(inaudible chatters) - [Narrator] On your check check.

(inaudible chatters) - It's a very special day.

If we are going to help people in America, we have to start right here at Robert Taylor Homes on the South Side of Chicago.

(crow applauding) The president said, "Let residents be in control of their own destinies."

and so we've changed our rules, so that residents are involved in every single decision that affects their lives.

(crowd applauding) (tractor roaring) - People outside perspective, people looking in, the politicians, the people in authority, the police, Robert Taylor Homes was chaos and a mess to them.

Here was the basketball court.

A lot of great things happened on this basketball court.

That was 45, 55.

A church sat right in the middle over there.

And we had to attend church every Sunday.

This is my first time being out here for years.

So a lot of memories are rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling.

(upbeat music) I grew up in Robert Taylor Homes.

Robert Taylor Homes began North at 39th Street and going South to 54th Street.

The cab men would always be skeptical about dropping me off in the projects.

They would never come right on State Street.

It was hard to get a cab.

They would drop me off on Michigan or even drop me off on King Drive.

They didn't wanna drive down State Street, past the projects And they would speak ill of the projects and I would often set them straight.

When I think of the projects, it's not the horrible things that I've heard.

My first memories goes back to the joy.

We had loving people.

We were caring people.

We moved from Robert Taylor Homes to Burnsville in 1996.

Housing authority had many people going around.

They had a little pink slip that we had to check off, asking people what was their choice?

Get section A, be placed in one of the other housing facilities temporarily or to have the option to return to the new mixed income places that were coming.

People were in a frenzy.

Most of the elders didn't want to go anywhere.

That's where they spent their life.

We knew we weren't coming back.

The city did fail because you and I can't make choices on what's being built.

Some people accepted other housing authority choices around the city and many had already moved to other states.

It was a family unit.

And the family unit was destroyed.

Her smile is Sunday.

This is me just thankful, trying to uplift and inspire people.

I used to walk around with a poster.

Smile, even when you don't wanna smile, just smile.

Happy Sunday.

Many people I grew up with are from the Robert Taylor Homes.

That's 45, 55 right there.

This one is those days I was out selling food, barbecuing.

I didn't have every grill on the market, including handmade hood grills.

(Lolly laughs) A lot of people don't remember.

We had gardens in front of every building.

People mingling, hanging out.

That's what I mean about family.

It's a lot of original things we did to represent us.

Love of Jesus, good eating, laughter, vibrancy.

Like today you go on the North Side, it's vibrant, it's happy, people out and about.

That's my memory of the South Side.

(utensils being banged) Lots and lots of layers of goodness and lots of sadness.

And the sadness stems from the segregation.

You had people inside each building that segregated themselves from each other.

The segregation, even to this day and back then was layered.

Had a lot to do with gangs, education, class, color, light skin, dark skin.

But that's not the footprint of what Robert Taylor Homes was about.

When there was chaos, there were people to resolve it.

It was people in the community who cared.

First and foremost, the footprint was family and love.

That love and that core love is still there till today, even with the projects gone.

Whip this up about five more minutes, it's ready baby.

Some of them go back there, meet congregate.

They could not destroy the love.

♪ As for me if you don't mind ♪ ♪ I'ma post up right here and unwind ♪ ♪ I'm chilling on goochie (goochie baby) ♪ ♪ And that's the way I like it ♪ I definitely can't tell you what the Robert Taylor reunion is.

The reunion started as a back to school picnic, giving out book bags, feeding folks, however it evolved.

It wasn't just the 45th builders.

48th used to be there, 49th used to be there.

People from all over all the projects.

The past few years, the rest of the buildings tried to outdo 45th.

More people have evolved their own building reunions.

And thank you and happy 45th day.

The reunion continues to draw people because the love is still there.

And even in spite of the darkness, that darkness gave me a lot of light.

My family, that's our core.

And the city's still trying to break that up.

The aldermen come out and be trying to shut down the picnics.

Like they still trying to dismantle it.

Even on that one day that we bring love together.

And the reunion days be super love.

Super love.

You ready to eat it?

- Yes.

- One of my eldest, think she about 10, 11 years older than me came to me.

She say, "You're a people person.

How do you just talk to people?".

I say, "Be true to who you are.

I am who I am.

Don't be embarrassed about where you came from.

It's that I'm true to who I am.

It don't bother me that I came from the project.

I've been around and I've seen a lot of them people who you may think grass is greener on the other side on Beverly Country Club Hills, up North off Lakeshore Drive.

These people with these different these zip codes, they got problems too.

They're people just like you.

Don't put nobody above you but God.

(train engine roaring) That's how I do it.