Black Pride in Riverdale = it is in The Bronx
    
    
    
Egressing Black History Month, I thought I’d publish my intersection with famous Blacks in the Riverdale section of the Bronx (yes, it is in the Bronx).Â
First, and foremost, I met the great Jackie Robinson at PS 81 on a campaign stop for Hubert H. Humphrey (the “Happy Warrior” who lost to Nixon). This was less than a year before Jackie’s death (at my current age!). There was something so very majestic about him – a much larger man than I expected, with white hair, and nearly blind.Â
Apparently, Willie Mays lived in Riverdale for a time.
I met Stokeley Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), the father of “Black Power,” in an English class at the Bronx High School of Science. He had graduated Science 10 years earlier, so what he was doing sitting in class I’ll never know – he didn’t talk to anyone.
Graduating Science in 1976, Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and distinguished Director of the American Museum of Natural History‘s Hayden Planetarium.