Audio File
Transcript
My name is DaJuan Davis. I am 11 years old.
My name is Robert Johnson. I am 16 years old.
My name is Donovan McKeever. I am 14 years old.
And we interviewed Terrell Williams on July 18th, 2018.
My date of birth is July 31st, 1981. I was born and raised in the Hill. I grew up in the projects like probably the first eight years of my life. The projects were what you’d expect in the 80s, you know what I mean? Saw a lot, met a lot of people, ran into a lot of situations, then moving from the projects to Bloomer Way, it was a slum. My street had heroin addicts, crack heads, prostitutes, after hours, places like that, because that’s all we could afford. The 80s was different. It was crowded up here. You didn’t have all the fun gadgets like phones and all that, so you had to go outside, and you had to play. I grew up around bullies and tough guys. It was a good childhood. It helped develop me into who I am today. But it was a little too rough. I wouldn’t want my daughter or my son to go through stuff I went through.
When I left middle school, I was more worried about my social life than everything else. I didn’t like not having friends in middle school, so once I got to Schenley High School, I really put time and effort into molding my image into being that dude and everything I did, I either wanted to be the flyest dude with the clothes, or I wanted to be the dude that everybody had respect for. I was trying to figure out, like, what is the Hill district dude? I’m reunited with all the guys that I came up with from the projects and all that, and at all times, I’m watching them saying “all right, I could be like that. You know what I mean? I could be fly like him. I could be tough like him.” So the academics part was easy and I didn’t put in much effort as I could. I probably could have been like a 4.0 student if I really would have focused on that one. I went to the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. I didn’t finish, and I ended up getting in some trouble and losing financial aid and not been able to complete. So I had to, like, really, like, wander around and work stupid jobs for like years and years, and then I finally found a way to get back into school, and I was like 25-26. Went to Point Park, didn’t like Point Park, so I went to CCAC. I knocked out a associates degree in education. Then I went to Carlow. I got a degree in theology. Now I’m probably going back to Carlow probably this fall to get a master degree in education.
The state of my life right now… A lot of the mistakes I made, they contributed to some of the greatest things I have. If I had wanted to be a lawyer, I probably could’ve been a good lawyer, but I wouldn’t have been a good person. If I would have went to Pitt, I probably would have been a horrible person right about now, because a lot of the mistakes pushed me and gave me the energy to do a lot of the things that I do now, and it gave me the perspective to care about things that I probably never really paid attention to before. Ultimately, my goal is to either be a professor or a teacher or both. Right now I’m kind of in flux as far as what level I want to go. I feel like I could be a great professor, but when I look around, I go to different high schools in the City of Pittsburgh, even when I’m out of town. Then I talk to, like, the youth in, like, maybe DC or Virginia, and I-I really just listen to how they conversed about certain things. I’m like, man, you really needed a role model, man. You needed somebody to talk to you, you needed somebody to teach you or tell you to do better, you know, with the state of how Pittsburgh public schools is right now, I’m wondering if I should just go into teaching high school.
This Hill District looks nothing like the Hill District I came up in. My father used to take me everywhere. This whole strip looked like South side Carson St. Bars and restaurants and barber shops… There’s a gas station in here. This whole strip was lively with people. As you can see now it’s-it’s not alive to me. While there was the negatives of all the people in these streets, it was still like a positive because these people were family. The Hill District doesn’t have the soul that it had when I was a kid. It hurts looking up here. It hurts when I ride through. It hurts when I see that the people that struggle from the past are not benefiting from this except for having a prettier Hill District, but it’s not the same as what I grew up in.
My experience as a father, that’s huge. It-it’s a big change. I was set up to be a bachelor. I wasn’t married. I would just buy the nice car. I just bought rims. I had jewelry. I had all this money to just blow on myself. I was living my best life. And then, I was supposed to go to a party bus with a bus full of New York young ladies that were all single. I said no to that and said “I want to go hang out with my future wife.” I had my child last April. Everything that I do now is based upon “will this hurt or help my baby because she’s a girl?” It’s so important to be a positive black man, to at least your daughter, you know what I mean? Because then that sets her up for whoever she might date in the future, and her perception of black men. And I don’t want to destroy whatever perception she has.