African American Studies Commons^™

Crier, Arthur, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Arthur Crier

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Summarized by Concetta Gleason

Crier is an organizer of the Morissania Review and a leading figure in Doo-Wop and Rhythm and Blues in the Morrisania community. Crier was born in 1935 in Harlem, but raised on Prospect Ave in the Bronx. His mother was from the South, specifically North Carolina, which is where he currently resides. He attended a mixed elementary school and also played street games with the other children on the block. The schools were very good and teachers genuinely cared for their students. The neighborhood was safe and the families looked …

Detroit Blues Women, Michael Duggan Murphy

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

DETROIT BLUES WOMEN

by

Michael Duggan Murphy

August 2011

Advisor: Dr. John J. Bukowczyk

Major: History

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

"Detroit Blues Women" explores how African American "women's blues" survived the twentieth century relatively unscripted by the image-makers of the male-dominated music industry. In the 1920s, African American blues queens laid out a foundation for assertive and rebellious women's blues that the many musical heirs who succeeded them in the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty first century sustained, preserved and built upon. The dissertation argues that women's blues, which encouraged women to liberate themselves …

Stokes, Daphne, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Daphne Stokes is a parent coordinator at a Bronx high school. Her mother was from Alabama and came to the Bronx when she was a teenager and lived with her sisters. One of her sisters did domestic work and one other did not work. Her father was originally from Harlem. Her parents met in their teen years and once they were married moved to Quonset Huts on Lafayette Avenue. After that they moved to Bronx River Houses, where she was born in 1953. When the family moved to the Bronx River Houses, her father was working for the Veteran’s Hospital …

Lawrence, Rosalind, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Rosalind Lawrence

Interviewer: Dr. Brian Purnell

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Rosalind was born on November 26, 1956 in the Bronx. She grew up in the Sedgwick Houses. Her mother was born in Connecticut and her father was born in Georgia. Her parents moved from Prospect Avenue to the Sedgwick houses and saw it as moving up. The Sedgwick houses were originally for Veterans, and because her father was in the Korean War, they were able to move into the Sedgwick housing projects. They had a roomy 2 bed room apartment. Most of African Americans living in her building were …

Hines, Eric And Johnson, Lance And Wheeler, David, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewers: Brian Purnell, Mark Naison, Princess Okieme, Dolores Munoz

Interviewees: Eric Hines, Lance Johnson, Joshua Wheeler

Summarized by Leigh Waterbury

Eric “DJ Cool Clyde” Hines and Lance “DJ Lightnin’ Lance” Johnson were both born and raised in theBronxin the 1960’s. Eric Hines was born July 31, 1966 and grew up in the Soundview section of theBronx, in the Skylar House. Lance Johnson was born August 6, 1962 and was raised mostly in the Lafayette-Boynton Avenue Houses betweenStory AvenueandBoynton Avenue. Both men briefly discussed their childhoods and the negative environments of drugs and gangs that attracted many children their age. Hines …