Racism in The Bronx, where I was born.

      I've written a lot about racism in Alabama, where I have lived since 1976, but I've recently learned that Parkchester, the Metropolitan Life Insurance company housing development in The Bronx/New York City, where some of my family lived, was segregated:

Despite denials that they never restricted rentals to white-only tenants, according to Parkchester: A Bronx Tale of Race and Ethnicity written by Jeffrey S. Gurock, Frederick Ecker, president of Met Life said in 1943 that, “Negroes and whites do not mix. Perhaps they will, in one hundred years, but they do not now.” (Source HERE.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 (left) My Mother and I in Parkchester. Her parents, my Grandparents lived there, and we would visit regularly. The photo is unlabeled, but I'm confidient it was taken on Easter. Probably 1961 or so.