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Excerpts

As I sit out here on this stoop with my best friend Osceola Washington by my side, I look around this U-shaped complex marveling how it's getting harder and harder to tell the days apart. I've been living here since June of '69. Lost my husband in '71. After raising four children, one grandchild, I'm now strugglin' to raise my great-grandbaby.

It's hard.

And I'm tired.

Over the years, or rather, over the decades, Atlanta has gone through some changes. Bentley Manor started off as regular apartment complex, but in the late '70s it was the ghetto, in the late '80s the projects. Now, it's the hood.

This place is crawling with the worst of the worst and I've seen my fair share of pimps, dealers, playas, and killers. Too many, in fact.

Some wonder how people survive places like Bentley Manor. To that, I can only shrug my shoulders and ask "what choice do we have?"