Remembering a Red Hook activist, by Brian Abate

Family, friends, neighbors, and appreciative members of the Red Hook community gathered to celebrate Nancy Kearse Gooding at a barbecue on Coffey St on July 20. Last December the corner of Visitation Place and Van Brunt was renamed after her.

Kearse Gooding was a force in Red Hook starting in the 1970’s. She ran an organization that helped local people find jobs. She demanded that Red Hook have a health center and made sure that it happened.

She died prematurely at 47 years old in 1984 due to complications following surgery.

“She was a fighter,” said Nancy’s sister, Christalee. “When she knew she was right, she wouldn’t let anyone tell or convince her otherwise. She was very, very strong-minded. She stood up for her family and the community.”

“She was one of those aunts who was really hands-on,” said her niece Ivymakita Kearse Bernard. One thing that really stands out is every summertime there was a cookout at our Nancy’s house and I remember she would always buy a full pig and have it slow-cooked during the day. I assure you, even though it was for the family she made sure everyone on the block was well fed.”

She was elected district leader and endorsed by Shirley Chisholm.

While Kearse Gooding often brought people together with food she also did so by holding “free community bus rides to Bear Mountain, Hershey Park, and other family theme parks.”
“You could tell how many people Nancy touched because you couldn’t believe how many people came to her funeral,” Christalee said. “It was a mixture of black and white people. There were so many who spoke about how she helped them personally.”

She was a tenant leader—the following was written about her in 1978 in the Brooklyn Phoenix newspaper.

Touted “Model Project” in Red Hook becoming “Model Disaster” for some tenants, by Peter Haley

Tenants of a much heralded townhouse developments for low and moderate families in Red Hook claim that structural defects, an absentee landlord, and local mismanagement are making their model project into a model disaster.

RAC gardens, 31 two-family brick structure scattered on three different sites in the Red Hook area, is suffering from the effects of initial shoddy construction, tennis maintain and among their complaints are leaking roofs, cracks and walls and floors, as an inadequate heating system that leaks gas into apartments.

“We were moved into RAC Gardens to prevent vandalism of the then new structures with the understanding that the contractors would return to the repair work if necessary. said Nancy Gooding a tenant leader. We have add many managers and none of them has dealt with the fact that a great deal of work will have to be redone here. Complaining that rents rose from $208 to $280, and in some cases 317 under PMI management while PMI has failed to hold the steady deterioration of the less than six year old development, tenants are withholding February and March rents as part of an initial rent strike.

Built by private funds in 1972 under the sponsorship of the New York urban coalition, RAC Gardens was a demonstration project aimed at redeveloping the local area without relocating local people. The urban coalition, an organization of business labor and community leaders that seeks to solve the problems of poverty and urban decay, initially organized the project and then served as a limited partner and managing agent for the $1.8 million development. In 1974 they gave up its partnership and management role Under NCHP, the tenants, most of whom are former residents of the Red Hook Houses have had different managers.

Gooding criticized the Urban Coalition’s departure as jeopardizing the development. They have this philosophy of training people but it looks to me like we are being trained to be ghetto bums,” she said

According to Richard Sherry, the coalition never intended to be in the real estate business. The Federal Government paid the mortgage, and rents were supposed to cover maintenance and operations. Tenants charged that outside of gas heat they had no visible evidence that NCHP was spending any money on RAC Gardens.

There have been talk previously of converting the 62 triplexes that make up RAC gardens into cooperatives, but few tenants want to own their apartments. Some even wished they were back in the Red Hook projects.

Brian Abate