The sample of 248 African-American children ranged in age from 8 to 12 years and came from five elementary schools in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods and four public housing developments with high rates of violence in a Southern moderate-sized city. While sitting in their classrooms, the children as a group were given a blank sheet of white paper and pencils and asked to draw two pictures. First they were asked to "Draw a picture of your neighborhood" (picture A). After completing this picture, they were then asked to "Draw a picture of what goes on in your neighborhood" (picture B). They then completed age-appropriate questionnaires related to trust, safety in their neighborhoods, and the degree of hopelessness. In the A pictures, the most frequently appearing items were houses, suns, clouds, trees, and human figures. The element most often appearing in the B pictures was human figures. These human figures were most often depicted as stick figures in the roles of victims, aggressors, and bystanders. In other studies of human figures, the use of stick figures for humans is an indicator of clinical distress in children. The finding of a consistent pattern in which the number of hopeful elements increased as the number of violent content elements decreased should be a mandate to both researchers and clinicians for future studies and interventions based on the findings from these children's drawings. 11 figures and 41 references