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  My Corner

  by Jennifer Szostak

  Illustrated by Maurie Manning

  The corner of 71st Street and Prospect is my corner. Nobody else seems to want it, anyway. Most folks look at it and say there’s nothin’ there, just an empty lot. But they’re not lookin’ hard enough. My corner is like a wide-open treasure box, but folks pass by all day long and never take the time to peek inside.

  My name is Tia. I live on the third floor of the apartment building next-door. Some days, when my sisters are chasing each other, and my brothers are yelling, and I feel like the walls of our apartment are about to burst, I run down to my corner. My sneakers pound the pavement, then they take me on a flying leap into a sea of green. I wade through the tall grass, my jeans swish-swishing with every step. Butterflies and crickets scare up at my feet. How they got to this part of the city, I’ll never know. I’m careful not to step on the flowers that grow here. They’re beautiful, even though they’re probably just weeds. If I’m real quiet, the birds go on about their business all around me. I sit down and close my eyes and listen to their songs. The grass smells clean and fresh. The sun warms my skin, and I wonder why I’m the only one who’s thankful for this place.

  Some folks don’t respect this corner. I’ve seen them throw trash from their car windows as they speed down 71st. There is junk here, too—old chairs, a broken bicycle wheel, someone’s rusty mailbox. I worry that soon there will be more garbage than birds.

  One evening, Mama says, “Tia, the city wants to pave over that corner of yours, turn it into a parking lot. It’s in the paper today.”

  I stop in my tracks. “Not my corner, Mama! They can’t do that!”

  “They can and they will,” says Mama, “unless somebody comes up with a better idea.”

  “It just needs some cleanin’ up, that’s all. How come they can’t see that?” I run to my room and slam the door. Out my window I can see my corner. Where will the birds and butterflies go, when it’s all blacktop and concrete? Mama knocks softly at the door and steps in.

  “Tia, you see somethin’ in that corner that most folks don’t. You got to make them see what you see. Make some noise about it. No one ever got anyplace by sittin’ back and stayin’ quiet.”

  That night, I lie awake for a long time. I’m thinking about what Mama said to me. In my heart, I know she’s right. I’ve got to do something.

  Early the next morning I drag a chair down to the corner. On a big scrap of cardboard I’ve painted “No Parking Lot! Save Our Nature!” in large letters. I sit down and wait. Most people pass by and don’t pay any attention to me. Some boys walk by, and I hear one of them say, “Looks like a junkyard to me.” They laugh, but I don’t care. A few people ask me what I’m doing, and I tell them. Seems almost no one knew about the plan to turn this corner into a parking lot.

  Across the street, Mrs. DiRisio steps out of her beauty shop. She’s angry, I can tell. She marches across 71st without even looking, sending cars screeching to a stop. Her eyes are fixed on me. “What is this?” Mrs. DiRisio asks, waving her hand at my sign. My heart is racing. “My customers need a place to park,” she says. “You go home, little girl.” She glares at me. “Go home,” she says again and heads back across the street.

  I swallow hard. I feel my sign drop to the ground. I don’t stand a chance against angry Mrs. DiRisio.

  Then I see Mama and my brothers and sisters coming down the street. They’re carrying chairs and they’ve painted signs. They’re here to help me! I give each one of them the biggest hug I can. “Thank you,” I say. Six people gonna get a lot more attention than just one. That’s the great thing about our family: We’re an instant crowd. I can see Mrs. DiRisio in the window of her beauty salon watching us.

  “Don’t pay her no mind,” says Mama. “Don’t she know that most of her customers ain’t got cars, anyway? What do they need a parking lot for?” Mama’s shoulders heave with laughter.

  The afternoon sun is hot, but that doesn’t stop my sisters from trying to catch crickets in the tall grass. As I fan myself, I look down the street and notice a woman taking pictures of my corner. She smiles and walks over to me.

  “I’m Sara Bennett from the Tribune. Can I talk to you?”

  I look to Mama, but she nods her head in my direction. I’m the one who needs to make some noise. I start talking, and Ms. Bennett scribbles on a small notepad.

