Kimi Gray Quotes
(compiled by Joe Lapp, March 2005)


Poor people are allowed the same dreams as everyone else.


Poverty has been very profitable for everyone but poor people.


[Not a Kimi quote, but close: “This places is just like a reservation.  They put us here just to keep us out of the way and quiet.”  unnamed quote in September 27, 1971 Washington Post article by Bart Barnes, “This Places is Like a Reservation: Black Youths Hope to Quit Kenilworth”]


I call it the “mushroom principle” of welfare.  They keep us in the dark, feed us shit and then sit back and see how much we grow.  And how much can you grow living in the dark, eating shit?

They call us savages, and that’s why they put us out on these reservations.

Just ask anyone, black, white or green, for Miss Kimi.

We’re the greatest survivors in the world.  We’ve survived for 200 years.  But we’re ignorant.  We need to be educated, in the broadest sense, so that we can start to live and not just survive.

    -“A Poverty-Scarred World of Anger and Frustration,” article by Lewis M.
Simons in March 31, 1978 Washington Post, pg. A1

I know some folks would find it hard to believe [that only 35 percent of the families in Kenilworth Courts are on welfare], but that’s just because all public housing people have been branded, lumped together, by white people, Congress, all those psychiatrists and the newspapers.  And that’s funny because it’s them who’ve thrown us together in places like these, without incentives, and it’s them who throw us some bread crumbs from time to time.  And it’s them who give insufficient funds to all those programs and then say the programs are failures.

No one says anything about the good kids.  No one writes about the young girls who don’t get pregnant, about the young men who graduate and go to college.  No, all we hear and read about is crime, about all those illegitimate babies.  The newspapers only write what the public expects and wants to read.  And that hurts more than it helps.

I mean there are some good kids out here whose parents can’t afford to send them to college.  So we get them to take the correct classes in high school, we check on their behavior, we go to their graduations, we help them pay for the caps and gowns if necessary, we help them apply for entry, we help them line up summer jobs, we pack their trunks and we put them on the bus and once they get there we help them get scholarships.  If that ain’t ‘sending’ them, I don’t know what is.

    -“Parents Fearful of Damage to Children,” article by Lewis M. Simons in April
18, 1978 Washington Post, pg. A1

One thing I’ll give you white folks credit for, you certainly do know how to divide us.  You do that real well.

    -“Cities Within Washington,” article by Lewis M. Simons in May 5, 1978    Washington Post, pg. C1

Black men don’t know how to take care of a wife and family.  They’re not trained that way.  They’re always taken care of— first by their mothers and then by us.  So, we’re always alone or with a lover, because black men are always lovers— they’re loved by their mothers and by us.  The trouble isn’t with the men; it’s with us.  We put them on a pedestal, and then we tear them down.  They don’t go to work because we allow them to lie in bed.  And we destroy them.  We’re our own worst enemies.

My husband was a spoiled brat.  He earned decent money as a construction worker.  Then he spent it on drinking and buying shoes, and I didn’t even know that [shoe store] existed.  I listened to my mama, and I stayed with him.  Then the pressure of family life built up, and he couldn’t take it.  I told him to leave, but I don’t hate me and I don’t hold anything against him, though my five babies and I have been on public welfare, on and off, ever since.

I know they say our boyfriends— we call them Jodies— live off our welfare checks, but that’s a bunch of bull.  There’s just not enough money in a welfare check to care of a family and take care of Jodie, too.  In fact, Jodie usually helps out with some extra money when he can.  And when the welfare people find out about it, they cut our payments.  So, we’re forced to lie about that, too.  Most of us, we just want love and companionship.

My five babies are my backbone.  If it weren’t for them, I don’t know where I’d be, what I’d be doing.  I’d be lost.

