Stories
Planting Success in South Carolina

Yard of the Week

Clif Judy

Down in South Carolina, the black communities can be pretty rough, with crime in the streets, drugs and other problems in the homes. These neighborhoods are a place where people see nothing but trouble and have very little hope for any other life. Clif Judy is a man who has a vision. He's found a way to give the people in the poor black communities a new outlook, one with pride and promise. He's seen them respond to his encouragement, cleaning up their neighborhoods, chasing trouble away and taking steps to better their lives. It's called Yard of the Week.....

Simply put, the Yard of the Week Contest exists to promote safer, cleaner and healthier neighborhoods through friendly competition. It’s about making people feel good about who they are and where they live. It’s about igniting those “inside forces” that bring success and happiness! Where negative elements like litter, loitering, poor public service, crime, violence, drug and gang activity exist to tear down communities, our aim is to empower residents to take back control of their streets, one yard at a time.

It sounds simple, but the YOTW Contest track record since 1996 is proof it works! It happens in the spring of the year, starting with just one neighborhood resident with a winning spirit who believes he can make a difference. Then you see and hear the signs of change – mowers crank, rakes and hoses appear, and the next thing you know…flowers are blooming! Yard by yard, the beauty and pride in a neighborhood is revived!

As residents scramble to gain control of their yards, everything else in their lives tends to come under the same positive control! A new hope is awakened and it prevails to chase away blight and despair and anything that would detract from the place people want to feel proud to call home.

.........This is Mr. Judy's story........

"I’m watching the black people in the Southeast and nobody’s ever gone to college anyway. None of them – zero, ever. So what you see is, when you’re born there, you’re basically born into mental slavery. Nobody ever did anything, so there’s no expectation for you to. You’re not expected to do something, so you duplicate that expectation. And then you get into drugs and all that stuff. If you are in the Southeast and you’re in a low income, black area –  you wake up in the morning and you look out – cars up on blocks – beer cans everywhere – you know that the police car is in and out of there. One third of your black neighborhood in prison, federal or state. 70% of the kids are born illegitimate. Christmas ain’t fun; there’s nothing to do at Christmas. You're still hungry.

So, we know that in those areas people just are miserable. The first contest we did was in 1996. We call it a contest because it’s not a program. It’s no program because there’s no government money involved. We give prizes based on effort and ability. The first woman that ever won a prize was 85 years old in a wheelchair, with no legs. Lived in a house trailer. And what she did to win the prize, she talked the local electrical utility into cutting a tree down in her yard. They had no responsibility to cut it down but she hounded them so much. She told them what it was going to do to the house if it fell on the house, but their only responsibility is to keep the power lines clear. She kept messing with them until finally they came out and just took the tree down. So we gave her the prize. It was wonderful. She thought it was delightful. It’s still sitting in the yard. And she loves it.

We have 10 prizes per week for eight weeks every spring. Ten gold dollars per winner. Thats 10 winners per week, 80 winners total, in a neighborhood of about 300 to 400 houses, which is roughly a 30% chance that you can win. That’s not so distant. Far from the attitude that you'll say, "Oh, I’ll never qualify". We let enough people win at the lower levels. It’s not based on somebody going and having a really beautiful yard. Some people do. But that’s not why we do the contest. If somebody has moved a car out of their yard or they’ve cleaned it up or collected all the trash out, or knocked down the garage that was falling down in the back. These kind of things happen and it’s puts so much pressure, once they win, then people on both sides of them start feeling that pressure. And it doesn’t take long for that pressure just to expand itself out into the whole neighborhood.

We're basically re-empowering the head of household which generally, in this black community, would be the momma. And once they start feeling good about themselves, crime just seems to go away. It just walks right out the door. And it makes so much sense, because you wake up and you’re thinking about – "I got to get to those roses because that man’s coming and besides that Molly, she won last week and Sara, she won the week before that. And I’m getting tired of looking at their prizes and them wondering if something’s wrong with me."

And then also Molly and Sara and Frances start protecting their domain. And the next thing you know, the whole thing’s working. That’s why you see those pictures on that web page. I took all those pictures. And they loved it. They do love it.

What we see is recognition by those people that they are good. And if you recognize that you're good, you might as well use it. And that’s what they do. I think we’re hitting 10,000 people, maybe 12,000 in the contest areas.

Say it’s 300 houses gets you to roughly 1000 people. That would be an average. And in Baltimore they hit 400 houses. So that gets you to 1200 or more. Then you have those that are next door. Which is like planting a positive cancer. It’s a self feeding proposition. Nobody tells you to do anything. It’s fun. It’s good manners and fun.

Now I'm white, I'm a cracker. But the only bad experience I’ve had in 10 – 12 years? Zero. They look at me like – we don’t know who you are, but you haven’t caused us any problems. I don’t report what I see to the police either. So I’m not a functionary of the police. No raids come after I come there. I make sure of that. Always exactly what I do is just ride through and hand out these things and leave people proud of themselves.

