“I can’t get mail service anymore and they turned the lights out in May, so what’s the point of staying?” Jameson, 42, told The Peoples News as he crossed 8 Mile—Detroit’s northern border—to live with a cousin in Oak Park.
Jameson, who makes a living selling his blood, left the city after the results of a nationwide standardized test were announced. Some 69 percent of Detroit’s 4th graders and 77 percent of 8th graders scored below basic, meaning they were unable to perform even the simplest skills.
However, Jameson revealed that he took all 7,827 tests.
“I can’t add to save my life,” he said. “And do long division? You must be out your mind.”
Jameson lived in a 12-bedroom home on John R Boulevard, and scavenged food from abandoned supermarkets. He wandered the city and every couple days, stopped by different schools. In October, he began seeing tests piled at the front of each school.
“I don’t think anyone realize no one actually attends school in Detroit anymore,” he said. “Goodness knows that with scores like that, how could anyone think students were actually learning anything here?”
This isn’t the first time Detroit has been abandoned. The Potawatomi hunted in the area—which they called Dekissimotroit or ‘The Land of No White People’—for generations before leaving.
“The schools were awful, people were always firing arrows willy-nilly on New Year’s Eve, and enemy tribes would sneak in on Devil’s Night and set fire to the tepees,” said Detroit historian Melinda Dolittle. “It was really an awful place to live.”
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