    -“Out-of-Wedlock Black Children Draw a Community Together,” article by
Lewis M. Simons in June 25, 1978 Washington Post, pg. A1

They almost always say the first thing is to take their momma out of the project and put her in a home of her own.  Then they want a sports care, nice clothes, good shoes, a 10-speed bike to put on the back of the car and go riding in the park, a nice apartment— not anything luxurious, but nice, with green plants and pillows on the floor.  They say they want an eight-hour-a-day job, so they can come home in the evening and enjoy all those things.  The counselors also try to show them the job they think they can get so they can do all these things.  That stops them for a minute.  That’s the beginning of reality.

Peer pressure, that’s what it’s all about.  You’re a punk if you spend your time studying instead of playing basketball or dancing at a disco.  More and more parents do understand the value of education, but most still don’t.

I’ve seen too many black youngsters come back from white colleges like ‘Oreos,’ white inside and black only on the outside.  We don’t want our black children losing their black identity.

    -“Unique Group Gets Youths Into College,” article by Lewis M. Simons in
August 6, 1978 Washington Post, pg. A1

[Tenant management] will give people a sense that if [the project] is ours then people will keep up their property better.  I’ve heard people say, “I’m not going to fix anything because the government owns it,” but that will change because people will feel “this project belongs to me.”

    -“City Seeks Better Public Housing by Letting Tenants Be Landlords,” article in
February 23, 1980 Washington Post, pg. C6

I want to own the plantations.  Yes, the plantation.  That’s what public housing communities are, aren’t they?

Public housing is my home.  It’s where my people are.  All I want is for everybody here to live in a decent, safe and sanitary community, not in misery.

William Shakespeare said, “The whole world is a stage,” and I feel that what we must learn as children is what role to play.  No matter what career I’m in, my role is to help my people.

Whenever I walk into a room, all attention is immediately focused on me because I’m so big.

Everybody [at the Northwest house, where Kimi’s family shared space with other families until she was five] had to use one bathroom and one kitchen.  When we moved into public housing [at the Frederick Douglass Public Housing Development in Southeast DC], I was happy as I could be.  We had a front yard, a back porch and a nice backyard to play in.  I thought we had just bought a new house.  I didn’t know my mother was on public assistance.  When I was young, that was none of the children’s business.

[Gray wants Kenilworth to be] a nice community where there are beautiful homes, green grass, good recreation programs, clean property and concerned parents working together.

The key to proper management of public housing communities is strong resident council leadership.  And in order to be effective, the residents and the management have to work together on everything— social problems, housing problems, everything.

In order to fight the hoodlums, the residents had to work together and snitch on them.

    -“Kimi Gray’s Dream Project,” article by Edward D. Sargent in September 25,
1980 Washington Post, pg. DC1

It’s the bad-guy image that gets our youngsters into jail, and our penal system is not a rehabilitative system.  Too many of our guys return there because they haven’t learned anything that will keep them out.

    -“Youth Speaks No Remorse,” article by Thomas Morgan in December 14, 1980
Washington Post, pg. A1

You’ve got to remember that most of us [the new tenant managers] are people who have never had to make a real decision before in our lives.  In the past, all we had to do was call up and complain to the office.  Now, we are the office.

Trips me out, chairman of the board!

We’ve got five mothers on welfare who’ve become cleaning women.  The only people working on the property who aren’t residents are the licensed engineer, plumber and electrician.

We did our homework [for a meeting with drug dealers in Kenilworth]: I read off from a list—“We have your street name, your real name, your girlfriend, your address, your license number.  Now, we don’t think your business is to our advantage.  So, get off the property or we’ll take this information to the police.”  Tripped me out; they said, “Ms. Kimi, you’re right.”  And they’re gone.

    -“NE Project to be Run by Tenants,” article by Lewis M. Simons in January 11,
1982 Washington Post, pg. B1

It’s like a reward for us.  [said of the $13.2 million in federal funds for Kenilworth renovation]

Actually we are practicing what the president [Ronald Reagan] has been preaching: self-help.

    -“Kenilworth Courts Get $13 Million From HUD,” article by Caryle Murphy in
October 13, 1983 Washington Post, pg. DC1

When the city fathers decided to move the dealers our of 14th and W Street, they came right over here nine months ago.  And now we have an epidemic of drugs.  We found four bodies in the last year, two of them in the woods.  None of them even lived here.

