stanley dixon

I stay on the West Side now, but I'm from the Lincoln Courts. When I was younger, I used to play for The Neighborhood House. I used to play for the football team they had. And I played for that team from [age] nine to 12 and boxed in the Neighborhood House, did a lot of things, almost everything they had to offer as a young guy down in the West End. We used to walk from the Lincoln Courts, go to Park Town, get all the little guys that play football, and we used to all walk up to Bank Street and practice. We didn't really have much, but it was a lot of morals and values that we got from really not having a lot. Like, they used to give us—they probably still got it right now in the basement—they probably got all the football equipment that they used to give us and, and cleats and all that stuff. Without that stuff, we wouldn't have had nothing because our parents couldn't buy that type of stuff. They couldn't support us with that type of stuff. But, because of these type of places, we was able to be part of something. It was kind of good to be from down here for real, because everybody was going through a lot of the same things.

Listen to Stanley’s story here: