When Timeica Bethel flew home to Chicago from her senior year at Yale University this month, she knew she had to pay a visit to LeClaire Courts, the troubled housing project where she grew up.
And so on a cold, overcast morning, she stands on an overturned plastic bucket and peers over the green construction fencing. LeClaire, like so many other housing projects, is being knocked down.
As the clatter of jackhammers echoes through the complex and backhoes rip huge chunks out of nearby buildings, the 22-year-old in the Yale T-shirt raises her camera phone and takes pictures over the fence.
Click. Click. Click.
Bethel can’t help but think of the teachers and family members who helped her escape this place and step up to something better.
Yale graduation is May 23. Just around the corner. After that, there are no limits. She dreams of becoming a talk show host or a famous writer. Almost anything seems possible. But something deeper tugs, and so she has decided to come home after graduation and teach on the city’s West Side.
She wants to do for others what was once done for her. “I want to be the one to say, ‘You think Yale is impossible, but it’s not,'” she says.
