Groups and Cameras for Harlem Photo Essay 4-28-11

Total 51 with permission slips in and scheduled to attend:

Richen Dolma
Jahziel James
Roxanne Coleman
Harold Peralta
Riyesh Nath
Laura Kabadi
Allison Li
Kristine Buckheit

Brenda Morales
Jadzia Ramsay

Sheniece Bunyan
Emily Chen
Robert Bronchard
Mohammad Farhan
Mohammed Hussain
Rokeya Begum
Iqra Amin
Yan Kadori
Anisah Ahmed
Rebekah Goberdhan

Alexandra Castro
Elfrin Cedeno
Renee Drummond
Delorian Nappi
Naurin Khondoker
Samantha Sun
Natalia San Pablo
Shakif Awsaf
Bryan Duran
Yomiuri Ortiz
Ricky Dundi
Sukamol Chonpatawat
Lisbeth Guzman
Muyiwa Adeyeye

Valentin Castillo
Abby Scuesa

_______________________________________
Normally in P7 and P8 with Moore or I

Mikhail Green
Khalid Haynes
John Morales
Alex Erazo
Ernesto Malaluan
Mandy Zhao
Jamie McCoy
Mike Lin
Regina Hembrador
Hana Lee
Delmy Del Cid

Leonela Contreras* 
 Alexus Murray*

Jennifer Khan
Priyanka Verma
Amy Lau
Shyrin Hasan
Stephanie Garces
Sabrina Fletcher

Groups will be responsible for arranging ONLY one camera per group of 4 scholars. Ms. Walrond, and I will have extra cameras for those whose members flaked.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers   

by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

_______________   ___________________ 

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

                                    by Langston Hughes

Give this second poem a Title________________________________________

Why have you titled it this?

Haircut  by Elizabeth Alexander

I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice, scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me, says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n' Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.

Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water, played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.

None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg me, for my money?

What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural that is dying every day.

Elizabeth Alexander was born in 1962 in Harlem

Fats Waller— May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943

Not only was Fats Waller one of the greatest pianists jazz has ever known, he was also one of its most exuberantly funny entertainers -- and as so often happens, one facet tends to obscure the other. His extraordinarily light and flexible touch belied his ample physical girth; he could swing as hard as any pianist alive or dead in his classic James P. Johnson-derived stride manner, with a powerful left hand delivering the octaves and tenths in a tireless, rapid, seamless stream.

Themes and Areas of Interview Questions Harlem:

Ragtime

“Inherit the Wind” aka The Scopes “Monkey” Trial

“The Birth of a Nation” 1915 - propagandist movie 

The Great Migration

Suffragette 

The Harmon Foundation

Langston Hughes

Countee Cullen

World War I

The Great Depression

http://www.history.com/videos/the-harlem-renaissance-an-artistic-explosion#the-harlem-renaissance-an-artistic-explosion?vid=HIS_MRSS_Hulu

Tenement Building Tours - Interview Questions

Suffragette

Migration

Plights of the European 

The Waistshirt Fire

WW I

The Great Depression

Though these sites are primarily steps to interviewing for a JOB or entrance into a Uni or College of you choice, many of these hints are helpful when interviewing strangers for this project.

http://www.helpguide.org/life/interviewing_techniques_tips_getting_job.htm

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander