DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1 (Picture the Homelesss Oral History Project)

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

Tape #1 Q: [00:00:11.00] Lynn Lewis: Ok. So, good Afternoon Dickerson: [00:00:11.16] Good Afternoon.

Q: [00:00:12.25] Would you tell me your name?

Dickerson: [00:00:16.19] My name is DeBoRah Dickerson Q: [00:00:20.20] OK DeBoRah. Today is October 27th, it's Friday afternoon, and we're in East Harlem, and you're a long time leader of Picture the Homeless. So tell me a little bit about yourself and where you're from?

Dickerson: [00:00:40.08] I was born January the 28th, in Crown Heights. I lived in a private home. Crown Heights was, was and still is, a very multi-cultural place. Where you had people from different parts of the United States, and the country, living there.

It's family. You know neighbors. I grew up with everybody coming over, talking to you.

My mother was a Southerner, so was my father. My mother's from North Carolina, and my father, he's from Florida. They met in New York City, and I came out! [smiles and then laughs] I had, I had two brothers, we all were born on the 8th. My baby brother was born June 28th and my older brother was born October the 8th. My baby brother, he's deceased and I just lost my older brother this year, June 7th. But we were the three musketeers [smiles]. I am the middle child. We grew up in a middle class, a middle class community, working people you know, honest, didn't mind working, helping everyone. It was like a big old melting pot, so I really loved that because like I said, everybody cared for one another you know, and that's the way it was. I lived in three places in Crown Heights and one of the buildings again, I stated was a private home. I lived in a railroad flat for 33 years. So I knew everybody, you know, and it's just a beautiful place, beautiful place. And I also, in that community, what came out of that community, was the Honorable Shirley Chisholm, which was in our political club. So everybody backed her and we loved her [voice rises slightly in emphasis]. It was family.

Q: [00:03:23.03] Umm. I've heard you tell some Shirley Chisholm stories. Would you like to share one now?

Dickerson: [00:03:30.14] Oh, she [smiles and looks away as if remembering]. The name of the political club was the United Democratic Club. It was on Kingston Avenue and Union. It's no longer there. It was like on the corner, and my mother worked for the Board [of Elections] and everybody that worked at the Board was very active in the political arena, preferably, the Democratic. I would see this woman walk in, so regal, and so, she always had, there were always young folks around her. One day she got up to talk and I stood up and I listened to her and I'm like Oh my God, she's just fabulous! So I got 1

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

the opportunity to meet her, and as soon as I turned 18, I wanted to vote. In meeting, going to her to speak to her I said to her, I said Oh Miss Chisholm, you speak so elegant, oh I wish I could speak like you! I said, I just, I love your voice! And she said in her very stylish way, [here DeBoRah slightly imitates Shirley Chisholm] she said Young lady, you will speak like me. And she said, And you will speak better because you have a beautiful voice too! And she said, it's not about how I speak. Whatever is in your heart, you will be able to speak. So she says, speak from your heart. She said, for now, you're learning, she said, but you will be better than me! I always remember that. I guess [voice rises and she smiles] I speak, people like to hear me, and sometimes I'm amazed. But um, I thank God for her, you know, meeting her. I hear my voice now. I'm 63 and I hear my voice! [said with conviction]. My mother was an elegant speaker. In the South she won medals for speaking. Even though she was a southerner, she had a Bostonian accent and because we were instrumentally and sang, we were taught to speak well and to be able to pronounce. Also, there was a big emphasis on diction, you know. "We didn't say de boy went to de stow, you knew you had to do dat", that was a no - no. We could not say that.

That's important. People don't speak well and that's important.

Q: [00:06:36.05] Your mom made an emphasis on proper diction? Or was it also in the schools? Where were you getting that instruction?

Dickerson: [00:06:44.25] Well! I come from a family of ministers, teachers and nurses.

The teacher part was, we had family members while we were in school, that, they could not let people know that they were related to us, especially my mother. My mother said when they would get, they lived on a farm and she used to pray that it would rain so she could go to school and they would always keep their homework, and they was always up to date. They emphasized speaking well. Even though they may have had an accent, and I guess the ones that were ministers, it was very, very important to be able to speak well so that people did not make fun of you because you know being Southerners they always thought that people of color didn't know how to speak. So that was very, very important.

Up until my mother had, my mother's has Alzheimers, and she's at the last stages, but my mother could recite [said with emphasis] the Gettysburg address. Word for word verbatim, so could her other sisters. I can't do that. We didn't learn that! And I mean, she would come out with four scores, I would come out with four scores and my mother would complete it. And that was, I was like wow!

Q: [00:08:32.26] Who was the biggest influence on you growing up?

Dickerson: [00:08:36.25] Wow, who, wow! We, on my mother's side, it's into the fifth generation. I was, had the opportunity, to see five of my great aunts and two of my uncles. My great aunt, my mother's oldest sister, oldest sisters, and my uncle and my moms and my grandmother! They were very, very influential. I call my mother "My".

"My" would have these little tidbits. When I graduated from junior high school, my 2

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

mother used to say "Before a task is ever done, do it well or not at all. Be thy labor great or strong, never finish until it's done." [smiling] Q: [00:09:50.17] [laughing] I love that.

Dickerson: [00:09:49.29] So those were the things that they used to say. My grandmother, and I would hear my other Aunt, she said "use your head for more than a hat", you know, I was like how'd you use that grandma? She said God gave you brains.

Don't just put a hat on and don't have anything in there. I said, but grandma {laughing}, grandma why? We have something in there, we got our brains in it! Now, I love you D, God gave you brains so that means you got to think, you got to think about things before, you just dress it up. So that was important to me.

Q: [00:10:39.07] Did they all live nearby you?

Dickerson: [00:10:42.11] Well, when growing up before my moms, my mother and my father separated, we didn't have really a lot of people. We were in Connecticut. Then my mother went to North Carolina. Oh, we had so much family, [smiling] it was beautiful!

One of my aunts lived across the street. A cousin lived next door to me. We had a place called Rabbit town, and this is in Statesville, North Carolina. We would go see my Aunt Lottie. My Aunt Lottie would come, and she would get us when we got out of school.

So everybody kind of lived in close proximity. That was very, very important. When we had to come back, we moved from the country, and when we had to come back into the City, I hated the City. When we were in Cleveland, we could, I could, go feed the hogs, and the pigs, pick berries and string beans and all that, tend to the mules that we had.

When we left, I couldn't do that no more. But, you know, just being there I had family that was so close you know. Everybody lived next, and they still do. They still do. My uncle, my mother's only living brother now, everybody lived close near each other. To me, as a child just growing up, that was important having that family around.

Q: [00:12:30.26] Yeah, that all sounds beautiful. So you came of age into adulthood in New York City, or were you still down in North Carolina?

Dickerson: [00:12:44.14] Well, wow! I started school in, we went to, Anthony, Florida.

There we had a two room school with desks where they had the ink wells. Where you had one row was the first grade, and another row was the second grade. My brothers, my baby brother and I were in one room, and my older brother was in another room. They had a pot belly stove, you know, and we had to walk like five miles to get to school. We would walk and, my father's mother she would make [laughing], she would make potato pancakes [laughs more]. I was so bad, Grandma would make those, Aunt Fanny I mean, Grandma fanny, would make these potato pancakes and I loved them! When I got down there all they ate was rice and I didn't like rice because we just didn't grow up on rice you know. So from my mother's side, they were called tar heels, and we ate potato 3

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

everything. I loved them potato pancakes and I would sneak into the lunch room and eat my potato pancakes [continues laughing] before lunchtime! I started the first grade and a little of the second grade and then my mother came and got us because my father's sister said that she wasn't going to bring us back. My mother said I'm coming to get my children! [we both laugh] Florida was kind of tough. I didn't really know my father's people. The difficult thing was that they drank. My uncle, when he, this was father's oldest brother, he was very abusive, you know. He would get drunk and want to beat everybody up. He didn't care whether we was, my Aunt Minnie had I think, Fanny was, she was little, like maybe one or two years old and he would just beat everybody. It was a blessing to come back to North Carolina. Then I went to school in elementary school in North Carolina, the third and the fourth grade. The school system there was very different. I remember that they had a lunch program and people [laughs] funny, nobody, sometimes people in the south, if they don't know you they don't eat your food. They said, they're not fixing that food because we don't know them and they might put poison in it! So they invited all of the parents to come, just to be involved with the lunch program. They came up and they came up with their baskets of food. It was really funny [smiling]. School, there was very nice and one of my Aunt's lived in a different part of Statesville. One of my teachers, she was not nice to me at all. On my mother's side of the family they got gaps, and she used to tease me about my gap. I had earrings.

Here the tape cuts out because it ran out of space.

Tape #2 Q: [00:00:01.09] OK, so we're back. One of the things that you've always brought to Picture the Homeless, and I'm sure, other aspects of your life, is something very beautiful, is your singing. I want to know if you would tell me the story of when you started singing and realized that you are a beautiful singer.

Dickerson: [00:00:28.20] Wow! Um. Wow. My mother [laughs], wow. My mother played the piano. They were very musically inclined. I remember, we lived in, we were living in Hartford, Connecticut. There used to be a song that my mother, we would sing, and I listened, and we had one of those old time radio things, that stood up with all the wood. My mother had bought it for Christmas. My mother loved music herself, and music was always in the house! I learned that my mother could play some music and she loved to dance [voice rises]. So I remember my mother would be singing and my brother and I, my baby brother, he would be singing "Go Stagger Lee", and I would say "Mommy! Sing that song! And my brother and I would do a duet together and we used to sing this song. I was standing at the corner when I heard my bull dog bark/he was barking at two little/to the gambling in the dark. And we would be standing, we would be at the window saying, Go Stagger Lee! Go Stagger Lee! And my mother would say, you two get out of the window! [laughing] Singing Go Stagger Lee [keeps laughing].

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Dickerson: [00:01:58.13] And then my mother would also, the first time I went in church, my mother went to church but [pauses] because of the different lifestyles that my moms and she learned about my father, he drank and he did not want my mother to go to church. The first time that I remember going to church was an Easter Sunday morning.

One of the songs that I learned was Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. I didn't even know, but we came into church and we sat down because Easter Sunday's a very high holy day. Everybody comes to church that don't normally come to church you know.

This woman had me, and I was singing this song, This is my duty, this is my duty [laughs] and the lady said, no that's not it and she started to say the words to me and I was so happy, just being there, and I started to sing. People around listened and started to say, wow that little girl! And I was 5 ½. My mother was going to, she had an audition to sing with Nat King Cole. Nat King Cole's father was a minister and Nat knew my mother, she has a beautiful voice, she is a soprano, she had 3 or 5 octaves that she could sing. My mother wanted to sing opera.

Dickerson: [00:03:52.26] As we, as I got older, I started to sing. Now that, as I became an adult, I have sung with, and it's been gospel and in College. I sang with the Edward Hawkins Gospel Work Ensemble, the Triborough Mass Choir. Now they have become very famous in the gospel arena and also with Azuzza which is under Bishop Hazekiah Walker, which has won the Dove. In regards to singing, it's something that I just do. It's from my heart. When things get to me, we would sing. It’s something that we did. It’s just natural. My brother was the lead singer for Tower of Power. He played 17 instruments and read a lot of music. So, that gift is just embedded. I don't make no big thing, [smiles], I just do it! People are somewhat amazed, the say I didn't know you could sing! I say, you didn't ask me! I said I can carry a tune [laughs]. I just leave it like that, you know, that's that.

Q: [00:05:40.24] I remember one time, Reverend Billy was looking for a singer. I said I know someone here [DeBoRah laughs] who's a wonderful singer! [DeBorah laughs even louder] And he says, well you know, I can't hear her over the phone! And I said, well just give it a shot, just get a taste! And you got on the phone, remember this?

Dickerson: [00:06:01.18] Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Q: [00:06:02.00] And sang, and he immediately invited you to be part of his choir [both of us smile at this memory] because you were, you are, such a beautiful singer.

Dickerson: [00:06:10.09] Thank you. It's just, you know, I don't, I don't, say that I'm one of those outrageous, but it's that some of the things that I have ventured, you know, got into, singing, I'm like, I just did it. You know, a lot of them, you know, in college, I've been on a couple of recordings and stuff like that. So. Like I said people say I didn't know you could sing, and I say you didn't ask me. So I mean, you know that something I 5

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

grew up with. My mother sang, I listened to, we would have Brook Benton. She loved Dinah Washington, anything with Nat King Cole, oh Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson.

My grandmother used to like this ________ Quartet singer, she liked that. Sam Cooke, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, those are people that I kinda, you know we had in our house, playing that kind of music. It was almost music that we had. When grandma was around we'd play certain things, when my mother was around I used to play certain things. But I’ve always, music has always been, singing, and music has always been a part of me. You know, it's just always just been a part of me. I was not really one, everyone played an instrument! You know, I did some guitar, the last venture I did was playing the congas! And I love drums! I really love drums. I'm hoping in the near future that I, because the drums, it's a beat, it's a sound, [voice lowers in emphasis] and it's so rhythmic, and it just, if you listen to the drums, it talks to you. I think it does and I like being able to you know, dance to my beat and sing my song.

Q: [00:08:36.22] Tell me about the time that you first heard about Picture the Homeless.

Dickerson: [00:08:45.29] Wow. [laughing] I laugh because I came looking for, I saw an ad, a flyer of some sort and it was I think it was Community Voices Heard. I came to 116th St. and they had this Cuchifritos downstairs and I was like, wow, I'm in Spanish Harlem, woo! Oh this is nice! I was just amazed you know, because my baby brother always came to Harlem you know and he's always, and I'm like, I'm going there. So I was in the shelter and I wanted to see you know, what I could do. I wanted to have an activity that I could do and getting involved with people because I've been involved with social justice a long time, as a teenager because that's what we did in Crown Heights in our community. So I walk up the stairs, and I knock on the door and it says CVH. I'm like, OK. I look and I didn't see nobody, and I'm looking around and I see people in a meeting. I had to walk over, nobody came to the door or anything. I stood there for like maybe 5 minutes or so, and no one was there. So, I walked, CVH was at one door, and I walked outside and I saw this door that said Picture the Homeless. I said Picture the Homeless! [laughing and voice rises] What kind of mess is that?!

Q: [00:10:41.09] [laughing] Dickerson: [00:10:41.09] Picture the Homeless! I said, who put some mess like that. [smiling] I said this is crazy. I'm going to go in here and see. So I went in there and I saw this table. It had all kinds of brochures and stuff and I heard somebody say Hi! How may I help you? I said, I see on your door it says Picture the Homeless. What you mean?! [laughing] What do mean by Picture the Homeless? So, it was Sam, so he says, Are you new? I said Yes, and I'd for you to explain what you do. So Sam came, and then Roosevelt came out, and Tyletha was in the other room and she was talking, and she said Hi! and I said Hi! So you know, people was like really hospitable. They were coming out. So I said to them, I was next door and I showed them the flyer. I said but tell me 6

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

something about you. I'm kind of interested and I would like to do something. I want to know something about you. So they said, we have a meeting later on. I said, you have a meeting? She said, yes, you can come, we would like to have you. You can come and see what we're about. I said Oh! He said, we also have refreshments. I said, you do?! I said, OK! So I waited around, you know they had different ones come in. They had Jean, Jean Rice. They had John, um, Marco, Jean, uh, Roosevelt, Leroy was there, Tyletha was there. You know, it was really, people started to come in. They said, who's here for the first time? You know, stand up and give your name. And it's been from there, it's just been, I just took it on from there because, I liked the way they greeted me, you know, and they got my nose up in the air, [smiling]. So I'm happy about that, you know.

Q: [00:13:08.17] Lynn Lewis: And that was in maybe, 2006?

Dickerson: [00:13:14.03] 5 Q: [00:13:14.03] 2005, so that's 12 years ago.

Dickerson: [00:13:22.08] Uh-huh Q: [00:13:22.08] Were you still working as a home health aide then? I seem to. I don't know if my memory is faulty.

Dickerson: [00:13:28.25] I was [pauses to think], yes I was. I was working, yes I was, but I was looking for something else to do. I was also in the shelter. So I was really looking for something to do. I needed, I had been involved with the Coalition for the Homeless and I had also been involved with Life and Faith Sharing. Life and Faith sharing is one of those non, it's an interfaith group and I did things with them. When I was in the shelter in '95, no 96, 96/95, when I was in the shelter, so, you know being in the shelter it's always good to have a support. I say a group, to know that you're not in this by yourself. So I think that's very, very important because sometimes when you're with a group of people, especially if you're experiencing homelessness, it's always good to have somebody that you can really lock arms or heads up with. So when those days of dealing with a system that is so corrupt and, and don’t treat you like a human being, to connect up with.

Q: [00:15:08.03] Hmmm. That's powerful. Could give you an example, or tell a story, of when either you felt like you weren't treated like a human being, or you saw someone else not treated like a human being, for people to understand.

Dickerson: [00:15:34.27] Wow. When I was 68th and Lexington, we had there, the administration, it was an armory. It was for women it was supposed to, in the beginning it was for working women. People would fill out different things for housing, then all of a sudden we lost a housing specialist. So we had no one there. Even though you had a 7

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case manager, they didn't do nothing. There's some case managers, and it's very rare, that would be able to connect you with finding a place, finding an apartment or studio or whatever. Then they started coming in, wanting to do locker searches. There were locker searches. Then I had gotten sick. I had a torn mediscus. I said I have a torn mediscus. We had to have a pass in order to stay in our room. They had one case manager. She was just really, really nasty. She would come in the room doing her rounds. I would always have my pass. Somebody somehow decided to play a game and remove my pass, so I didn't find it. So she came in and started yelling and hollering and screaming at me. I was like, yo this is crazy. So I just got a little ticked off, and I was frightened because I had never lived under that kind of condition and that bothered me.

You know, and I just had to, I was like I'm not trying to bother nobody. One experience that I remember [laughing], I kind of chuckle to myself. They had this woman, and her name was Miss Taylor. Miss Taylor would, at 5, it was 5:45, and the lights would start turning, you hear her coming up the stairs. And she had a bullhorn.

Q: [00:18:29.20] A bullhorn!

Dickerson: [00:18:31.13] A bullhorn Q: [00:18:32.12] And this is 5:45 am?

Dickerson: [00:18:34.28] Yeah. 5:45, she's start up. She would go knocking on the door, turn the lights on! Then at 6 o'clock she's would say [imitates Miss Taylor, loudly] Rise and shine it's time to get up!

Q: [00:18:52.24] In the bullhorn?

Dickerson: [00:18:53.23] On the bullhorn [both are laughing]. I remember, it frightened me. And my heart was start beating real fast. And then she'd come in and say I said rise and shine, time to get up. Rise and Shine, everybody get up [laughs] Q: [00:19:14.27] Good lord.

Dickerson: [00:19:16.19] And they would throw, you know after a while people got tired [both laughing] and then finally I just got mad you know. She'd turn the lights on and turn them off. She would go around and make her rounds 3 times. I saw a note talking about the Coalition for the Homeless. I said whoa, we need to do something about that because this woman can't be doing that. She almost be having you have a heart attack! It was really, you know, really frightful. I told them, I said yes, let's write and tell them that she's with this bullhorn. Rise and Shine. Somebody said, let's take a picture of it.

Somebody sneak something, and I said, let's take a picture and send to them. That was one of the beginnings of some stuff that I did in there. She got written up but she didn't

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know [laughing] that I got a lot of people because I know what it means to have petitions.

I was like, oh we're Q: [00:20:39.24] Lynn Lewis: Crown Heights Dickerson: [00:20:39.24] Yeah, so we was like this bozo the clown got to go! So then she was mad about that. She was like I don't know which one of you and she was cursing.

Which one of you SOB's did this? Well I don't need no bullhorn, I'll just use my mouth!

Miss Taylor did that. And we wrote her up again. Then I went to a meeting and we wrote her up. Finally, you know, she had to stop. So I mean, I've seen a lot of things go on in the system that was really inhumane. Really, really inhumane. I have gotten retaliation and harassment because I reported them. When I first came into Picture the Homeless they would leave notes on my bed. When I was coming in they would tell me, well you know you gotta come and talk to us. About what? I remember one time I was on my way to work and the Director asked me well I want to talk to you, I said well I'm on my way to work! She said, well I need to talk to you now. I said, I can't talk to you now because I got to be to work and I don't need to be late. I would talk to you so I got on the phone and I talked to somebody and I said this man is retaliating. So he said, you're a smart ass. I said, So are you! I don't talk to you like that. I've seen things done. [voice trails off].

Another thing came to my mind, was a woman that had a deformed foot. She always had problems with it. She was from, I think she from Colombia, Colombia or Venezuela.

This lady was an older woman. She was here illegally, you know. This woman would complain about her foot, and the Assistant Director complained - no he didn't complain he told her that he was going to put her out on the street. So I intervened. She really didn't care for me, but then I got someone to talk to her. I got Picture the Homeless, was one. I also got Life and Faith Sharing because Sister Dorothy spoke Spanish. I learned that Sister Dorothy was a social worker and she wrote up the papers to try and get her the right papers and that this woman also had problems with her foot. With PTH getting on her, you know talking, connecting to the right people, the lady had legal help and help with immigration. She also, later on, they found her a place and she was able to connect with her family. When one day I saw her, and I'm not going to mention the name. He couldn't say nothing to her, and I said good! [loudly] You can't talk to her! [laughing] He didn't like that. Man, when I got ready, she got ready to leave, you know, she walked over to me and she started to cry and she said, Miss DeBoRah, I love you because you have helped me and now I got a casa. I said, apartamento? and she said si, [smiling] and I said oh excellente! And I said, and your salud? her health? she said, oh they got me a Doctor! I stood there and I cried. It was so important because she would sit nights, and days, and this was supposed to be a medical center and they didn't help people.

Q: [00:25:18.01] So you were the bridge in that case because you were a shelter resident so you could see what she was going through. You were also telling a story about how 9

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

you were organizing in the shelter [DeBoRah laughs] to deal with an abusive staff person.

Dickerson: [00:25:40.28] Yeah! I have organized two Client Advisory Boards Q: [00:25:52.28] Um, tell me about that.

Dickerson: [00:25:56.10] The first, no three! The first Advisory Board was 68th and Lexington, and I became the Sergeant of Arms [laughs] and also the Secretary, the Corresponding Secretary. We had so much going on and I just, there was someone there, and we didn't have anybody. I just started talking to different women. I had the Coalition to come in and talk to the women. They told us how we could have an advisory board and that was at 68th and Lexington and that was in the late 90's. In 2005 and 2006 there was a Client Advisory Board at 85 Lexington, which was in Brooklyn under BRC. We started a Client Advisory Board there. I started one there. The next Advisory Board I started was with Olivieri, which was a drop in center that was under Urban Pathways. I told the women that we need to start an Advisory Board. I went to meetings to see what we could do and they had no literature or anything, so I began to search out. I said listen, we have our little group so we can have a client advisory board. So we started an advisory board at Oliveri. The unique thing about Oliveri was that this was a drop in center for women that had mental health issues. It was a mix, but you did have a lot of people with mental health issues. So, that was significant because now we have a voice. I was able to help some women who were some great fighters, some great fighters and they connected with their families and they also got some apartments. That was important. I told them, you have a voice, we can sit up and organize. I guess the good Lord had allowed me to help others to get ourselves together [smiles].

Q: [00:29:05.16] One of the really powerful things that I'm hearing in what you’re saying, is that when you came to Picture the Homeless, you were already organizing.

Your whole life, in many ways, had taught you that, right? So, you find yourself in a situation, and you’re looking for organizations to hook up with. I heard you talk about folks at Picture the Homeless being welcoming. What has kept you at Picture the Homeless all these years, because it's a significant commitment that you have made?

Dickerson: [00:29:55.13] Wow. One, I have to say, I didn't have to be homeless. I have family that had. I have some family members that had 2 or 3 homes, right next, and nobody stayed there. They were very mad with me you know, because I became homeless but I, it was a decision that I made. It was like, either sink or swim. That was something that I wanted to, I did. Not want, I did. It was difficult. It was hard. And it hurt. I know, my moms, she said would worry about me. I had a cousin; she did have her own business. She was like, yo, you can come down here, and I said nah. It's a decision that I made. After I learned about what homeless people were going through, 10

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the first time I came in, I stayed in the system for four years. Not because I wanted to.

God knows that was not the situation. I remember that they lost, you had people that they had been there for such a long time. I said, they put us on a dead or alive list [laughs].

