– Mary Ann Jones
It was really a great community. Really the epicenter of our community was Marcus Books. They served coffee for adults and they had a family dog and so everyone kind of came to Marcus Books and Hamilton recreation center. People went there to play basketball. My sister played there but there were a lot of black businesses and a lot of black families. But there was also a high concentration of artists. My mom was in the arts so I remember like my Angelo and my first job I worked in Willie Brown’s office and so we were like surrounded by all these really interesting people.
– Mary Ann Jones
It was very very exciting time.
– Kia Wallace
I was raised in the Fillmore and what I can remember it was still families who owned homes own property you know had jobs it was a thriving community organizations were black on in the Fillmore.
– Mary Ann Jones
When I was eight years old I remember there were no real housing no new housing projects in the Fillmore. But later when the housing authority was building these communities they would just put all these African-American poor people together and not really understand why there was the violence and the continual poverty and other issues there.
– Mary Ann Jones
And it’s really related to what happens when you put a group of people.
– Kia Wallace
People aren’t integrated with other people but as soon as they start to rebuild and take away the families that were in the neighborhood you’re you’re starting to push people in concentrated areas along with those neighborhoods. There goes the businesses do businesses started to pop up. For example we never had a Starbucks in one Starbucks you know came you know what Starbucks brings. When I was growing up we had a heart puts which was I where we would go get our Adidas and RDA doors you know like our little neighborhoods would get our swimsuits.
– Kia Wallace
That’s gone. So I would say gentrification really played a role. And with that it also affects your mental health. If before we had access we have resources and now those same resources and the access that we have before is removed then you’re going to have stressors. West Side has always looked at.
– Mary Ann Jones
The impact of oppression on people. They didn’t just look at this as a group of people that they’re sick they’re angry because they’re poor. They looked at what is it that created the conditions that bring this person to you in this place. People became aware that their environment was causing the problems and that it wasn’t something that is just wrong with them. And so I think that that is a more empowering way for people to to access mental health and really destigmatize mental health for a lot of people because it was founded by members of the community.
– Mary Ann Jones
If you look for evidence based theories in treating the African-American community you’ll find very few unless they’re done in places like West Side. The evidence based theories that they use to treat African-Americans throughout the United States you don’t listed to the Department Health and Human Services are based specifically on people who’ve been incarcerated. It is still 10 times more likely for an African American male to be diagnosed with schizophrenia when he’s depressed than for a male of any other ethnicity 10 times. So you have people that are coming in and because of the way they present or the way the society sees them and so they get this classified mistreated which is not a fair representation.
– Kia Wallace
So so what side needs to exist because of that the founders decided that this is a need for our community that mental health is something now we need to recognize in the African-American community and to create that and to continue on 60 years later well 50 years later despite the dwindling numbers of African-Americans in the city the fact that our CEO remain committed to the mission. She you know was like we can’t give up on these families. That’s huge. That’s huge. So I really thank her for that.