African American Studies Commons^™

Kontihene, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Kontihene

Interviewer: Dr. Jane Edward, Kojo Ampa, Kareem Salifu, Dr. Mark Niason

Summarized by Sheina Ledesma

Kontihene is a Ghanaian Hip Hop musician who has lived in the Bronx since 2004. Kontihene describes his own music as being Afro-Pop or Hip-Life because it combines lively beats with traditional Ashanti folk music from Ghana. Kontihene grew up in Ghanaian town called Kumasi with his parents and two sisters. His love for music developed at a very young age. By age ten he was already writing poems and songs that discussed his family life. Encouraged and mentored by a local musician …

Drammeh, Sheikh Moussa, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Sheikh Moussa Drammeh

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison, Dr. Jane Edward, Dr. Benjamin Hayford, and Kojo Ampah

Date of Interview: November 3^rd, 2009

Summarized by Michael Kavanagh

Born February 4^th, 1962, Drammeh grew up in Tendrami Joka, Gambia, a city bordering Senegal. He began his schooling at six years old in the Madrasas which focuses on memorizing the Qur’an. He has completed the Madrasas four times. His mother is Gambian and father is Senegalese, both died before he reached the age of ten, at which point Drammeh had to focus on making a living for himself …

Boakye, Benjamin, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Reverend Benjamin Boakye

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Benjamin Heither, Amy Davies, Jane Edward

Date of Interview: October 29, 2009

Summarized by Sheina Ledesma

Reverend Benjamin Boakye is a senior pastor at the Ebenezer Assemblies of God church in the Bronx and the president of the Ghanaian Ministers Fellowship. Boakye was born in 1962 in the Ashanti region of Ghana. He was the eldest of six children and as the oldest was given great responsibility within the family. From an early age Boakye was exposed to University life. His father was a plumber at the University of Science and Technology in …

Ampah, Kojo, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Kojo Ampah is the head of a student organization at Fordham University called the African Cultural Exchange and has a long history as a radio host, organizer of cultural festivals and educator in Ghana. He is a Phantee from the Southern tip of Ghana, Cape Coast and his father is Muslim, while his mother was Catholic but converted. His father always maintained four wives so he has many siblings. His father was the medicine man for the tribe in a type of Voodoo and worked with herbs etc ., in a blend of Islam and local traditions. His father taught …

Mckinney, Todd And Mckinney, Stephanie, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

This is was a two-person interview by Dr. Naison. The interviewees go back and forth speaking in the transcription.

Stephanie Woods was born on May 4^th 1966 in Fordham Hospital in the Bronx. Her family was living at the 439 Crotona Park North in a private house until 1991. Stephanie’s mother was born and raised in Harlem. Stephanie’s father was from Danville, VA. Stephanie mentions that he mother loved Hip-Hop and was the reason for life long love of Hip-Hop as her mother was the one who introduced her to it and would take her to street event, known …

Silverman, Carol, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

BRONX AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY PROJECT

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Oneka LaBennett

INTERVIEWEE: Carol Silverman

SUMMARY BY: Andrew O’Connell

Carol Silverman, an anthropologist born and raised in the Northeast Bronx, sits with Dr. Oneka LaBennett in this interview to talk about her childhood, her witnessing of the community’s deterioration in the 1970s and her fieldwork as an anthropologist with Romani people in the Bronx.

Born on March 30, 1951 on Intervale Avenue in the Northeast Bronx, Silverman spent the first twenty some odd years of her life living in the borough. Silverman describes the area she grew up as secure as comprised of …

Cenance, Robin, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Robin Cenance

Interviewer: Mark Nasion

Date: July 15^th 2009

Robin Cenance was born in New Orleans and moved to Harlem at the age of one. Cenance went to PS 43 in the South Bronx; it was a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood and school. The South Bronx Community Action Theatre was a popular and successful program that provided dance classes, drama classes and plenty of other programs that encouraged kids to get into the arts.

Cenance goes on to talk about the living situation. The projects were completely different back in the 60s than they are now. They …

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 …

Ray, Pastor, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

The Bronx African-American History Project conducted this interview with an entourage representing the Ashanti King. Topics discussed included a fund for schools in Ghana, the relationship between different Ghanaian ethnic groups, and the royal protocol surrounding the Ashanti King.