Some of them say – "how come I can’t win?" My answer is "because you haven’t done anything. That’s the number one reason. Why don’t you do something and then next time you can win." And that’s typical. I hear that a lot. And it’s pleasant.

What I’m learning, what’s wrong with our world, is we don’t have enough hugs and hellos. And that’s about all the problem is. If you do something nice for people, generally they do something nice back for you. It’s the one thing we’ve learned to do.

My church sits four blocks from where my contest area is and if you really needed to die and were too chicken to shoot yourself you can go down there at night. Somebody would shoot you. Go on down there. It’s roughhouse. The week before we started in this area which was during the summer they had 100 police officers hit there on the weekend. And they put 21 people in prison, for 25 years or longer. Drug stuff. So it’s roughhouse.

Since we started, when I talk to some people, it’s quieter. So the trick to it, if you bring peace back into an area, what will follow is people just doing business.

The cost of one contest is $3000.  In a neighborhood of 300 houses, that's only about $2 per person. The $2 covers everything. That will cover your signs, prize money, and publications that you put out. And if somebody complains that they’re having a hard time doing one of them, I say, well I fund four by myself. But in Baltimore they’re finding their funding through a grant. And next year they should be able to get money through neighborhood associations.

In Florence, South Carolina, Central Methodist Church is doing the contest. The woman that started it is probably 55 to 60. Somebody suggested that she do it. And I told her what was going to happen and described that you’ll end up with a bunch of volunteers who aren’t going to show up. She got into it and then - 20 of them showed up at the meeting and on the  weekend everybody was gone to the beach. So, she just put it off a week. I said, well, keep at it, and what’ll happen is the joy that will come out of it will belong to you, on one side of it, but on the other side it will come from the people.

Good way through it, she said, "You know, you were right. Those people when they look at you they thank you. And God bless you." And then she understood. As time goes on, she loved it. Now she’s got some real volunteers who want to get up there and be part of this feeling good about yourself and helping people. It’s got a big reward when you go out there and see these people jumping around and having a good time with life. You see those smiles in those pictures. When’s the last time you had somebody smile at you?

It’s roughhouse there in downtown Florence. Gangs – there’s just everything you read about going on in the middle of that southern town. That’s 70 – 80,000 people. You can’t go downtown anywhere in the USA. There’s a roughhouse in every part of the country. So you can do this contest wherever  you are.

We don’t know what to do with high risers. Haven’t got to that yet. But up in Spartanburg they did one in a public housing project that was so rough that the police had cut the rails from railroads, not the ties but the rails, and stuck them in concrete at the end of the roads. They fixed it so there’s one way in and one way out, so the druggies couldn’t get in there and get back out. That was the neighborhood. And when they did the contest, the women took metal cans and filled them with different planting materials and had flowers up and down the walkway. So, they were interviewed by the Spartanburg Herald and one of the women was quoted as saying, “yeah, at first the children didn’t understand. They rode their bicycles through and knocked the plants over.” Then she said, “but us moms got together and we talked to the children and then the children understood.” When you plant one plant, then that’s one above none and that is still a hundred percent. One above none is one hundred percent.

So if you leave and you come back wondering if your plant grew, it’s probably what you thought about during the day. And most plants do grow, so you had a success in your life. And once you start this, it’s a new way. And it works.

What we’d like to do is have a concept. I’ll tell you about it and you tell your sister about it and she tells your brother in law about it and he tells his uncle about it and his cousin and if you want to do a contest in Topeka, Kansas, we've got instructions on the website. And if you’ve got questions, you can call me. One day we'll be able to say we've got one right down the road from you in Hattiesburg, Miss. Why don’t you call him?

We know that the worse it is, the better it works. And if you've affected 10,000 people, then you probably could affect 10 million. That’s what I’m looking for. And if you can affect 10 million, you can probably affect 30. And if you can affect 30 million, you can get them all.

I think about what happened to the United States when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We solidified into one nation there for a while and it was just like creating a hornet’s nest. Same thing happened with the World Trade tower. It’s the same thing. Why do all the blackbirds fly one way then all of a sudden they turn and fly the other way? How do all women know when Walmart’s got a sale without talking to each other? They all do. Ain’t that right?

Walmart doesn’t tell them. They just have the sale and all the women show up. But I think we’re seeing something like that. Why be sad if you can be happy? And why not do a little bit of work right as opposed to a lot of work wrong? And that’s where I’m coming from. What we’re seeing, it works. What happens is, as you feel good about yourself, what I’ve noticed in the black population, they have a much higher spiritual value it seems to me. Have more fun. If you see a fishing boat anywhere around, it’s been fished. You see a fishing pole laying up against a house, it’s been in the water.

So if you take the poison – they do have some poison in society when 70% of your children are being born illegitimately, that’s poison. And one in three black males goes to prison, that’s poison. There’s nothing about that that is good. If you’re feeling bad about yourself, you're in a prison. And so if you learn how to free yourself, then you’re free. On that same exact minute. Once you feel good about yourself, then that’s it. All of us are gonna die. I haven’t seen anybody yet who didn’t die. So we all gonna die. We know that when we’re born. So it’s what we’re doing in the process.

