Photography by Arthur Witman, courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri
This portrait is a study in gray: dried-out wooden steps and a dirt courtyard, the father’s oil-spattered trousers, the family’s dusty shoes, the tired old pillowcases hanging to dry. Still, there’s greenness: moss growing on the stairs, a tree of heaven, and the bath towels strung on the line. This is the first family to move into Cochran Gardens, St. Louis’ third public housing project, the largest until Pruitt-Igoe would rise in ’54. Eight years after this was taken, 10-year-old Bertha Gilkey moved in; hers was one of the first black families at Cochran. By 1969, it was nicknamed Little Nam, with drug dealers hustling in the hallways, busted-out windows, and water leaks. At 20, Gilkey helped lead St. Louis’ nine-month rent strike, organized on behalf of the 22,000 people who lived in St. Louis’ city-run housing projects. “When Cochran was all white, they didn’t refer to it as a project,” she told photographer Brian Lanker in 1999. “It was called Cochran Gardens. As Cochran became more and more black, I began to see the services reduced. Once it became all black, there were no standards. It moved from being a neighborhood to a project.”
Pruitt-Igoe fell. But Gilkey—as the head of Cochran Gardens Tenant Management Corporation—worked with residents to turn Cochran back into a neighborhood, starting with a new door, a lock, and some paint for the laundry room. By the ’80s, it was a national model, and Gilkey was its unpaid manager, traveling the world as a housing consultant. As a kid, she’d been told she was the ugly one, the failure. But for 40 years, she proved that wrong: In heels, red lipstick, and shiny rayon dresses, she cut the figure of a movie star and spoke like a big-tent preacher, calling for a world where all people, including the poor, are given control over their own destinies. The city took Cochran back in 1998, and it went downhill fast—it was demolished in ’08. Gilkey died this past spring. Though she is gone, and so is Cochran, her influence is still felt. She showed that the inner city can bloom green—and not just be a cage of grayness.
