“The Greatest History Ever Told To Our People” is how Beauty Turner described her G.H.E.T.T.O. Bus Tours. The tours were part of a project meant to educate and give voice to people who have lived in Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) buildings. The tour took a yellow school bus to various public housing sites, including the Robert Taylor Homes, where Ms. Turner lived for sixteen years and raised three children.
“Their stories need to be told,” Turner said in a 2007 NPR interview about her bus tours and the impending demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes and other CHA apartments. “Everyone else in the world is telling their stories, but the best voices that you can ever hear will be the ones that you will see and hear on the trip.” She went on to explain that affordable housing was being replaced by high-end condominiums and townhouses. ““But the people that’s receiving the Section 8 vouchers end up living with other relatives because there is no low, affordable housing. The housing market is extremely tight.”
As an editor for Resident’s Journal, a newspaper by and for public housing residents, Turner and other journalists touched on topics of CHA plans and programming as well as stories about residents and youth activities. When CHA funding for the Journal dried up in 1999, Turner continued to cover public housing at the nonprofit We the People Media.
Turner died on December 18, 2008. She was fifty-one years old.
Now, Turner’s legacy lives on at the National Public Housing Museum’s Beauty Turner Academy of Oral History, which is located in the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes, or ABLA Homes, in Little Italy. The museum opened earlier this year. As a student in the Academy’s summer 2025 apprenticeship program, we meet guests speakers, oral historians, authors and on a weekly basis; learn about oral history, its principles and their importance; and are given the equipment, mentors and tools we need to really listen and capture oral history effectively.
“It’s important for educational equity,” said Liú Chen, senior program manager of oral and narrative history. We met for an interview in the museum, which features an oral history archive, public programming, and an entrepreneurship hub. Chen said the work is empowering, healing and authentic.
Nedra Deadwyler, who lives in Georgia, is my apprenticeship mentor. She said the Beauty Turner Academy provides a community for marginalized people.
“It’s direct empowerment to the people,” Deadwyler said. Through the Beauty Turner Academy of Oral History, we continue her work and we’re now an extension of her voice. We have created unique bonds through this program, and it’s through Turner’s work and efforts that we do this. It’s an amazing feeling.
Beauty Turner Academy of Oral History at the National Public Housing Museum, 919 S Ada St. Wednesdays–Sundays, 10am–5pm; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Free admission. nphm.org
Dulce Maria Diaz was born in Tumbiscatío de Ruiz in Michoacán, Mexico and raised in Chicago. She is a multidisciplinary self-taught artist. Following her study of Business for Artists at the University of Chicago, Dulce founded an arts and education non-profit organization, S.H.E. Gallery (Sharing Her Energy Gallery) in 2015. She is an adjunct lecturer for the Art Institute and works with other educational organizations such as Art Muse Chicago and Childhood Victories, as well as leading mural art clubs with Chicago Public Schools.