MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS WATCHING THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB on the lower level of a bunk bed with my brother and mother. I would have been nearly four at the time and I vividly recall it was a Sunday evening and Mum was pregnant with my sister. At first we lived in the Castle Hill middle-income housing project in the Bronx and it felt like a real community, with playgrounds and playing fields amid all the buildings.
WHEN MY FATHER’S INCOME INCREASED WE MOVED TO RIVERDALE, which was a more plush part of the Bronx and, prophetically perhaps, our building was called Skyview. One day I came home and there were people protesting against Black families moving in. That was in 1964, when I was six years old, and that seemed so odd to me. I thought, because when you’re a kid you can’t process complex issues, you