  “A walking path would be nice,” I say, “and maybe a vegetable garden. And a bench, so people could sit down and listen to the birds singing.” I’m surprised at myself, at how many ideas I’ve got for this corner.

  When we’re done, Ms. Bennett snaps a few more pictures and thanks me for my time. I can’t believe it! A real newspaper story about my corner! Mama hugs me and says, “I’m real proud of you, Tia. You’re makin’ things happen. I have a feeling tomorrow’s gonna be a big day.”

  Mama was right. My brothers burst into my room the next morning, waving a copy of the morning paper. “Fighting for Nature on the Corner of 71st and Prospect” was the title of the article, and along with it was a picture of me! We were all jumping up and down and shouting when Mama said, “Hey, don’t be throwin’ a party just yet. You’ve got a corner to save.”

  After breakfast we drag our chairs and signs back to the corner. I’m just settling in for a long day when all of a sudden I see my friend Tanya and her family coming down the street. They’ve got chairs and they’re joining us!

  “That was quite an article in the paper, Tia,” says Tanya’s father. “You’ve got some good ideas for this corner.”

  Then Mr. and Mrs. Choi from the second floor show up. “Tia, I think you’re right. We need a little nature around here,” Mrs. Choi says.

  This isn’t just my corner anymore. This is our corner.

  A week later we’ve got people all up and down 71st Street and Prospect wavin’ signs and makin’ noise. A few of us work on cleaning up the garbage. It’s hard work, but it feels good. Folks are finally takin’ a closer look at this corner, and they’re excited about what they see. Not Mrs. DiRisio though. She’s standin’ out in front of her shop with her own sign. I feel a little sorry for her, partly because she’s all alone over there, but mostly because she cares more about a parking lot than the birds and flowers.

  I’m asked to speak to a group of people from the city. Mama says they’re the ones who will vote on what to do with our corner. I wear my blue dress and my Sunday school shoes. My hands start shaking when I spot Mrs. DiRisio in the audience, but I keep my eyes on Mama and I speak in my loudest voice, just like she told me to. “If this is the last little bit of nature in our neighborhood,” I say, “doesn’t it make sense to try and save it?” At the end of my speech, everyone applauds and Sara Bennett gives me a big smile. I think secretly she’s on our side.

  Other people give speeches, too. Some of them have good reasons for wanting a parking lot. Mr. Agostino argues that people would buy more groceries from his store if they could park right across the street. Mrs. Worth explains that she hopes to attract customers to her dress shop by being able to offer them parking. I feel a lump in my throat and I look down at the floor.

  “Hold your head up, Tia,” whispers Mama. “No matter what happens, you should feel proud of yourself for standin’ up for somethin’ you believe in.”

  I’m almost asleep that night when the phone rings. I hear Mama’s voice, low and muffled. I climb out of bed and peek into the living room. When Mama hangs up the phone, she lets out a whoop that probably wakes the entire building! “You did it, Tia! The city voted against the parking lot! You got your nature preserve!” Mama hugs me so hard that she lifts me off the ground. And then my brothers and sisters are there, and it’s a night I’ll never forget as long as I live.

  My family congratulates me by giving me a nature book. Inside the book I find the names of all the flowers, birds, and insects that live on our corner. Mama told me there’s no sense in living next-door to a nature preserve if yo
u don’t know what’s in it. I think I must be the happiest girl in the world.

  A year later, the sign on the corner makes it official. Now we’ve got a walking path that curves and winds its way through the 71st Street Nature Preserve. We’ve got a stone bench and plans for a vegetable garden. School groups come here to collect leaves and study the insects and birds. Folks come here to walk, run, or just sit. My corner isn’t just mine anymore, but I’m more than happy to share it. As for me, I spend as much time down here as I can, but I’m pretty busy these days. There’s a vacant lot down on 73rd Street that could use some cleanin’ up…

  Gordon Parks:

  Bigger than LIFE

  by Ann Parr

  Gordon Parks took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Bolstering his courage, he entered the Life magazine building in New York City and marched straight past the secretary into the office of the chief picture editor. Wilson Hicks, his glasses propped on the end of his nose and a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, looked up and frowned. “How’d you get in here?”

