where her father and mother worked in the fields to make ends meet.

Barb recalls the sacrifices her parents made, and how little she thought about it when she was a child.

Originally aired December 16, 2005, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Joe Vitacco, Freelance Embalmer

“I just do them. That’s all I know.” That’s how Joe Vitacco describes his life work. Vitacco is one of the last of Chicago’s freelance embalmers. He still works out of his trunk, driving from funeral home to funeral home, performing three embalmings a day, every day of the year. While most embalmers don’t make the twenty-year mark, Joe just keeps at it. Over his career of forty-one years, the bodies have piled up. Joe estimates he has embalmed 40,000 bodies. Here is the story of just one.

Recorded in Chicago, IL. Premiered March 11, 2004, on All Things Considered.

This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.

Blak’s Story

In March 1993, producer Dave Isay put a microphone into the hands of two young people living in Chicago’s notorious Ida B. Wells public housing projects and asked them to record an audio portrait of their lives. The result was Ghetto Life 101, and it sparked the interest of an aspiring poet and writer living in the projects: Yanier “Blak” Moore.

Blak’s life has been marked by an almost inconceivable degree of violence and death — gang-banging and drug-dealing, the murders of his parents and countless close friends — but through it all he has been able to transcend personal tragedy with the power of words.

On the tenth anniversary of Ghetto Life 101, Sound Portraits is proud to return to the Ida B. Wells and present a new story of hope.

Recorded in Chicago, IL. Premiered March 13, 2003, on All Things Considered.

Archival photos of the Ida B. Wells housing projects from the Library of Congress

A class in radio for youngsters at Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3- 000319-D.

Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-004871-D.

A childrens’ rhythm band in a music class, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000294-D.

Children playing a game in a music class, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000270-D.

A meeting of the Cub Scouts in the community center, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000290-D.

An apartment in the Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34-038652-D.

The Carr family in their living room, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000086-D.

In the kitchen of the Carr home, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000085-D.

Jelna Carr and her father listen to the 6:45 news broadcast, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000075-D.

Jelna and her sister Grace both play the piano, Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000078-D.

Ralph and Grace Carr, Jelna’s brother and sister.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000068-D.

Jelna likes sciences, is going to be a doctor. For Christmas her parents bought her this chemistry set. Ida B. Wells Housing Project, 1942.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000076-D.

Mrs. Ella Patterson, the oldest resident at the Ida B. Wells Housing Project, Chicago, Illinois, and her grandson, 1942.. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-000105-D.

Photos of the Ida B. Wells housing projects, by John Brooks

Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse

Remorse explores the death of Eric Morse, a five-year-old thrown from the fourteenth floor window of a Chicago housing project by two other boys, ten and eleven years old, in October, 1994. The documentary was reported by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman — both residents of the Ida B. Wells housing development, where the crime took place, and both sixteen years old.

Remorse marks the return of Jones and Newman to NPR’s airwaves. In March of 1993, at age fourteen, they collaborated with producer David Isay for the radio documentary Ghetto Life 101, an audio diary of young people growing up on Chicago’s South Side.

When Eric Morse fell to his death in 1994, LeAlan and Lloyd felt compelled to pick up their tape recorders once again. They spent a year reporting the case and interviewed everyone from Eric’s mother, Toni Morse, in the only interview she’s granted to the press, to Vince Lane, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, to the father of one of the assailants. They set out to learn about the story from the inside, to see how a tragedy like this can touch a community, and to bring to light the scars it left behind.
Remorse won the Grand Prize Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Peabody Award in 1995.

Recorded in Chicago, Illinois. Premiered March 21, 1996, on All Things Considered.

Ghetto Life 101

In 1992, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, both thirteen years old, collaborated with public radio producer David Isay to create the radio documentary Ghetto Life 101, their audio diaries of life in Chicago’s South Side. They taped for ten days, and their documentary brought listeners an audio portrait of children’s daily life in one of the country’s most dangerous and disadvantaged housing projects, with sounds of machine guns at night and the effects of a thriving drug world on a community.

Ghetto Life 101 became one of the most acclaimed programs in public radio history, winning almost all major awards in American broadcasting. It was translated into a dozen languages and was broadcast worldwide. The team went on to collaborate on a second radio documentary, Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse, about the murder of 5-year-old Eric Morse, who was dropped from a 14-story building in Ida B. Wells by two other boys, and the book Our America.

May 2001 Notes from Lloyd and LeAlan

Lloyd Newman writes:

I know a lot of people have been wondering what’s been going on with me over the past few years. Is he living up to his words or is he still living that Ghetto Life? Well, I’d have to say both. Since the documentaries and the book came out, I have attended three different colleges, searching for the one that fits me best. I’m not living a Ghetto Life but I’m still living in the ghetto (when I’m not at school), which doesn’t bother me at all, even though there are rats and roaches still crawl the wall. My father has been doing the same. Some people might think, “Oh he’s a terrible father,” but a father who loves his kids as much as mine does is the best father you can have. My sisters are still doing great, raising great kids, even thought they still don’t have jobs. Lately I’ve been thinking of a million things that I want to do, but I’ve had a hard time putting it all together. Yes, I have been blessed with success in journalism, but I was a kid then and had a lot of help. Now that I’m in college, I see you have to work hard to get to where you want to be. All I can say is: I got ideas. Don’t think that this will be the last time you will hear from me because I will put those ideas to work.

LeAlan Jones writes:

I am now a junior at Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois, were I am taking up Interdisciplinary Studies with a minor in Poli-Sci. I will be graduating from Barat in the spring of 2002 with a Bachelors Degree in the above fields. I have been continuing to speak at all levels of academia, from grade schools to graduate and law schools around the United States. I firmly committed to changing the intolerable conditions of urban America. I still live in the same community and have immersed myself in attempts to affect the social climate of poverty. A change will come when we as a people embrace difference and respect all capacities of life. Whether it be a ghetto or an isolated rural community, we have to begin working towards One America. This is my goal, my life, and my mission.

December 2022 Update on Lloyd and LeAlan

Lloyd moved to DeKalb, Illinois, and spent the last few years working at the DeKalb Public Library, where he recently told us, ”It didn’t feel like a job, but something to be a part of…a service that needed to be provided to the community.”

Lloyd passed away in December 2022 from complications from sickle cell anemia. He was 43 years old.

LeAlan is a father and husband and trains student-athletes in Chicago.

Rest in Peace, Lloyd Newman. March 3, 1979-December 8, 2022.

Photos of the Ida B. Wells housing projects (1997), by John Brooks