
DATE: Wednesday, July 30, 1997              TAG: 9707300730

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY JACKIE R. BOOKER 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

BOYS' INNER-CITY TALE PAINTS VIVID PICTURE

TOO OFTEN, our only glimpse of America's inner-city neighborhoods comes from a one-minute spot on the nightly news. What we rarely see is that real people, some of whom have genuine hopes, dreams and aspirations, live in these depressing communities.

In ``Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago,'' two young black males who live in a run-down housing project chronicle not only their lives but also those of their families, friends and neighbors. Their interviews give us insight into what sociologists call America's underclass.

In 1993, broadcast journalist David Isay asked LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, ages 13 and 14, respectively, to document life in Chicago's Ida B. Wells, the nation's oldest public housing project for African Americans. Using tape recorders, LeAlan and Lloyd talked to immediate and extended family members, drug dealers, gang members and others who live in and among the boarded-up apartments they call home.

They even canvassed the neighborhood for reaction to the murder of a 5-year-old that shocked the nation. The boy was dropped from the 14th floor of the housing project by two adolescents.

Neither LeAlan nor Lloyd has a stable family. LeAlan's father doesn't acknowledge him and his mother has an illness that is compounded by alcoholism. Lloyd's father is also absent from the home and alcoholic. His mother died from cirrhosis of the liver. Maternal grandparents and an aunt provide the limited supervision that Lloyd receives at home.

Problems among the boys' family members range from teen-age pregnancy to drug abuse to chronic unemployment. What emerges from the stories LeAlan and Lloyd relate is a familiar theme throughout Ida B. Wells: generations of alcoholism, teen-age pregnancy and joblessness.

The death of 5-year-old Eric Morse drew the national media and evoked comments from President Clinton and Jesse Jackson. The 10-year-old and 11-year-old boys who dropped Morse from the project's 14th floor, allegedly because he refused to steal candy for them, were sentenced to prison.

After the news media left Ida B. Wells, LeAlan and Lloyd continued taping, turning up some rare insights. Few of the people they interviewed were surprised by Morse's death, only by the youth of the victim and the murderers. Death had become so common in their neighborhood that they were hardened to it, accepting it as a way of life.

LeAlan and Lloyd's interviews offer a daily account of a world few Americans can imagine. With so much discussion about race relations and affirmative action dominating headlines, few if any reporters have dared to venture into the lowest segment of society. Although scholars have written extensively about the inner city, none has given the vivid pictures that Our America offers.

If there is hope in these stories, it is evinced by the young journalists. Now 17 and finishing high school, LeAlan plans to attend Howard University in the fall. Lloyd is 18 and has a difficult time in school, but he is still optimistic about his future. Both attend schools where less than 50 percent of their classmates graduate. Many are lost to drugs and shootings, even on school grounds.

What this book suggests is that despite the bleak, urban landscape that is home to thousands of African Americans and others, life does exist. And it is precious. MEMO: Jackie R. Booker, formerly an associate professor of history at

Norfolk State University, is now an associate professor at South

Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

SCRIBNER

LeAlan Jones, left, and Lloyd Newman took tape recorders into their

Chicago housing project and emerged with a haunting insiders'

report.

Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago''

Authors: LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman with David Isay

Publisher: Scribner. 203 pp.

Price: $23