The Robert Taylor Homes in 1996

PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS/BETH A. KEISER

Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes was the first housing project in America to:

a) Be named after an African-American activist who quit the CHA to protest segregated housing
b) Encompass 28 16-story buildings, approximately 4,300 apartments and 27,000 residents, making it the largest project in the nation
c) Serve as the home of Mr. T
d) All of the above

Scroll down for the answer.

Answer: d. The Robert Taylor Homes, where Mr. T spent his formative years, came to represent the worst effects of racism and mismanagement in public housing after it opened in 1962. For decades, poverty, gang violence and drugs plagued its residents—99 percent of whom were African-American. The last of the high-rises that once spanned two miles of South State Street just west of Bronzeville were demolished in 2006.

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