  “Just walked in.”

  “Then you can turn around and walk out.”

  “Fine,” Parks answered, “but can’t you take a quick look at my work first? You might like it.”

  Still grumbling about the unexpected interruption, but noting the excellence of Parks’s photographs, Hicks finally said, “Got something in mind that you’d like to do?”

  Parks, who hadn’t expected to get this far, thought fast. “Gang wars in Harlem,” he blurted out.

  Hicks thought it would be easier for Parks to sell snowballs in Alaska than to photograph gangs in one of the roughest and poorest areas of the city. But after a long pause, he agreed to give Parks a try.

  It was 1948, and Gordon Parks had become the first black photographer for Life, the world’s most popular magazine.

  The youngest of fifteen children, Gordon Parks was born on November 30, 1912, in the small town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Like many towns and cities in America at the time, Fort Scott was racially segregated. Black children and white children attended different schools, and Gordon faced racial prejudice every day. Gordon’s family was poor, but his mother inspired him with confidence. From the time he was little, she told him, “If a white boy can do it, so can you.” Gordon believed her. His mother guided him to use his head instead of his fists. When Gordon came home bloodied from a fight with white boys who had jumped him, she wanted to know if he had refrained from hitting until he had been attacked first. Gordon asked why whites hated them so much. “All whites don’t hate you, son,” his mother answered. “And those that do are in such bad trouble with themselves they need pitying.”

  “My mother spoke one language — love,” Gordon later remembered. She showed him how to build dreams and to work hard for what he wanted. She died when he was just fifteen years old. Looking at his most beloved friend and advisor for the last time as she lay peacefully in her coffin in the family parlor, Gordon dried his tears, wrapped himself in a quilt she had pieced, and lay down to sleep on the floor beside her. Over and over he thanked her for her words of wisdom. They would encourage and strengthen him throughout his life.

  After his mother’s death, Gordon was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with an older sister. He entered high school and joined a basketball team. But on a frigid December night just before Christmas, he argued with his sister’s husband, who threw him out into the below-zero weather. At sixteen Gordon was on his own, scrambling to stay alive. He worked at a diner, where he had one full meal a day, and rode the trolleys at night to keep warm. During the Great Depression, times were miserably hard, especially for a young African American. Gordon traveled to Chicago and New York, hoping to find work. By the age of twenty-four, having married a high-school classmate, Gordon was happy to get a full-time job with the railroad.

  Gordon waited tables on a train that ran from Minneapolis to Seattle. In his spare time, he read the magazines that his well-to-do passengers left behind. One day he came across photographs that showed the effects of the Depression on the rural poor. The sadness and confusion on the faces of drought and dust-storm victims, traveling in broken-down jalopies and looking for work of any kind, reminded him of his own impoverished childhood. He noticed that the photographers worked for the Farm Security Administration, a program set up by President Roosevelt to help farmers. Gordon never forgot the power of these photographs to show the reality of poverty. But he also loved looking at the photographs of beautiful clothes and models featured in stylish fashion magazines such as Vogue. He even wrote his name under one of his favorite pictures, thinking that “Gordon Parks” looked quite natural there.

  Parks photographed both ordinary people and famous personalities, such as these two happy children (top), and poet Langston Hughes (bottom).

  In December 1937, with just seventeen dollars in his pocket, Gordon bought his first camera for twelve dollars and fifty cents. He studied photography during breaks on his train runs and took pictures while on layovers in Minneapolis and Chicago. “I read every book on art and photography I could afford,” he said. “I talked to painters, writers, and photographers whenever I discovered them on my car.” One day he noticed big red letters spelling LIFE on a passenger’s camera bag and struck up a conversation with Life photographer Bernard Hoffman. “Come and work for us someday,” Hoffman said. Laughing, Parks promised he would do just that.

