‘We ate good!’

In this Out of the Archives podcast episode, seven public housing resident narrators recount stories about sharing in community and forced changes to their family structures, shaped by undercurrents of federal policies enacted during the 1950s–1980s that strictly governed what resources were available to whom. These stories touch on how the United States’ aggressive involvement in global affairs affect its residents at home and reveal deeper insights about how systemic changes affect each individual.

We encourage you to share this episode with a friend and discuss how sharing and governmental policies have impacted your communities.

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To learn more about the history and policies discussed in this episode, check out our full source and additional readings list: 

Nicholas Lemann, “Four Generations in the Projects,” The New York Times (January 13, 1991, Section 6, page 17), accessed at: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/13/magazine/four-generations-in-the-projects.html 

Natalie Y. Moore, with research by Beauty Turner, “The Good Ol Days,” The Chicago Reporter (September 26, 2007), accessed at: https://www.chicagoreporter.com/good-ol-days/

Alison Lefkovitz, “Men in the House: Race, Welfare, and the Regulation of Men’s Sexuality in the United States, 1961–1972,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 3 (2011): 594–614, accessed at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41305886.

Rahim Kurwa, National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Study Examines ‘Man in the House’ Rules in the Voucher Program, Housing Policy Debate (August 24, 2020) accessed at: https://nlihc.org/resource/study-examines-man-house-rules-voucher-program 

Nestle, Marion. “The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): History, Politics, and Public Health Implications.” American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 12 (2019): 1631-1635, accessed at: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305361 

Hortense J. Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: an american grammar book”  (1987), Diacritics 17, no. 2 (Summer 1987): pp. 64-81, accessed at: https://www.mcgill.ca/english/files/english/spillers_mamas_baby.pdf or https://doi.org/10.2307/464747

Gregory Acs, Kenneth Braswell, Elaine Sorensen, and Margery Austin Turner, “The Moynihan Report Revisited, published by Urban Institute, Open Society Foundations, and Fathers Incorporated (June 2013), accessed at: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23696/412839-The-Moynihan-Report-Revisited.PDF 

Daniel Geary, “The Moynihan Report: An Annotated Edition,” The Atlantic (September 2015), accessed at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/ 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor (March 1965), accessed at: https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Moynihan%27s%20The%20Negro%20Family.pdf