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in March 1968 Channel four broadcast a documentary film, which I made about a black family living in San Francisco's Fillmore district. The program was entitled A Family on Fell Street. It told of the struggle for survival of Louis digs and impoverished handyman and his Children, Joe,

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Shari and Larry. Seven years have passed since then. The house on Fell Street still stands, but the community surrounding it and the digs family who once lived here They're gone now. Louis Digs has gone back to Texas. So have Joe and Shari. But there's one member

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of the family on Fell Street who remains in the city, if not in the neighborhood. In 1968 Larry Digs was 20 years old and a street worker for a neighborhood service organization. His mother, the strong central figure that held the family together, had just died. It

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was a critical period in the life of this young black man, for his family was disintegrating and his community wasn't much better off. It was a turning point, a time to make choices and commitments, and Larry made Hiss. Now Larry Digs is a 27 year old

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radio broadcaster. He's worked for several major San Francisco stations as news reporter, disc jockey and talk show host. But Larry has also traveled extensively, especially in Africa and the Far East. Much has changed in his life and his outlook since he left the Fillmore district. So

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we thought we'd revisit Larry Digs and his neighborhood and find out what seven years of change has meant to each of them. On K SFX, That Stevie Wonder and Golden Lady and I'm Larry Digs. Here's a reminder from Kids FX. The Outlaw is a national newspaper

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off the prisoners union. It presents a form for convicts, grievances plus news of prisoners, union activities, subscriptions of free two convicts and $8 a year to non convicts. For information, you can call 6482880 that's 648 2880 while you're doing it, why don't you drop a line

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to some convicts over there? I'm sure they could, uh, use the correspondence, and you'd be really glad to hear from them is a group called Earth, Wind and Fire from some more music on K SFX doing That's the way of the world. Hmm. Today, Larry digs

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is a neighbor of mine in San Francisco's Richmond District, an integrated middle class neighborhood with no conspicuous black population. He lives there with Gail Category, a Japanese American woman who came to San Francisco a few years ago from the Middle West. Larry says that time and

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travel have changed his attitude toward a lot of things, including his commitment to his old neighborhood. I'd like to stay and film or or in any other place and work for the betterment of people. But now I'm taking a different kind of attitude about what is

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helping people. Um, e think I've to put it bluntly. I've lost my May psionic complex, meaning that I don't see myself a Jesus Christ anymore. Thio to save the people. I think the impetus has to come from the seven years you've gone from being a kind

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of an idealist in an optimist, kind of a cynic. Yeah, I would say that that to describe my my mental condition right now, one wants to call it that It's really strict where Larry digs grew up. Have you seen anything change in the neighborhood? Yeah, I

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think that in a lot of ways people a lot more together now than they used to be. There are a lot more politically aware, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Some people would immediately say That's good But sometimes I question that because before

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there was a kind of what people call soul now soul, I think lost what? That soul that they had, uh, to to the functional ism of politics and materialism. There was a time when you get the buck, everything will be all right. You can afford education,

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a decent house and this and that. But in the race to get that black people, I think, are losing the soul that the rial feeling that they had, uh, which I think it basically is the same thing that having a white people at some point in

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time, I think that, you know, they must have had some kind of feeling of camaraderie and riel, humane kind of feelings. But in in and struggling to become materially materialistic, Lee successful, they spend more time making money than making love, and the results are obvious. That's

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a new housing, But other people lost the community exactly, and I think that that you know, there's old saying that, you know, for everything. You gotta pay something. And I'm just wondering if what we as as as black people ask for in terms of decent housing.

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If the price for that wasn't the loss off the soul we had, I'm wondering accounts, which I had. And actually, you know, the house on the hill overlooking the whole city and all of that I had. And then I finally realized that what it costs me

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was everything that I had learned to love is growing up as a kid. One of the guys Larry grew up with in the Fillmore district is Roy Andre Dupri, leader of a neighborhood youth group called the Young Adults. One day recently, Larry and Andre walked through

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their old neighborhood together, talking about times past to go. I mean, we had places like right up the street here. The marquees would have parties in the basement, and they had their clubhouse right right here. They had their clubhouse, and now you know, place for nobody

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to go. I mean, you know, the students, like I think, a lot of the that kind of soul, that kind of feeling that that kind of community is no longer here. I mean that that time is gone past and Waco and, uh, Black Panther Party and

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other groups were beginning to, you know, wage struggle on various levels. And now, uh, most people don't want to struggle for nothing. Andre and I grew up together and, uh, feel more. We went, I guess we started knowing each other about junior high school. He still

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sees that it's that it's important to try to get some things done and try to get people together and an organization and and and seeing, you know, their own self worth. And I feel that, you know, they should have some direction and self worth to. But

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I'm not. I'm not any I don't anymore have any faith in organizations. I think the best thing that any politicians can do is to start making people search for their own answers. When they start to, say, two people both poor and rich alike, that you must

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take the responsibility for your own survival. And when government starts working to eliminate itself, When these social programs and local political programs start working to eliminate themselves, then they're helping the people. They're doing it for the people until that time. I think they're doing it to

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the people. Good example of this is redevelopment. People were pleading with the government. Give us the housing like the wipes folks got. And what they found out is that in the government's attempt, and surely there have been some under the table deals and stuff like that.

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But in the government's overall attempt to fulfill, you know, the please off people who wanted those kinds of things, they've had to destroy something else. They've had to destroy the community. Larry's immediate family has gone from the Fillmore district, but his grandmother, Mrs Helen Snell, lives

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in a senior citizens housing project, part of the redevelopment of the neighborhood. My grandmother is probably one of the few of my relatives that I see on any kind of regular basis in a way, you know, she's happier, I guess, in the new place. But it

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always seemed to me that she was happier at the old place, Bob. They all night when we go to church where we're brought back by, somebody in the church has to bring us back home. Larry's present day cynicism is in sharp contrast to the high idealism

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he felt seven years ago when he was a 20 year old child of the ghetto.