They put everybody's name on this list, and put it on the bulletin board. They were taking our records, and the records were being stored in a room that was not, it was in storage and there was no lock and key. So people could come in any time and look at anything they wanted to. So that was a problem that I had an issue with. Being the fact that while I was in the shelter system, I had three major surgeries. My health started to decline. I came in with kind of a health issue. My leg was bothering me. I had a torn mediscus. Later on I had to have surgery on the mediscus, so it's kind of scary. Yeah, I came with skills, organizing, in the Crown Heights that I grew up, and even I can say on my mother's side, I have a statement that either you're going to be part of the problem, or part of the solution. Someone said that’s part of Tupac, I don't know, I just feel very passionate about. Instead of sitting around saying oh this is wrong, that's wrong; do something about it! We had growing up, a vacant lot. We had one, and people were just throwing garbage in it. I was part of the block association and I said, instead of doing that I said, let's just clean this block up. I came out there one day I said, I asked a few people and we got some rakes and stuff. We got some garbage bags and the kids started coming around. We started a Junior Block Association. I didn't say nothing about it.

Then I told the people where I grew up about the police. There were giving people tickets. I got involved with the 77th Precinct council. I got on their board. I was the Corresponding Secretary and they promoted someone I know, he's a former politician, he asked me to come on board and I became the 3rd Vice President. I told my neighbors, we got to do something about these police. So when one of us gets a ticket we're going to start knocking on the door and we're going to storm the precinct. And tell them, show them the tickets. I can't do anything, I'm a part of this but I can't do anything but I need you to come out and be with me and I can say, they never failed me. My mother and I were not home owners, we were tenants. But the 1200 block of St Marks backed me up [emphasis words slowly]. As a result, I made cakes, brought them in and the council started to grow. People came out and I said you need to come out and not just complain.

Ask for solutions that would help. So I developed a relationship with community affairs and it was important. We made sure also, I also voted and I also said come on out and later I became a county committee person. So I mean, you know that's why I love, really love PTH. The things that we do, people don't understand. They say you never know, instead of criticizing somebody until you walk in their shoes.

Dickerson: [00:36:45.17] One thing, when we did the count, that made it so important. I was like in another world, I didn't realize, and when the actuality of us going out and counting it made it so real. I thought, what about those people, we can do something with these places. I didn't mind doing that.

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The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project DeBoRah Dickerson, Session 1, Tapes 1-2

Q: [00:37:09.19] And what were we counting, for people that are listening to this.

Dickerson: [00:37:13.16] We were counting vacant buildings and properties. We were having a meeting one night and I got so fired up and mad. I said anger can be constructive and destructive. I'm going to talk about the constructive part of anger. At 116th St. between Lexington and 1st if I'm not mistaken, if my memory corrects me because I don't remember everything [we both laugh], we had some buildings and these buildings had commercial on the bottom and apartment buildings on the top. Lexington Avenue from 116th to 114th I remember there was one block it was nothing but commercial buildings on the bottom and apartment buildings on the top. I said, oh my god. Those could be homes for people. They don't have to stay in the freaking shelter.

That was just the beginning of a little seed that has blossomed. I'm like, wow. We went out. They said we couldn't do it. But you know, I'm going to get to some of my faith. If Jesus took two fishes and a loaf of bread and fed a multitude, we took some vacant buildings and we counted all these vacant buildings in all five boroughs and they said we couldn't do it. That has really been my passion. I have no children. I'm not close to my family, not because I want to, just things that have happened. I have lost a lot. But I have also gained what it means to help in your community. I want our community to have life like other people's communities. People of color and Latino, I'm a senior now and I am disabled. They're pushing us out. We don't make the money like they do. But I'm going take what I got and I'm going to make it work [starts to speak slowly for emphasis, lowering her voice]. When my homecoming, I'm talking about, it's going to be a celebration. That DeBoRah loved her community and loved her people. That I wanted to help! Either I'm going to be part of the solution or part of the problem. That's why, in the times that I've had three major surgeries. People were nice to me, they were good to me, and they didn't have! We took what we had. Like the fable, chicken soup, stone soup! That's what we did. That's what I saw. People, if you just gave them a change. I see hope! I see jobs! I see cultural exchange! I see entrepreneurship, I see education.

Where they have left us out: I say, you can't leave us out! If our former founders, they took a little something, a dream and look at it now. So, you may push us out, but we're not out of the universe. We have work to do. Like I said, those buildings blew my mind.

We didn't have a lot of people, but we had committed people. This is what I'm talking about - is commitment. When you believe in something you're committed. When you have faith and trust in God, you can do anything.

Q: [00:42:15.24] Thank you DeBoRah.

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