Our America » (Reprint)

LeAlan Jones attends Florida State University, where he is majoring in criminology. LeAlan is the National Junior Spokesperson for No Dope Express and has lectured across the country. His honors for the radio documentaries Ghetto Life 101 and Remorse include the Livingston Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the grand prize from the Robert F. Kennedy journalism Awards — the first time a radio program has ever received that honor.

Through two award-winning National Public Radio documentaries, and now this powerful book, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman have made it their mission to be loud voices from one of this country's darkest places, Chicago's Ida B. Wells housing project. Set against the stunning photographs of a talented young photographer from the projects, Our America evokes the unforgiving world of these two amazing young men, and their struggle to survive unrelenting tragedy. With a gift for clear-eyed journalism, they tell their own stories and others, including that of the death of Eric Morse, a five-year-old who was dropped to his death from the fourteenth floor of an Ida B. Wells apartment building by two other little boys.

Sometimes funny, often painful, but always charged with their dream of Our America, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman reach out to grab your attention and break your heart.

Preface by Dr. Cornel West

Acknowledgments

Introduction by David Isay

Author's Note

A Ghetto Glossary

Part I: Life — 1993

1. The Beginning

2. The 'Hood

3. School

4. Kicking It

5. LeAlan

6. Lloyd

7. Ghetto Getaway

8. Peace Out: 1993

Part II: Death — 1995

9. Messengers

10. The Scene of the Crime

11. From the Outside, Looking In

12. A Breakthrough

13. Juvenile Justice

14. Falling Through the Cracks

15. Both Sides of the Law

16. Shorties in the 'Hood

17. Closer Than We Imagined

18. Remorse

Part III: Life — 1996

19. The Maze

20. The 'Hood

21. School

22. LeAlan

23. Lloyd

24. Parting Words

25. Our America