  To get a start working as a photographer, Gordon visited department stores asking for a chance to photograph their merchandise. Everyone refused the inexperienced black photographer except Mrs. Murphy, the owner of one of the most fashionable women’s clothing stores in St. Paul. “I’m willing to give you a chance,” she said. “Can you be here tomorrow evening?”

  With borrowed professional equipment and a few last-minute instructions from a local camera store owner, Gordon returned and shot the photographs. “How beautiful!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed the next day. Unknown to her, Gordon had double exposed all but one picture of her models and gowns. Enlarging the only good picture, he had placed it on an easel at the front door. “Where are all the rest?” she asked. When Parks told her, she said, “What’s double exposure anyway? If you can do pictures like that, I want you to do more.”

  The wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis noticed and admired Gordon’s photographs for Mrs. Murphy. With her support, he was able to move to Chicago and get work as a fashion photographer. But Gordon never forgot the power of the camera to expose misery and injustice. “I knew that more than anything else I wanted to strike at the evil of poverty,” he said. When he held an exhibition of his fashion photography, he also included documentary photographs of the urban poor on Chicago’s South Side. Rich and poor, black and white, were both in his photographs and in the audience.

  Parks was ecstatic in 1941 when he won a fellowship that sent him to Washington, D.C., to work for the Farm Security Administration — the agency whose photographers had so impressed him just a few years before. But he was dumbfounded by the racism he experienced upon arriving in the nation’s capital. Taking a walk on his first afternoon, he was not allowed to eat at a drugstore counter because it served only whites. He was ignored by salesclerks in a department store and denied entry to a movie theater. Parks returned to the FSA building, angry and frustrated. His boss encouraged him to use his camera to expose how freedom and opportunity were denied to black people. Gordon took his best-known picture, titled “American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,” when he photographed one of the ladies on the cleaning staff holding her mop and broom in front of the American flag. This woman, whose mother had died when she was a girl, whose father had been lynched, whose husband had been shot, and whose daughter had died two weeks after giving birth, was raising her grandchildren, one stricken with paralysis, on her tiny salary.

  Following World War II, Parks moved to New York. Although many publishers refused to hire a black photographer, he found work photographing fashion as a freelancer for mag
azines such as Vogue. In 1948, having built up his professional portfolio, Parks made good on his promise to himself and marched into the offices of Life.

  Parks took these pictures of cleaning lady Ella Watson (top) and her grandchildren (bottom) while working for the FSA in Washington, D.C.

  “You’ve got a death wish,” Red Jackson, Harlem’s most feared gang leader, said when Parks explained his plan to photograph Red’s gang, the Midtowners, for Life magazine. But for the next four months Parks hung out with Red and the Midtowners, risking his life to get the pictures he wanted. He photographed the Midtowners battling other gangs and viewing the body of a slain gang member. One picture caught Red crouched in a corner, clutching a .45 automatic pistol. When Parks’s photographs hit the newsstands on November 1, 1948, Life’s readers reacted with shock and amazement to his stark portrait of senseless urban violence.

  “Poverty, crime, fashion, Broadway shows, sports, and politics were among the fifty-two stories I was assigned during my first eighteen months at Life,” Parks later wrote. “But those special problems spawned by poverty and crime touched me more, and I dug into them with more enthusiasm.”

  During his years as a Life photographer, Parks reveled in his assignments to Paris, kept company with celebrities, and met world leaders. But “I never lost my fierce grudge against poverty,” he said. And Parks used his camera to make an impact. His photographs of slums outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on Flavio, a boy dying of tuberculosis, generated thousands of letters. Life readers spontaneously sent in more than $30,000 to help Flavio’s family and provide medical treatment that saved his life.

  Parks’s camera gave Life’s white, middle-class readers another perspective on the world. During the racial turmoil of the early 1960s, only Parks was able to photograph and write about the Black Muslims, whose leader, Elijah Muhammad, refused to talk to white reporters, believing that the white man “can no longer be trusted.”