There are many children and other family members of public housing tenants nationwide currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Some are fighting in the War with Iraq, and others are on active duty maintaining the peace in other countries at home and around the world, while some are being prepared for land, air and sea warfare at various basic training camps nationally.

My two sons, nephew and brother are part of this military effort. I am a 42-year-old single parent of six children – three boys and three girls, ages 24 to 11, who were reared from 1989 to 2002 in the infamous Chicago public housing “projects.” My soon-to-be 21-year-old son Antonio Johns is an Army Specialist by rank and a welder by trade. He is part of the maintenance crew from Fort Riley, KS. He was scheduled to go to Kuwait but since the war ended, that plan is now on hold. Read more »

Before he went to college, civil rights veteran and businessman Vernon Jordan’s mother told him to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), according to his book, “Vernon Can Read.” All the white people she had worked for made their children join ROTC, his mother reasoned. “There must be something to it,” she told the young Jordan.