5. The House

Joan Matthews-El & Kim El

“Well I was brought to the Hill from Lawrenceville. Our whole family lived in Lawrenceville because my dad worked at Heppenstall steel mill. I was 2 years old and my brother was 3 months old when we moved to 2348 Bedford Ave in the Hill District. They were tearing down this little section of apartments and houses that my mother and dad lived in, [and] they brought with them extended family of my grandmother and her husband. They moved to the Hill because there was a 4 bedroom house, they could take everybody there. My mother was born in um, Bessemer, AL. But she doesn’t claim that. I’m not quite sure when my father came. He was kind of reticent to talk about the south, I’m not sure if he came when he was a little boy or what, mhmm.

We were on Bedford. It was purely residential, so there wasn’t anything going on there. We were kinda like the bougie ppl on the street. First ones to get a tv, a black and white. Must have been about 14 in and it only showed one channel, and everybody came with their popcorn and sat around watching this one little tv. We had one of those, not a little tiny radio but that big console Philco in the living room. And of course the living room had linoleum, everything had linoleum on the floors so you could scrub em and wash em and wax them.

Just about every block was a jitney station. We had to have that because you didn’t see a yellow cab willing to bring you to the Hill. (Kim) He was a jitney driver but he worked in the steel mill so he had money. And so he would wear his pleated pants and his real nice shoes and his socks. And his hat. And he would sit on the porch with a cold drink. And he would say I want the white people to see what I look like. So when they would ride down Bedford Ave he didn’t look like he was some cotton picker or a sharecropper. He was dressed on a Sunday… So if you rode down Bedford Ave and looked at 2348, my grandfather was sittin there looking really nice.

(Kim) Even though we didn’t live on Bedford, I spent the majority of my childhood at 2348 Bedford Ave. Because that was the meeting place where everybody went. Everybody came to that house. We sat on that porch, my grandmother had an apple tree with big green apples on it, she would make apple pies and things out of it. And that was our world. We stayed in that circle.

Since I was the oldest I had to watch my sisters. All three of us went to Weil Elementary. We lived in Elmore Square housing projects after my mother separated. We were not allowed to go on Centre Ave because the heroin addicts were down on Centre. There was a drug epidemic in the 60s. And so we just stayed where we were supposed to go. It was safer. Because with me having boundaries and the lady down the street having boundaries, then she’s looking out, we’re all looking out—it’s like the village is raising the children and keeping everybody safe. There was a whole lotta kids and everybody watched everybody’s child. If a mother seen one child and you needed to come in, if you needed to take your child over while you ran to the store…it was like that. It was very close knit. The projects at that time was not where you see murders and killing. Very rarely did you see that. 

One of the things my mother did was make sure we were educated. And that we had class. We didn’t even take the trash out with curlers in our hair or without lipstick. They thought we were tryna be bougie or classy, but she knew we wasn’t always gonna live in the projects. I was living in the projects when I went to Duquesne University. The RA said, ‘Look out the window, do you see that building? That’s the housing projects, you should not ever go there. It’s bad, it’s dangerous, do not go over [there]’—yet here I lived there and they’re telling everyone don’t go there. And they still do that. So there was a stigma. And the stigma caused a lot of personal and psychological self-esteem issues.

By the time we get to the 70s my mother had a real big natural. I remember she went down on Centre Ave and got her natural hair cut. And I was like ‘Wow!’ And my grandmother hated it. All of us had real big afros. She was mad! (Together) ‘Straighten those girls’ hair!’ My mother wore dashikis. She wore a chain with the fist and she was like that (gestures Black Power fist) all the time. She was very militant. Which I’m glad because she instilled that in us. (Joan) Yes! Because you saw the pride I had in us, and our heritage. So boom. (Kim) My great-grandmother would say, ‘She’ll get over that.’ Talkin about my mother. But she didn’t. My mother never did. So my Hill District was always people and positive. You cannot put a label on The Hill.”