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Peterson, Robert, Mark Naison

Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP)

Interviewee: Robert Peterson

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison, Kathleen Palmer

Date of Interview: August 5, 2009

Summarized by Michael Kavanagh

Born in Brooklyn, December 18th 1926, Peterson has lived in the Bronx most of his life. His Father’s parents were first generation European immigrants from Sweden and Norway, respectively. They both settled in Yonkers, NY, where they first met and later got married. In 1895, Peterson’s father was born in Yonkers, NY. At the beginning of World War I, his father joined the United States Navy as a ship navigator. When World War I ended, his father returned home and worked …

Nesbitt, Robert, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Robert Nesbitt (b. January 8, 1924) was a soldier in the Tuskegee Airmen unit during World War II. He was born in Harlem, on 125^th St. and Broadway, the son of an ex-military father from South Carolina and a mother from North Carolina. During this time, Harlem was fairly integrated: his neighbors included blacks as well as Irish, Jews, and Italians. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Corona in Queens, to an almost universally black neighborhood. Unlike many young African-American men, Nesbitt attended high school at Haarem high, where he developed a passion for mechanics …

Greene, Aurelia, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Greene grew up in the Morrisania section of The Bronx; Third Avenue and 171^st street in the 1940s and ‘50s and it was a racially mixed neighborhood. There were a few African-Americans, mostly Irish, some Italians, and some Jewish people too. Her parents separated and her maternal grandparents, Maud and Harold Russell raised her. Maud was from Trinidad and her grandfather was from St. Vincent. Maud “was Mulatto and she could pass for white”, as it was difficult during the Depression for African-Americans to get jobs, so she worked as a domestic in hotels downtown. She was very conscious …

Interview With Carol Thompson, Marcia Monaco

Chicago Anti-Apartheid Movement

Length: 91 minutes

Oral history interview of Carol Thompson by Marcia Monaco

In this interview, Carol Thompson recalls her involvement and work in the anti-apartheid movement. She explains that her awareness of the anti-Apartheid movement began while at Northern Illinois University, but she first became involved after she moved to Chicago, when she met South African author, Donald Woods, which led to her involvement in the Dennis Brutus’ defense committee. She recalls that she initially worked with Clergy and Laity Concerned and later, alongside Prexy Nesbitt, became a founding member of CIDSA, which was committed to passing legislation in Chicago …

Hip-Hop Futurism: Remixing Afrofuturism And The Hermeneutics Of Identity, Chuck Galli

Honors Projects

Examines the phenomenon of futuristic hip-hop works and explores the Afrofuturist, surrealist, and postmodern cultural practices of the African diaspora which informed these works.

To Die A Noble Death: Blood Sacrifice And The Legacy Of The Easter Rising And The Battle Of The Somme In Northern Ireland History, Anne L. Reeder

History Honors Projects

In 1916, under the pressurized conditions of the Great War, two violent events transpired that altered the state of Anglo-Irish relations: the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme. These events were immediately transformed into examples of blood sacrifice for the two fundamentally opposed communities in Northern Ireland: Nationalists and Unionists. In 1969, Northern Ireland became embroiled in a civil war that lasted thirty years. The events of 1916 have been used to legitimize modern instances of violence. This paper argues, through the use of cultural texts, that such legitimization is the result of the creation of mythic histories.

Hartfield, Regina, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Regina Hartfield won the Carl M. and Netty M. Memorial Award for the best reminiscence article in the Bronx County Historical Society Journal with an article about her mother, Dell Amedee, who was an alumnus of the Lincoln School of Nurses. Her step-father was from Haiti and worked as a cab driver, plumber and framer. Her mother was from Orangeburg, South Carolina and as a child Regina lived with her mother and grandmother, Marie Harper on Boston Road, before her mother married Richard Amedee and they moved to Washington Avenue. Her grandfather had diabetes and had come to New York …

Porco, Ettore, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Ettore Porco was born on January 15 1915 in southern Italy in the province of Cosenza. He was youngest of ten children. He came to America in 1933 during the depression. He immigrated to New York because the farm he tended to while in Italy bore no food. He went to stay in the Bronx with his oldest brother on Hollywood Avenue. His first job was as a shoe shiner and while he went to elementary school in Italy, he had to learn English from scratch once he came to the states.

He met his wife in the Bronx, she …