Once you wake up. You feel good. Your flowers are blooming. You got it all over the front yard. We get some old ladies got ten signs in the yard at a time – or more. Eventually we quit giving the signs cause you just get too many signs. I gave one to one lady, it was probably her twelfth. Lined up straight like soldiers in the yard. And she’s had a stroke since we started. And she has seven grandchildren and then she had a stroke and had to do something about the children. But those signs were her higher diplomas. Probably the only ones she got.

If you start out – say you did one in your neighborhood. The first year you would get somebody to help you. It becomes the two of you versus 300 of them. Them being 300 houses. That’s the first year, but as you move through the first year, at the end of the first year, you’ve created 80 winners. So at the end of that time, 82 teachers, each one being a teacher. Next year you go in, you start out with 82 teachers and then you’re down to 220 students. Assuming the second year you have 40 new winners and 40 repeat winners, the next year your 82 goes to 122. Eventually everybody becomes a teacher. And that’s just in the yard cleanup. Anytime you develop one good habit it leads to another. Next you go to work with a good attitude, you do better at work. Then they pull you aside and say you really have done a good job. Next thing you know you’re the boss.

And then because the collective mind changes in your neighborhood, the next thing you know, crime doesn’t have a place in your neighborhood. And that’s what we’re seeing. All of this is about the human psyche. That’s all it is.

In one of the areas we’re in our sixth year of the grade contest. My car’s a white Mercury. It looks like a police car. Got a sign on the side that says yard of the week contest. Children run up to me. They call me Yard Man. Say, “Yard Man, how come my momma ain’t won one? Put one in my mom’s yard!”

They want their momma to win. Because winning is not something they've had. So what we added was the grade contest. If you’re a 13 year old black girl living with a crack cocaine mom in one of those neighborhoods, and mom had a different man every night. And then when the fellow got through with mom, because you were 13 years old, he might want to deal with you too. So you escape him during the night, hiding and doing what you gotta do. You get to school the next day and what are you going to know about Shakespeare? Wordsworth, Longfellow? You’re working on a different time schedule than the other kids – the time schedule is you gotta get home. I gotta see what mom’s going to be doing with crack cocaine. And your time horizon is just different from people generally in school.

So what we’ve done is if you move up one grade notch, you win. And there are no losers. Go from an C to a B, or an F to a D. It doesn’t matter. If you win you get five gold dollars and take a picture. And we give you a pin of excellence.

So, these children – one little girl – you’ll see them in those pictures – one little girl, last couple of years, made ten improvements in grades. I paid her fifty bucks. Took a picture. She was 16. We didn’t know what she would do the next time. So the next time around, she dropped nine grades. I’m glad it happened – I learned something from it. You can do it and win, or you don’t. We’re not going to talk about it. And we don’t. We don’t embarrass anybody about anything. What we finally realized was her younger sister always made good grades. She got sick and tired of Momma hugging her younger sister. So she said – watch this. To America – watch this. So she made 10 grade improvements just to let everybody know. And that was her statement. When she gets on a little bit further in life, when she’s working in the tail end of McDonald’s, and they tell her to clean the bathroom, she’s going to be offended by that. By that same spirit that caused her to move those 10 grades up, she’ll get in and knock that bathroom out and then she’ll notice that she don’t have to wait until her sister does something. She’ll outdo her sister and the next thing you know she’ll be outdoing the manager. Next thing they’ll have her as the manager in the other store across town. Next thing she’ll be a district manager for McDonald’s and she’ll be middle stream America. Then she’ll have to wonder if she’s devoting too much of her life to all the problems that you got, I got, and the rest of us got.

You never get away from living life. But she will at least get out of the pit. She’ll know that her life is her option. That’s what your life is, I’m guessing, its your option. My life is my option. That’s as high as I can get it. At some point you have to figure it out yourself. I’ve figured mine out. And that’s what we live life for, I think.

So, in her case, she lost – she threw it out the door. I don’t think she meant to. Now that she came up complaining to me I said, “Whoa! Look at that. We got a picture of you. Go cry to somebody else right now.” And she would have to grin because she knows she can do anything. That’s what we have to see.

So the grade contest is different from the yard contest. We’re still experimenting around with it.

And when I go down in these areas, these people know that you’re down there. You the only white people down there. And they don’t care. I think if anybody ever did pick on us, somebody would get their head snapped off. Because the rest of them like it. They appreciate you being down there. It’s hot in the Southeast. Rottwielers running around in there and Pit Bulls on chains. But nobody has ever bothered me in 10 or 12 years. And I am a honky. I am a cracker.  I’m all the things they’re supposed to hate. That’s a big farce. Otherwise I couldn’t be talking to you.

Anyway it’s pleasant and it’s fun. And what you’re finding out is that these people are great.

You can do it in any city. And that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s game, but it’s fun. I know darn well you can make the people happy. Happy people don’t go to jail. They don’t beat on anybody. Happy people don’t cause problems. They help the problems. So you create happy people. But you don’t create anything. You give them rewards and they find it within themselves.

www.yardoftheweek.org