a book called Mighty Be Our Powers. As she was speaking about the Liberian war during this talk, a white man stood up with his checkbook in hand and said, “Tell me any amount of money you want and I will write a check for it.”
Leymah looked at him and said, “We in Liberia know about you in Chicago, you need to pick your own corner of the world and do something to change it.”
Robbin looked at her husband and said, “Okay, I guess I need to go pick a corner.” And from this inception, she picked the corner of 64th and Honore St. One key part of this story is tied to the quote, “If you want to know a problem, you have to get in proximity to it.”
With that kind of backing, Robbin needed to immerse herself in this and that’s where it all started.
It has grown. Robbin had first started with just a table full of Subway sandwiches on our street corners of 64th and Honore when our now Co-Executive Director, Quentin Mables, came up to her. Robbin told Quentin, “Hey, I’m thinking of having a house that is going to be rehabbed by the community. Do you want to take back your community?” Quentin looked at her, grabbed a trash bag and started cleaning…
She went on to purchase a home on that block that was up for demolition, but what she did not know at the time she started this project of the Peace House, was that our block was one of the most violent blocks in the entire city of Chicago. It was receiving an average of 12 phone calls to the police per day. Robbin actually hired contractors not to do the work on the house, but train men in the neighborhood that were part of the problem and teach them how to rehab a home.
It brought about a community of ownership and an