    -“Cutting Down Drug Trade: Chain Saws Hit Dealers’ NE Hideout,” article by
Linda Wheeler in February 17, 1985 Washington Post

[Resident management] gives residents back the responsibility of taking care of their community.  It provides jobs.  Maintenance calls are answered within 24 hours.  The engineer lives on the grounds.  When the heat goes out, he becomes cold, too.

    -“Public Housing Tenants Experiment With Self-Government,” an article by
Arthur S. Brisbane in May 20, 1985 Washington Post

It is very important for the community to know that we will not tolerate anymore of this foolishness, this drug business.  We have cooperated with the police.  Our tenants are now willing to call the police on their neighbors.  We are closing up the shooting galleries [where users are injected with drugs].  We don’t want a Band-Aid.  We want to get rid of the drug traffic.

    -“150 Police Swoop Down on NE Drug Market,” an article by Linda Wheeler in
July 19, 1985 Washington Post, pg. C1

In situations like ours, about 10 percent of the people are truly undesirables.  That leaves 90 percent that really want to make things better.

We have written in our leases here that the head of the household is responsible for everyone in their house, including visitors.  But we don’t have to put children out here, because we have a good relationship with the police.  And if they can’t handle the matter, we work it out in-house.

Public housing was never meant to be permanent.  But the shortage of low-income housing means that a lot of people simply don’t have any place else to go.

    -“Kenilworth Lights a Path,” column by Courtland Milloy in September 12, 1985
Washington Post, pg. DC1

Kenilworth was one of the worst public housing projects.  The crime rate was up and rapidly increasing.  Vandalism was bad.  Trash was everywhere.  The high school dropout rate was high.  Police were afraid to come in here, because kids would throw rocks at their cars.  There was often no heat and hot water.  The project’s management was more concerned with bricks and mortar than with people.  City Hall was insensitive to our needs.

In this city, if you don’t have at least two years of college, you don’t get a job.  If a high school student tells me he doesn’t need to go to college, I ask him what he wants to have when he’s 25.  When he tells me he wants a house and a family and to move his mamma out of the project, I ask him if he knows how much that costs and what kind of job it takes to get that kind of money.  Then I show him what kind of education it takes to get that kind of job, and I take him around to colleges and just let him talk to the other kids.  That’s usually all it takes.

We want to buy our homes.  We want ownership, so that those of us who have stayed so long and worked so hard can enjoy the fruits of our labor.

    -“For the poor— hope, schooling, independence,” article by Gil Klein in
September 17, 1985 Christian Science Monitor, pg. 1

[About Stuart Butler] He’s this little, funny-talking fellow.  He has a British accent, you know…  [But] what he said sounded good to me.  We basically found out we had similar ideas.

I think sometimes people have a misinterpretation of liberal, conservative.  We’re talking about save the people, my people.  There is no liberal, conservative.  I forgot about white, black, conservative, liberal, Republican.  I got past his accent after our first meeting.

I love his home ownership for low-income residents idea.  I love his idea… that if you lose your job, you can get part of your unemployment compensation and invest it in a business.  Stuart is one of my favorite people.  He’s good people.

    -“Heritage Theorist Targets City Woes: Stuart Butler Draws Supporters,” article
in May 18, 1986 Washington Post, pg. H1

[Kimi’s grandmother] If I say a roach can pull a cart, then you hitch it up— and load the cart.

The art of handling money is the same whether you get a check for $185 a month or several checks totaling $100,000.  The bottom line is you never have enough, so you have priorities.  As a welfare mother, it was feeding the children and paying the rent.  As chairperson of the board, the priority is training our youth.  We believe that education is the key to freedom.

My grandmother used to tell me, “Don’t let the white folk fool you.  The fight is not about race or poverty.  It’s about owning land.”  So the way I see it, despite all of the accolades, we are just another project until we figure out a way to buy this place.

