Church Street South Community Lives On

While the old Church Street South housing project was being demolished, Tiffany Jackson returned to capture photos of the stripped and crumbling complex. She felt as if she were ​“grieving a slow death.”

“You may have demolished our childhood home,” she said, ​“but we stand strong. We are not the bricks. We are the people. And we will rebuild as we have already, story by story.”

She wasn’t alone. She discovered that childhood friends Tyrone Palmer, Shawn Anderson, Ramona Davis, Rhoda ​“Gail” Melvin, Manny James Sorrells, Tracey Menafee, and Andrea Taylor-Lee felt similarly.

They all reconnected recently for an online discussion about their memories of Church Street South (CSS) and their personal journeys decades after they left.The demolition caused lifelong friends to be displaced from their beloved homes and their first-ever encounter of a community. The friends carry forward a vision, bringing talents nurtured at the complex to the wider world.

“Church Street South was more than low-income projects,” Jackson said. ​“Church Street South was a family.”

Rebuilding A Vibrant Cultural Mecca

The federally Section 8‑subsidized private complex across from Union Station was constructed in 1969. It housed 301 low and moderate-income families. Due to prolonged failed upkeep by the building owners and failed government regulation, CSS was demolished in 2018.

In the discussion (watch it above), the group recalled what CSS physically consisted of — not just apartments, but community rooms, nursery, laundromat, food mart, candy store, pharmacy, preschool, tennis court, basketball court.

As kids, Palmer and his friends would play with Matchbox cars outdoors while making race tracks out of popsicle sticks. ​“We would make up our own games out of anything,” he said.

Popular games amongst the group included hot peas and butter, hide and seek, and leapfrog over concrete court benches.

CSS tenants would distinguish sections of the housing complex by communal hangout spots like Jose Marti Court, Cinque Green, and Diego Court. Palmer argued Cinque Green’s tire swings made it the best ; Melvin argued in favor of Diego Court with the basketball court.

The design of those hangout spaces offered them an ​“option to bond” that ​“made us into a strong community,” said Menafee.

Menafee was the ​“big sister” of the group. She got girls involved in scouts, cheerleading, Camp Cedarcrest, double dutch competitions, 4‑H, and the Phoenix drill team. She also looked after the boys and made sure they stayed out of trouble.

As the double dutch coach, Menafee led the CSS team to a statewide competition.

“You saved our lives. You kept us busy with positive activities,” Jackson told her during the online reunion.

“This was family. It wasn’t residents. It was family,” Melvin said.

Growing up in CSS meant the mothers had a mutual understanding and obligation to look out for all of the community kids, not just their own.

When Menafee left for college in 1984, her presence remained with the group. ​“I’m going to college like Tracey,” the others remembered saying.

The former neighbors recalled block parties in the court known as the Square. The gatherings later turned into ​“hip-hop extravaganzas,” as the genre blew up in the ​‘70s. Residents would haul their stationary home speakers to and from the popular parties. The hip-hop music would pulse through what seemed like the whole city, Melvin said. ​“Every apartment felt the music.” Residents would walk across the street to the train station and ride to New York. Or New York would come to CSS.

“We were instrumental in the proliferation of hip hop on the East Coast,” Jackson said.

Menafee’s brother, known as DJ Reggie Reg. put together CSS block parties with performances by New York’s rappers, including then up-and-comers like LL Cool J and Big Daddy Kane, she said. When the rappers visited, they would sell their records.

At CSS, the group recalled, they learned life lessons like how to work as a team, be gracious, and deal with loss.

“There are some things that are never outdated. Technology can get old, but when it comes to morality and ethics those things, our value systems, every kid should learn them,” said Jackson.

“Who Says No Good Thing Comes From The Hood?”

The eight former tenants talked about the village-like community of CSS in the ​‘70s and ​‘80s.

CSS was frequently referred to as ​“The Jungle,” a trouble spot for drug dealing and shootings. Despite the negative narrative, CSS for these tenants meant ​“family,” ​“community,” ​“love,” ​“safety,” ​“the best place in the world that a kid could grow up in,” ​“a village,” ​“lifelong relationships,” and ​“excellence.”

Melvin moved to CSS in 1970; her family left in 1990. She remembered CSS offering all her family needed onsite. They would leave only for church or to visit her mom’s accountant.

When Melvin would go with her mom to the accountant growing up, she decided when she grew up she was going to CSS’s accountant. Today Melvin is a governmental forensic accountant. She founded an accounting firm, TheRho Financials, which aims to assist marginalized individuals and business owners. 

Palmer’s family was one of the first to move to CSS. They arrived in 1970; his sister was the last to leave the complex in 2018.

When Palmer wasn’t playing basketball at CSS, he would hang out on the other side of the street at Union Station shining shoes and selling newspapers.

“It kept me out of trouble, and I made some money,” he said.

Now Palmer works for Metro-North Railroad.

Jackson’s family moved to CSS in 1976. She went to college in 1989 while her family remained there until 1997.

Jackson and Davis used to sing in their CSS apartment hallways as young girls. Jackson had no idea she lived in the same city as the Neighborhood Music School, until she expressed her interest in music at Co-op High School. Then she took lessons at NMS. This led her down her career path as a classically trained singer and voice professor. She also started Gift Passion Purpose Project, a nonprofit on a mission to provide resources to young musicians in underserved communities.

Davis’s family of ten moved to CSS in 1972 and left in 1993. Growing up in CSS, Davis was motivated by her mom, a social worker whom she looked up to. Today Davis is an administrative assistant for the chief of police and plans to get into human resources in the future.

Manny James moved to CSS in 1979 and left in 1997. At age 8, he would listen to the music of the neighborhood and sing along. ​“This is where my music dream started,” he said. He had many mentors at CSS. While a camp counselor for LEAP at 14 years old, he became motivated to help young kids. Today James is a recording artist, songwriter and composer. He created and manages his own record label, called Church Street South Entertainment, and and runs a Church Street South Arts and Music Program for youth.

Menafee’s family moved to CSS in 1969. She left for college in 1994 and her mom left in 2016. For ten years Menafee worked for the city health department and did social work for different organizations. She now works as a school security officer and a bus driver.

Taylor-Lee moved to CSS in 1974. Her family left in 1983. Taylor-Lee’s family includes some of CSS’s original staff, like her Aunt Brenda, who was a secretary in 1970. Her family’s roles have ranged from property managers to members of the residents council to organizers of arts and crafts programs. Taylor-Lee was motivated by her mom’s community work and retired as a state social worker after 26 years. She was also an emergency room social worker for 19 years.

CSS Forever

During the discussion, Jackson shared a clip of her one-woman show, called From the Hood to the Ivy League. It recounts her story of growing up in subsidized housing to then heading down a path of educational success and musical passion. In the clip Jackson recites a hand game rhymes from her childhood and the lyrics to the popular tune ​“The Message”:

Don’t push me, ​‘cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under

Days after the online discussion, seven of the eight participants reunited in person outside the former CSS site.

“What I would give to come back here. This place is so special,” Menafee said.

The group hired a photographer to capture their reunion at the site. The street echoed with their laughs and inside jokes from their childhood.

They pointed over the cement walls to the the empty site reminding each other of what the site once looked like.

“It looks so much smaller than I remember,” Jackson said.

Jackson is working to make a documentary of the group’s stories. She hopes to inspire New Haven youth growing up in the subsidized housing to dream big.

“The love that was there; today we still share that amongst each other,” Palmer reflected. ​“It’s never going to go away.”