The illegitimacy rate right now is like 70 percent among blacks and back then you are talking about maybe 13,14 percent but any good economist will say, “look if you lower the cost of something people are going to do more of it and if you raise the cost, people are going to do less of it.” It just so happens that the welfare state has made illegitimacy and broken homes a more attractive proposition. And today the opposite would be true, that is to find a child with a mother and father in the home would be rare. My mother separated from my father and ultimately they got divorced in the late 40s but among friends and associates - to my recollection - we were the only ones that did not have a mother and father in the home.
The closest we got to graffiti was hopscotch chalk on the pavement. I include a photo of the building I lived in, there was no graffiti. People did not have bars at their windows. WW: It’s not just the projects that are different, but poor people in general - poor blacks of yesteryear and to some extent poor whites - but I am talking about blacks in the Richard Allen housing projects in the late 40s early 50s - we did not go to bed to the sound of gun shots. TheDC: You write a lot about how the projects are different today than they were when you were growing up. And also the encouragement of my wife, who is now deceased, and finally my daughter told me to get started right away lest it become a work of fiction - which is a nice way for a daughter to say you might lose your marbles. Thomas Sowell had been after me for years to do an autobiography and since he and I have lived controversial lives he said we better have our side out there.