The interviewees talked to the BAAHP about their efforts to establish a fund to support Ghanaian education. According to the interviewees, $500 can support two or three students in Ghana, a fact which led to their decision to assist in Ghanaian education. The interviewees have also sought to increase the technological presence in Ghanaian classrooms by sending computers and printers to …

Soumahoro, Maboula And Karima Zerrou, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Karima Zerrou and Maboula Soumahoro are two influential figures within the world of French-language hip-hop. Zerrou is an internationally renowned hip-hop artist and producer while Soumahoro is a professor at Barnard College who has written extensively on the subject of French hip-hop culture. In their interview with the BAAHP, Zerrou and Soumahoro discussed many of the influences on the rise of the hip-hop genre within French society.

Zerrou got her start in the French hip-hop industry at age of 17 while working for an artist known as Monsieur R. From this job, Zerrou eventually worked for a radio show on …

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 …

Mardah, Muhammad, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Mohammed Mardah is the head of the Ghanaian Association of New York, and is heavily involved in the Bronx Ghanaian community, as well as the public school system. Mardah was born on February 28, 1966 in Accra, Ghana. His father was head of the Ghana Publishing Corporation, and he died when Mohammed was ten years old. Mardah’s mother was uneducated, but was a businesswoman who traveled the world in search of goods that she could sell for a profit in Ghana. Mohammed grew up a practicing Muslim, and Hausa was his first language. His upbringing took place during a time …

Martinez, Danny Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Claude Magnum

INTERVIEWEE: Danny Martinez (Interview Two)

SUMMARY BY: Andrew O’Connell

In his second interview with the Bronx African American History Project, Danny Martinez speaks with Dr. Claude Magnum and delves deeper into his intricate role as one of the forefathers of rap and hip-hop in the Bronx.

Martinez tells that he first became interested in deejaying when his cousin began the trade around 1970. About five or six years later around the age of 11, Danny Martinez stepped behind the turntables for what would be the first time in an illustrious career, spinning his records on the same …

Byas, John And Danny Martinez, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWERS: Mark Naison

INTERVIEWEES: John “DJ Jazzy Jay” Byas and Danny Martinez

SUMMARY BY: Andrew O’Connell

In this interview with John “DJ Jazzy Jay” Byas (b. November 18, 1961), the Bronx African American History Project obtains amazing insight into the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Born in South Carolina and having moved to Harlem at the age of either five or six, Byas soon became enthralled with music through his church, The Greater Zion Hill Baptist Church on 116^th Street and Manhattan Avenue, singing in the church choir and finding a …

Benjamin, Michael, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Assemblyman Michael Benjamin was inspired to work in public service after hearing that President Kennedy had been shot and killed; he found it interesting that a person would be involved in public service and they could lose their life. His youngest brother, Vernon, suffered from lung ailments and his mother wrote Mayor Wagner. She got an application back from the Mayor’s office for public housing and in 1965 they moved into the John Adams’ houses. The area was made up of working-class, two parent families. There was a communal feeling there and the building and amenities were new and safe. …

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 …

Winsor, George, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Born on February 19, 1914 in Nassau, Bahamas. George Winsor immigrated to the United States at a very young age to live with his godmother in Harlem. Winsor, who has a very dark skin complexion, cites the racially stratified nature of the Bahamas at the time as being one of the main motivations for his parents sending him to the States. Fearing that he would not be able to succeed economically and socially in a society that put such a heavy premium on complexion, Winsor’s parents sent him to a country in which they thought his skin color would not …

Ceesay, Yandeh, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Yandeh Ceesay

Interviewer: Dr. Jane K. Edward

Date of Interview: February 10, 2009

Summarized by Sheina Ledesma

Yandeh Ceesay is an undergraduate student at Fordham University. She was born in 1989 in the West African nation of Gambia. When she was a year old her father left the family and moved to the Bronx. A year later, in 1991, her father was able to send for Yandeh and her mother, and they both moved from Gambia to the Bronx as well. When Yandeh first arrived she lived with her parents in an eight-floor apartment building on Fordham Road. She …

Brifu, Karen, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Karen Brifu

Interviewer: Mark Naison, Jane Kani Edward, Brendan Hayford

Summarized by Eddie Mikus

Karen Brifu is a Fordham University graduate of Ghanaian descent who currently works for the Federal Reserve Bank. Her life story sheds light on the experiences and values faced by the Ghanaian immigrant community.

Brifu was born to two Ghanaian parents in the Bronx. As a child, her family often spoke Twi at home to ensure that their children maintained ties to the Ghanaian culture. Additionally, the family also made Ghanaian foods like a cream-of-wheat known as farina and played Ghanaian music while at home. …

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 …