[About Michael Price] I sent him away to get his head screwed on right because he was into Kenilworth hanging on fences, doing nothing.  He was a high school dropout and had no ambitions, no dream of going to college.  Somewhere in the back of his head was an idea that he wanted to be a draftsman.  But I told him no: You will be an architect because you will be the one to redesign Kenilworth.

[Quote from Mrs. Roy, KPRMC employee] I told Kimi [tenant management] would never happen.  But then she started with this, “If I say a roach can pull a cart…”  (full quote is a saying by Kimi’s grandmother, “If I say a roach can pull a cart, then you hitch up— and load the cart.”)

    -“Managing on Faith,” column by Courtland Milloy in June 1, 1986 Washington
Post, pg. B3

[About refusing mayoral candidate Brian Moore’s, running against Barry, request to knock on doors in Kenilworth]  If he gets shot, whose fault is that?  We think his request is out of order… To give him permission to knock on my residents’ doors at this complex, no, I am not going to do that for Brian Moore, Marion Barry or anybody else.

    -“Candidates Playing Politics at the Projects: Homes Become Backdrop for Barry
Announcements, Attacks,” article by Arthur S. Brisbane in October 11, 1986
Washington Post, pg. B1

Our goal is to own all of this property [in this area], and we will do it too.  No one thought a group of low-income housing tenants could manage their own property.

    -“Kenilworth corridor on rebound with loans from District, grants,” article by
Tracie Reddick and Jonetta Rose Barras in August 29, 1988 The Washington
Times

My grandmother taught me I had to lie in my own bed and be responsible for my life.

[Quote by Kemp about Kimi]  She is inspirational, and her mind is breathtaking.  She might have been born poor, but there is no poverty in her.

[About her early years in community activism] I’d go to meetings and get so mad I’d yell and turn the place out.

There were nights I cried myself to sleep because people wouldn’t listen, didn’t trust me or themselves.

People don’t throw trash on the ground when they know it soon will be their turn to pick it up.

Being poor doesn’t give you the right to be dirty or lazy.

There are thousands of Kimi Grays in America who are willing to try [tenant management].

    -“Turning public housing over to resident owners; a welfare mother of five who
organized a housing complex sparks national trend,” article by Jerome Cramer in
December 12, 1988 issue of Time, pg. 15

[To the architectural firm representatives that delayed letting Kenilworth residents see plans for renovations, then presented incomplete and unacceptable designs]  No hard feelings against you all, but your supervisors sent you down here to get your asses kicked.  And that’s exactly what we’re going to do tonight.  You just pack up and go home.  We’ll deal with it.

[To the visiting public housing director of Alaska]  The only way that you’ll truly get my time is getting me away from this property, ‘cause if a resident walks through this door with me, I don’t care who’s here, he’s my first priority.  And I won’t try and make believe it’s no different, okay?

It’s economics, that’s what it’s all about.  We can talk racism and all this and that, but it’s economics.  If you got some money, you can buy a lot of this stuff we’re talking about begging for, okay?

I’ve been approached by some people who say, “Well Kimi, now you’re a Republican.”  And I say, “No, I’m a dollar bill.  And on each bill there’s a different president.  My family was poor when we had Roosevelt in the White House, we were poor when we had Kennedy, we were poor when we had Nixon and Ford and Carter.  And we’re no richer now.”

I put the J in juvenile delinquent myself.

Some students came to me and said, “Miss Kimi, we want to go to college.”  What the hell did I know about going to college?  Well, I’ve always worked with young people— always— because they have their dreams, and they’re our future.  So I said, “Let me check it out.”

We went through the winter and summer together, and when it was time for our first group to go away, we cried.  The hardest job was us departing from one another.  When you would go to the bus station, we all would pile in the car.

