Reinventing Mount Hope

When James Monteiro got back to Mount Hope the streets looked empty, and the people were gone. He was sitting on Dave Hector’s porch on a hot summer day. “Where is everybody?” Monteiro wondered. “What happened to this community? It’s dead. There’s nothing going on. It’s like a graveyard. It’s summertime. It’s not what it used to be.”

Today, Mount Hope is a challenged neighborhood on the East Side. For many, it’s the few blocks you pass through on your way up the hill from North Main Street. Unemployment is high and rumors of violence and drug abuse are rife. The Billy Taylor House Project is working to change that.

Kid in the Hood
In the early 1980s, Mount Hope looked different, at least to a ten-year-old boy. There were places to go, things to do. The YMCA was one focal point, with inexpensive dues and a swimming pool. The gym at the MLK School was open at night for basketball. And the Mount Hope Neighborhood Association was a vibrant organization run by Billy Taylor, a powerful leader who gathered youngsters and gave them a sense of self worth.

If you ask anyone who knew him, their eyes will glow and smile will fill their face. Billy Taylor was the guy who took the city kids to the beach or to Lincoln Woods. He got them jobs in the winter shoveling driveways and in the summer cutting lawns.

“Billy was somebody anybody could talk to,” James Monteiro explains. “He was engaging. When you’re a kid growing up, you don’t want people to know you don’t know anything. I was quiet. Most of what I learned I learned from observation. A lot of what I observed was not the right thing. I was exposed to things I shouldn’t have been exposed to. Like drugs. This doesn’t sit well with me now. I was bullied by the kids I hung out with. Their rationale was they were toughening me up. Billy showed me how to play chess. He was the only man I looked to as an example. This is what a man’s supposed to be. When there were fights in the neighborhood, he would bring the two parties together and squash the fight. He was everybody’s father.”

Today, when you drive up Cypress Street, you can see the shining new water park at the playground named in his honor, but, it isn’t enough.

While there are places for elementary school aged children to go and hang out, like the after school programs at the Mount Hope Learning Center, there’s nothing for the older kids.

“These are the dangerous ages,” Monteiro says. “They need to be working. This is the age where you’re supposed to learn – the transitional period from a youth into a young adult.”

Billy Taylor was gone. He died in 1986 of a heart condition that few people knew he’d been born with. He had lived his life as if every day was a blessing because he knew he wasn’t supposed to be alive. His house, on Cypress Street, next to the current location of the Mount Hope Neighborhood Association, was empty and dark.

Beginning the Transformation
James Monteiro has assembled a team and a powerful vision for the Billy Taylor House that is well under way. He’s put together a board of directors and is creating a neighborhood nonprofit community center for young men and women. He wants it to be a vibrant place – with a mentoring program for girls, enrichment programs, a barbershop and a café that pays the bills and give youngsters a place to work.

His vision is make to the Billy Taylor House a place where teenage boys and girls can go and work and learn job skills – but mostly as a refuge where they can gather and hang out in safety while they find themselves.

The acquisition and renovation of the building is in process. This summer, see the first jobs training program. Eventually, James wants the organization to be self-supporting and selfsustaining, so that he can step away. “Ultimately, we want the kids to take ownership,” Monteiro says. “They’ll help build this. And they’ll build their own responsibility.”

The Billy Taylor House needs financial and volunteer support from the East Side Community. Any contribution, no matter how small or large, will benefit young men and women on the East Side.