Janie Poe's Son Visits Sarasota

"Dr. Cupid Poe, son of the late teacher for whom the Janie Poe public housing complex is named, saw its blight for himself Saturday morning.

"Mama would be sad and disappointed," said the Nashville psychiatrist and minister, who left Sarasota for college in 1956 and has visited his hometown infrequently in recent years. "I feel sad, too, that it hasn't gotten more attention."

Poe, 66, returned to his roots, Sarasota's predominantly black Newtown neighborhood, this weekend to attend a reunion of current and past residents of public housing. Although he never lived in the projects, he remembers firsthand the hardscrabble life in Newtown.

Even though segregation may have officially ended long ago, the Sarasota he saw during the reunion's bus tour struck him as a community that's becoming socio-economically divided again."

The Public Housing Reunion held this weekend was covered well by Dale White of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. The excerpt above is form his article about the impressions of a man that grew up in Newtown and returned to see how life has changed here.

What he saw was not particularly pleasing.