Seventeen kids went to school the first August.  That first semester when they came back, we must not have slept for two days.  They had so much to tell us.  Kids were out West, down South, up North, they were everywhere.  They couldn’t believe it!  They were sharing experiences: “Well, let me tell you about this!”  “Well, did you know this!”  “Well, it’s nothing like this.” [nine of the original 17 College Here We Come students graduated, and four went on to graduate school]

The only way you can make a change is through peer pressure.  Rules can’t be enforced if you have to go through judiciary proceedings.  If your momma was a bad housekeeper, and if her stove broke down, we would put the old dirty range out in front of her house, so everybody could see it.  Leave it there all day long.  Go get the brand-new stove, in the carton so everybody could see it, have it brought down, but not to your house.  [Instead it would go to a good housekeeper, whose old stove would go to the bad housekeeper.]  Now when your momma learns to keep the stove clean, she’ll get a brand-new one.

[On son being arrested for drug dealing] I’m not cold, now, I’m a loving mother, but my son was 26, living in his own apartment, and he chose that as his way of life.  After I spent my money to send him to college for two years, he decided that he wanted to be a hustler.  So I figured he must have wanted to go to jail to see what the experience was like too.  He’s home now.  Don’t smoke, drink or nothing, works two jobs.  He learned his lesson.  The best thing I think I did was I didn’t cater to him while he was incarcerated.  I was hurt.  But my momma and my grandma always said to me, “You make your bed hard, you got to lay in it.”

[About her tires getting slashed by an angry drug dealer]  They cut the brand new tires.  That’s when I got angry.  I knew the guy that was the main guy, that I figured paid somebody to do it.  I said, “You went a tad too goddam far!  You know how much those four tires cost me to go on that van?  More than the damn van cost!”  I said, “Now I’m goin’ to cut your damn tires up!”  And he’s been nice to me ever since.

[About dealing with the DC Department of Public and Assisted Housing]  You know, every time I get the runaround, I think about the same thing.  They have to deal with me, ‘cause I’ve got all this publicity, and this is how they treat me.  How the hell do you think they treat Mrs. Jones?

Folk want freedom.  Folk want power.  The door is open—they can’t stop us now.

    -“They Can’t Stop Us Now,” article by David Osborne in July 30, 1989
Washington Post Magazine, pg. 12-19, 27-31

Come here, baby— getthistrashouttamyyard.

[said of government officials close to her] If I’m being used, then I like it.  I’m using them too.  We’re using each other.

There’s a Kimi Gray in every public housing development in America.  Let’s just hope she’s not as obese as I am.

[About Jack Kemp]  Anybody that loving, understanding and committed to a mission of this type has to be led by God.  It’s not just a job for him at HUD.  It’s a mission.

[reasons for wanting to own her home] I want help on my taxes.  I want to leave something to my children.  I want to own some brick.  That’s the American dream, isn’t it?

    -“Jack Kemp’s Favorite Public Housing Tenant,” article by Jason DeParle in July
13, 1990 New York Times, pg. A1

Those who know me know I don’t go through any protocol— I can’t spell it, I don’t understand it.

    -“Residents finally get housing complex,” article by Matt Neufeld in October 1,
1990 Washington Times

Resident management is often seen as a Kemp movement.  But it’s a people movement.  Jack Kemp really understood what it really meant to empower people.  He really understood that what it is about is the green.  He gave us the tools and ammunition to be empowered.

We refurbish people, not just bricks and mortar.  We attempt a holistic approach of helping people build their lives and take pride in the place where they live.  Our standards are much higher than any private managers would be.  We take it to another level.

    -“A Community of Their Own: Thriving Kenilworth a ‘Laboratory’ For Concept
of Resident Ownership,” article by Judith Evans in October 11, 1996 Washington
Post, pg. F3

If you don’t go for freedom, I’m gonna kill you myself.  [Kimi quote reported by daughter Tonya in March 5, 2000 Courtland Milloy column in Washington Post]

[Conversation between resident and Kimi about $13 fine for any window broken by Kenilworth Courts resident]  Resident: But Mrs. Gray, poor people can’t afford to pay for broken windows.  Kimi: You got it wrong.  Poor people can’t afford to break windows.

I’m not an informer, I’m a snitch.

    -“Eulogy for a national resource,” column by Robert Woodson Sr. in March 14,
2000 Washington Times