Case Study East Harlem And Mrs. Cortes

     Harlem Renaissance, an African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. According to Wintz:

The Upper East Side, zip code 10028, and East Harlem, zip code 10035 are two very different neighborhoods. Overall health varies between The Upper East Side and East Harlem because of differences in social determinants such as socioeconomic status, education, and environment. More specifically, East Harlem has the highest percentage of hospitalizations due to asthma when comparing neighborhoods in NYC.1 Using my observations from doing fieldwork, I will focus on the structural differences in The Upper East Side and East Harlem that result in differences in asthma prevalence.

     The Harlem Renaissance was a time of racism, injustice, and importance. Somewhere in between the 1920s and 1930s an African American movement occurred in Harlem, New York City. The Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. It was the result of Blacks migrating in the North, mostly Chicago and New York. There were many significant figures, both male and female, that had taken part in the Harlem Renaissance. Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes exemplify the like and work of this movement.

Poverty has always been an issue throughout centuries. In most areas living conditions were horrible due to wars, and corruption within cities and states. Most families lost their male sons to the draft of the war at the ages of 6 years or older. Families struggled and did what they had to, to maintain a home as well as food for their families. Because of this Social Realism was successful. Social Realism was an international movement that many artists and composers where a part of. This movement highlights inequalities of capitalism, and gave the chance to these artists and composers to express everyday living conditions of the working class and the poor through their work. Diego Rivera is one of those artists that through his work showed the struggle of the poor, he was one of the most famous muralists in the Mexican Social Realism. The Harlem Renaissance was known as the “New Negro Movement” where African Americans where forced out of Southern states to the urban areas due to the Great Migration. Jacob Lawrence was one of those that expressed his thought on the Great Migration describing it as the push and pull factors.

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and literary period of growth promoting a new African American cultural identity in the United States. The years of 1920 and 1990 and “were clear peak periods of African American cultural production.” During these years blacks were able to come together and form a united group that expressed a desire for enlightenment. “It is difficult not to recognize the signs that African Americans are in the midst of a cultural renaissance” (English 807). This renaissance allowed Blacks to have a uniform voice in a society based upon intellectual growth. The front-runners of this revival were extremely focused on cultural growth through means of intellect, literature, art and music. By using these means

The Harlem Children’s Zone is a community based education system started by Geoffrey Canada. His main goal with this program was to close the achievement gap between affluent and low-income children in Harlem and ensure that every student that attends the HCZ also attends college. His charter school, referred to as “ The Promise Academy,” is unique as it provides a high-performing academic program supplemented with a variety of social services including parenting classes, support system for former HCZ students who have enrolled in college, fitness programs, community centers, and an onsite-medical clinic. Children living in the inner city are historically low-performing students, because they are not worried about their grade on a test like

During the early 1920’s, African American artists, writers, musicians, and performers took part in a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. This migration took place after World War 1 and brought African Americans of all ages to the city of Harlem located in New York (Holt). There were many inspiring young artists; one of them in particular was Augusta Savage.

The Harlem Renaissance was different than I thought it was. I had imagined it was a time of African American’s gathering together in small groups and reading poems and writing stuff. When I began researching, the things that I found blew my mind. Seeing all of the big names of the Renaissance was cool because I have heard these names all my life, but never realized why those names were significant. Being a student in band, the name Louis Armstrong has been a name I have heard since 6th grade. Up until this project, I never knew the extent of the impact he made on the world of music.

     Between 1910 and 1920, in a movement known as the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans uprooted from their homes in the South and moved North to the big cities in search of jobs. They left the South because of racial violence and economic discrimination. Their migration was an expression of their changing attitudes toward themselves, and has been described as "something like a spiritual emancipation." Many migrants moved to Harlem, a neighborhood on the upper west side of Manhattan. In the 1920's, Harlem became the worlds largest black community; also home to a highly diverse mix of cultures. This unprecedented outburst of creative activity exposed their unique culture and encouraged

Today, however, it seems as if the public has lost track of the importance of a great educational system. The main issue today’s public schools faces are funding problems. There is not enough money allocated to support the growing needs of school across the nation.

Ras is a militant black nationalist who says he is from the West Indies. He calls the narrator a traitor for not militantly standing up against the white establishment in Harlem. He gradually gains more power and influence as the novel progresses forward. He aggressively opposes the brotherhood and incites race riots in

Budget cuts in schools cause turmoil and stress among the students and faculty. Drastic changes in the budgets have caused schools to negatively impact the people around them. With the lack of funding, schools are facing difficult decisions on what to do to stay within their budget. Supervision is facing much scrutiny on how to handle the lack of funding in their school districts. A solution needs to be made to improve the distribution of funding to our schools in order to keep them operating and thriving for our children to obtain their education. Budget cuts in schools have shown negative effects on employee positions, supplies, extracurricular activities.

In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,

In addition, insufficient funding of schools along with quality teachers that are retiring are some of the problems we encounter in the education system. In some parts of the United States, there is a lack of adequate access to materials for reading and writing due to budget constraints. In Allen D. Kanner’s article, “Today’s Class Brought to You By…” he mentioned that with the baby boomers retiring, and a high turnover among new teachers, who are asked to teach subjects they are not properly trained for, are causing difficult classroom situations (280). Similarly, Governor Jerry Brown’s statement last January 11 pointed out that K-12 education has ‘borne the brunt’ of the state’s budget cuts with more than $18 billion in cuts over the last three years. This resulted in larger class sizes, programs are cut, and over 30,000 educators laid off. These teachers are very valuable in our society because they provide our youth with the knowledge and social experiences that they will use to better their future and the future of the entire world. As a student, I have suffered the consequences of triple digit fee increases and the lack of available classes offered. The high cost of education has put the burden not only on the students, and many of their parents, but educators, as

2. A ship is a significant term regarding the context of diasporic culture because it is a vehicle which can move between various places. Ideally, it could be used as a tool to explore one’s identity. The image of the ship is utilized in almost all the texts which we have read thus far this semester, from texts such as Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem to the opening scenes of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God to Marcus Garvey’s essays and speeches in Philosophy and Opinion. Where ships remain a metaphorical component of the two fictional texts mentioned, it represents a vehicle which would further a Pan-African agenda in the second. In Home to Harlem, McKay’s protagonist, Jake, spends his time on various forms of transportation, such as trains. However, he begins his tale on a freighter on his way back to Harlem. The first image we see of him is one on a ship, making a choice to come back to the United States. As an American protagonist, Jake’s diasporic identity has been created by ships through the slave trade while simultaneously being steered by ships through his own autonomy regarding decisions on where to live at any moment. As mentioned before, Marcus Garvey’s essays and speeches hinge on the return to Africa. This return would be accomplished through the Black Star, which never began its journey in relocating black individuals to Africa. Overall, both texts represent ships as a vehicle which can give individuals with diasporic backgrounds some form of