...and Sonny’s lives, but also into their environment Harlem, New York. The narrator used his point of view and personal perspective to reveal both Sonny and Harlem and how the environment they were both brought up in has shaped them into the young men they were in the past and who they are now. This story begins when the brother finds out Sonny was in jail, when the narrator went to pick him up they begin having flashbacks from when their parents were alive and were speaking about racial issues they had been facing. Sonny finds his passion in jazz music. When he finally encourages his brother to listen to his music he takes him to the night club. He has a great epiphany realizing that their hardships can be turned into something beautiful. Growing up in an environment such as Harlem has had immense impact on the people sonny and his brother have become. This tough environment in Harlem would easily shape any person living in it but in particular Sonny and his brother. Harlem influenced the courses of action the brothers individually chose to take. The narrator described the city as a place that seems to entrap the people living in it and suck them into a lifestyle that they cant avoid. The lifestyle of drugs and crime, even if an individual such as the narrator doesn’t choose to participate in these actions, they are still surrounded by them. Sonny went into the military to escape this environment of Harlem. When Sonny gets home from the military, he falls right back into this...
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...More children are living below the poverty line in America today than when the war on poverty began almost fifty years ago. Despite consistent efforts by the government, nonprofit organizations, and the people themselves, poverty rates in 2012 are very similar to the early 1960s. Social security and Medicaid have reduced the number of seniors living in poverty, but the plight of children has worsened. Several factors have contributed to this problem. As measured by inflation adjusted dollars, wages of low-skill jobs have declined. The number of families headed by unmarried mothers has risen, and large numbers of immigrants with little education have entered the U.S. The combination of these factors have resulted in approximately 20% of our country’s children living in poverty, which is 50% higher than 1969. Historically, the foundational basis for lifting the disenfranchised out of poverty is education. One of the first steps of the civil rights movement was a grassroots movement educating the poor and disenfranchised to a level of literacy that would enable them to register to vote. This strategy was led by Stephen Currier and his wife, Audrey Bruce, the granddaughter of Andrew Mellon, during the early 1960s. Their Taconic Foundation brought the leading civil rights groups together with other foundations including the Stern, Rockefeller, and Norman foundations. The funding to civil rights advocacy associations was matched with volunteers throughout the South who tutored...
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...Angel Hardy Mrs. Vermillion AP Lang & Comp 17 December 2016 Bad Boy: A Memoir Bad Boy: A Memoir is a memoir written by Walter Dean Myers illustrating the struggles and highlights of his childhood growing up in Harlem, New York. The memoir opens up with Myers explaining his familial history. Myers was one of seven children in his family, although he grew up with two of his sisters in Harlem. To him, Harlem is his birthplace and the only place he will call home. Growing up, Myers was extremely smart. When he was in the first grade he was able to read at a higher level than most of the children his age. His brains did not keep him out of trouble. Just as he was studious, he was also a troublemaker. Myers was always either fighting or doing something...
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...Student Name Professor Name Name of school The Harlem Renaissance: A review of how the works in the oral tradition reflect key social, political, economic and artistic aims of the Harlem Renaissance. “Originally called the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary and intellectual flowering that fostered a new black cultural identity.” (Rowen and Brunner). It was the African-American boom of cultural expression that peaked in the 1920s. Though it was centred in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies that lived in Pairs were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a celebration of African-American heritage expressed through an outpouring of art, literature, music and dance. It was also described as a “spiritual coming of age” in which the black community was able to seize upon its “first chances for group expression and self determination.” (Rowen and Brunner). With racism still rampant and economic opportunities scarce, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African-Americans in the early twentieth century. The timing of the coming of age was perfect. The years between World War I and the Great Depression were boom times for the United States, and jobs were plentiful. The Harlem Renaissance was helped along by intellectuals and the expansion of urban cultures. Artistic expression and articulated appreciation of African-American culture...
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...Literature Paper Phaedra Rosengarth ENG302 December 13, 2010 Judith Glass Ethnic Literature The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. A major factor leading to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the migration of African-Americans to the northern cities. Between 1919 and 1926, large numbers of black Americans left their rural southern states homes to move to urban centers such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, DC. This black urban migration combined with the experimental trends occurring throughout 1920s American society and the rise of a group of radical black intellectuals all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success of black artists. What began as a series of literary discussions in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) was first known as the 'New Negro Movement.' Later termed the Harlem Renaissance, this movement brought unprecedented creative activity in writing, art, and music and redefined expressions of African-Americans and their heritage. Historians disagree as to when the Harlem Renaissance began and ended. The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid-1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party...
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...Strategic Analysis and Recommendations 1 Memo Date: March 26, 2015 To: Harlem Children’s Zone Executive Committee From: MITA Consulting Group Re. Strategic Analysis and Recommendations: Per your request, MITA Consulting Group has prepared the following analysis of The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) strategies. HCZ’s main strategic focuses’ have included penetrating the zone, tracking performance, building the organizational team, expanding boundaries, and informing the field through governance and open communication to other organizations and policy-makers. The imperatives have enabled HCZ to continue to focus and build upon its set vision of actively helping children while building a scalable and replicable model. Although we agree with this holistic approach, our analysis indicates that three major strategic issues exist that are hindering long term growth capitalization. The issues are: 1. HCZ is struggling to create a culture of effective measurement and analysis. They are plagued with information silos and technology gaps that make it difficult for program directors to create any significant actionable insights through the data. 2. HCZ’s ten year vision is to reach $46 million in revenues, serve 24,000 people, and expand to an area three times the size of its current zone. However, a growth strategy solely focused on zone expansion will not allow them to reach this vision. Tigist’s suggestion to reword: 2 HCZ’s growth strategy solely focused on zone expansion...
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...government handouts. What Newman reveals, however, as she focuses on the working poor in Harlem, one of the country's most depressed urban areas, is a community of people who are committed to earning a living, struggling to support themselves and their families on minimum wage dead end jobs, and clinging to the dignity of a regular paycheck, regardless how meager it may be. Newman champions poor workers and seeks to reorient the poverty debate. She wants to deemphasize self defeating behaviors like teenage pregnancy, and to stress what she sees as the larger issues, the injustice of low wages and the apathy of more prosperous citizens. These low income workers “are not people whose values need re-engineering,” she writes. “They work hard at jobs the rest of us would not want because they believe in the dignity of work.” The author works to dismiss the stereotype that everyone who lives in Harlem does not want to work and is either on public assistance, selling drugs or both. “The largest groups of poor people in the United States are not those of welfare. They are the working poor whore earnings are so meager that despite their best efforts, they cannot afford decent housing, diets, health care, or child care” (page 40). Newman shows that while people who resist work and drug dealers do exist, including members of the worker’s families, there are plenty of working people in Harlem who share the same mainstream views and values, with regard to work, as the...
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...The Harlem Renaissance The end of World War I set up conditions for a new culture to emerge. Due to the abundance of jobs the war created, many African-Americans moved to the northern cities. In fact, so many of them moved up north, they created strong African-American communities, including Harlem in New York City. During the 1920’s, Harlem became the Mecca of Black culture and was home to many talented individuals from all fields. Roughly lasting from the end of World War I to the stock market crash in 1929, the Harlem Renaissance was the time period in which black literature was first taken seriously and published by mainstream companies. Even though the Harlem Renaissance focused mainly on literature, it is also strongly related to the advances in African-American music, art and politics of the 1920’s. Although there were many themes associated with the works of the Harlem Renaissance, the four topics of interest that were focused on were, a longing for Africa, the beauty of African-Americans, the racism of the time and demonstrating that they too experienced universal concepts. Many African-Americans of the time began wondering about their ancestral past, prior to slavery, and looked to Africa for inspiration. Many African-Americans saw Africa as their original homeland and a place where blacks where not discriminated and oppressed. In the poem “Heritage,” Countie Cullen wrote “What is Africa to Me?,” a common question African-Americans were asking at the time. He also...
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...HARLEM UNITED COMMUNITY AIDS CENTER 2014 PROGRAM GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS ADHCs ADULT DAY HEALTH CARE (ADHC) EAST - EL FARO............................................................................................................... 5 ADULT DAY HEALTH CARE (ADHC) WEST ............................................................................................................................. 6 HEALTH SERVICES DENTAL CLINIC .................................................................................................................................................................... 8 MOBILE HEALTH PROGRAM................................................................................................................................................. 9 PRIMARY CARE .................................................................................................................................................................. 11 HOUSING FOUNDATION HOUSE EAST ............................................................................................................................................... 13 FOUNDATION HOUSE NORTH (FHN) & FOUNDATION HOUSE SOUTH (FHS) ....................................................................... 14 FOUNDATION HOUSE WEST (FHW) .................................................................................................................................... 15 HRA SCATTER-SITE HOUSING ................................................
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...The Roaring Twenties, The most memorable decade. The 1920s are remembered as a decade of political and cultural change. Women finally got rights, there were Prohibition Laws, The Great Migration, and The Harlem Renaissance. For the first time ever more people lived in cities than on farms. The nation's wealth doubled between 1920 and 1929. These years were the best, but it was all coming to an end. “The New Women” One of the most important political reforms of the 1920s in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Female citizens didn't have as many rights as men. On august 18th, 1920 the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. Women wanted this change, by the end of the 1920s women were represented on local, state, and national political committees....
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...6) Harlem- So this is pretty interesting. In a time when most blacks could not own land or whites had at the very least made it very difficult to own land. Therefor the blacks could not even own/operate the clubs in their very own neighborhoods, the whites owned some of the most famous nightclubs in Harlem. This fact is intriguing all by itself. It is very similar to the south the white man benefiting off African American labor and culture. The whites were going into Harlem to have these crazy adventures on the other side of the tracks sort of speak. Meanwhile the club owners were mostly white. It seems so wrong that the blacks had come from the South to the North to have a better version of freedom. I am sure after surviving the South the North probably did seem better. Really it was the same story different setting. With that said after reading more and...
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...Lawrence Henderson Response to Willis Personal Narratives Photography – Prof. Boddie Spring 1 2015 / April 2, 2015 Essay Response to Deborah Willis – Picturing Us Deborah Willis’ essay, Picturing Us, tackles the issues of self-representation of African-Americans in pictures. In 1955 when Debra Willis first saw the photographs in the book, The Sweetfly Paper of Life, it left an “indelible mark” on her youthful mind. (Pg. 3). It was her first time seeing “colored” people that she could relate to. Through the narratives of the photos Willis was reminded of her family and the universal pride of other African-American families. From that point onward her sense of self was positively awaken, which promoted her to pursued books and photographs that honestly depicted stories of Black people through the eyes of other Black people. Year prior to Willis’ revelation, in 1882, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wanted to tell stories of Black people through Black people’s eyes and decided to start the First African-American newspaper, the Freedom's Journal. Russworm said “We were truly invisible unless we committed a crime.” Thus, in its inaugural issue, the paper clearly stated “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.” With the start of this newspaper, and many newspapers following, Black people developed a sense of self. Their images were positive and commonplace, a far cry from being displayed...
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...formal. She is volunteering to take Sylvia and her cousin Sugar to educational events for their benefit. A few days before Christmas, Miss Moore takes the children on a field trip and she starts off by talking about how much things cost, what their parents could earn, and the unequal division of wealth in the United States. The children see so many expensive, yet valuable items outside of F.A.O such as: an expensive paperweight, a microscope, and a sailboat that costs a lot of money. They begin to wonder why the sailboat costs way more then their own homes, but Sylvia feels uncomfortable in the store. Her uncomfortable feeling reminds her of the time when she made a noise in the Catholic...
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...Tracks on a Road, sketches her own life living in Eatonville, Florida, was the first organized self-government African American community. Many people saw the African American community as racism and segregation. Hurston implies that the nicest people she met in her early stages were whites who showed her compassion. According to her official website Zora Neale Hurston, “Dust Tracks on a Road, was her account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural south to a prominent place among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance.” Many people viewed Dust Tracks on a Road, as a fantasy life she idealized not the actual truth. While others believed in Hurston’s portrayal. Zora Neale Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891. When she was 3 years old, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida. Zora Neale Hurston felt like Eatonville was “home” so she claimed it as her birthplace. Hurston glorify it in her stories as a place where African Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society, once her father became mayor. She would later call Eatonville, Florida a utopia. Hurston's childhood in this all black environment may have shaped her later views on race. Zora Neale Hurston represented Eatonville as a perfect place in reality. It was a Negro town, a self sufficient, independent place, filled with African American pride. She didn’t felt the same way...
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...A. Actress, singer, dancer, activist and war spy Josephine Baker was a significant figure during the Harlem Renaissance who’s “commitment to the continued struggle honored millions” who felt the same pain that she did (Williamson). B. The events of both her “run down, rat-infested” childhood and glamorous adulthood had impacts on her future and the work she did (Caravantes, 3) C. Her actions did not end with the Harlem Renaissance, but live on today because of her determination “to prove that all people […] should be treated the same” (Caravantes, 60). D. Throughout her life, Baker carved a pathway for America to follow in order to obtain equality and be able to live in harmony. II. Baker’s troubling childhood and eventful adulthood carved...
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