Hopscotch and Fostering Community

Search Terms: “hopscotch”, “hopscotch” + “black neighborhoods”, “support” + “black community”, “black children + hopscotch”, “value” + “black community”

HistoryMaker Ann Ashmore

The game hopscotch is a quintessential game of youth, many people have many memories attached to it. This is the case for HistoryMaker Anne Ashmore-Hudson, a clinical psychiatrist, as she recounts a hopscotch tale from her youth, “I remember was really summer, playing hopscotch, the sidewalk thing. Sometimes in the summer, it’s so hot that if you were going barefoot, you’d have to jump from one little patch of grass to another. And ice cream trucks coming down the street. And being able to go into anybody’s house and get anything you wanted, really. It was — Atlanta (Georgia) is very nurturing, and it was… a nurturing and supportive environment.”

Hopscotch and other games were the reason why neighborhood kids knew each other so well, HistoryMaker Laurie Robinson echoes this community aspect, “..just connecting all the kids in the community, and how we would, you know, we would play hopscotch. We would double dutch. We would ride our bikes, and everyone was engaged in that.”

HistoryMaker Gloria Bacon

Kids flocking to play the game was not an uncommon sight in their neighborhood. HistoryMaker Gloria Bacon describes the rallying of neighborhood kids when starting to play the game, “..when we came home from school in the evening, we’d be signaling to jump rope and to play hopscotch. I mean, those were the two things that I can remember most. I mean it was just like when you’d get on. As soon as you’d get in the block. As soon as you saw somebody else, it was like first. Or you’d call, you’d claim whatever you were doing, do hopscotch.”

It would not be uncommon to see groups of kids throughout different neighborhoods playing hopscotch, as HistoryMaker and Poet Abiodun Oyewole describes that sight he often saw and the thriving black community that was the backdrop of everything. “...cool looking brothers hanging, standing on the corner or standing on the street, walking the street. And then the little girls playing hopscotch, jumping double dutch and their little booties just jumping around, they looked like life..total life.”

HistoryMaker Callie Crossely even recalls how normal it was in black neighborhoods and it was nothing out of the ordinary, “...I did hopscotch and dodge ball in the street and they were with kids around my age and I grew up with them. And it’s interesting now to talk to people who don’t have that experience.”

A recurring theme within these stories of hopscotch is community and how it united the neighborhood kids. The memories of this game would lead to the HistoryMaker talking about the thriving community they used to grow up in. HistoryMaker Christine James Brown recounts, “...we were able to do in Philidelphia because of that really huge park system that they have. Riding bikes, stickball, hopscotch….we had block parties all the time, and you know, we didn’t know any better, and everybody survived it..just a nice community feel. You had people who didn’t have a lot of money, but people would help each other if they didn’t have any money.”

HistoryMaker Daphne Maxwell Reid

Actress Daphne Maxwell Reid speaks on how outside games would serve as an escape, “…We would rather go outside and play. So we would go out with our friends and skate and shoot little games on the ground with bottle caps, or do hopscotch or jump rope… and just basically running around the projects and having a good time.”

“And we knew our neighbors. We had best friends that lived across the hall and grew up with their kids…and you would not know, growing up the way I did, that I was poor. But we were, and it didn’t seem to matter. There was a great sense of pride in the community.”

HistoryMaker Jack Arnett Kirkland discusses the importance of community amongst black Americans and the silent unity within black neighborhoods, “What is crucial in a black community is hope, right?..what are your friends doing? If they are going to college, you are going to college, if they are going to jail, you are going to jail. The point is to entice them..when I was telling you about my childhood, that was a neighborhood. There were strengths there. There were people there. It was family.”

Pearl Cleage adds to Kirkland's point of the black communities strengthening each other to a personal experience, when she speaks about the community within Atlanta, Georgia, “..grounding me in community. And in my case, in a black community in southwest Atlanta, which is my little village that influenced all of the work I do, that has influenced where I have chosen to live because I can’t imagine leaving that place. And I never really thought about places having that kind of importance in my work or even in my life….Atlanta has been such a specific community that I can see and get my mind around.”

Hopefully, leaving with a deeper fondness for the childhood game and how it nurtures and fosters community. By knowing your neighbors and creating a community, Model Henriette Cole states the importance of these characteristics, “…the community remains there to say; “we love you, we support you, we’re so proud of you, please give us more, be better. When that community is there, everybody thrives.”

Ambassador Update: Hello! Hopefully, this reading was meaningful to some. It is crazy how time flies, I felt as if it was just 2 days ago that I was coming to start my sophomore year of college, and now I am halfway through it with December slowly approaching. This feeling probably is why I felt so much nostalgia while writing this post, reminders of the youth that seemed to go by far too fast. Anyway! I hope everyone is having a great week!

Here is my playlist: https://da-thehistorymakers-org.ezproxy.auctr.edu/stories/6;IDList=290339%2C505597%2C2629%2C656426%2C323633%2C669941%2C364383%2C136220%2C564849%2C245044%2C64679%2C56423%2C636261%2C227973%2C2724%2C178139%2C64676%2C111352%2C202939%2C102894;ListTitle=hopscotch%2Ccommunity

SOURCES:

Harriette Cole (The HistoryMakers A2006.131), interviewed by Denise Gines, November 7, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 1, Harriette Cole talks about the importance of community in nurturing talents

Jack Arnett Kirkland (The HistoryMakers A2007.288), interviewed by Larry Crowe, October 15, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 7, Jack Arnett Kirkland talks about the importance of community

Anne Ashmore-Hudson (The HistoryMakers A2003.176), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 1, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 8, Anne Ashmore-Hudson continues to describe her childhood environs, Atlanta, Georgia, part 2

Laurie Robinson Haden (The HistoryMakers A2016.149), interviewed by Larry Crowe, December 13, 2016, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 8, Laurie Robinson Haden describes her earliest childhood memory

Abiodun Oyewole (The HistoryMakers A2006.164), interviewed by Shawn Wilson, December 13, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 7, Abiodun Oyewole describes his childhood impression of New York City's Harlem

Callie Crossley (The HistoryMakers A2013.118), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 23, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 8, Callie Crossley shares her early childhood memories of her neighborhood

Christine James-Brown (The HistoryMakers A2012.086), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 30, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 4, Christine James-Brown describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood

Pearl Cleage (The HistoryMakers A2004.177), interviewed by Jodi Merriday, September 23, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 1, Pearl Cleage talks about the importance of the African American community of Atlanta, Georgia in her life

Dr. Gloria Jackson Bacon (The HistoryMakers A2002.129), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, July 10, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 11, Gloria Bacon describes activities in her childhood neighborhood

Daphne Maxwell Reid (The HistoryMakers A2004.103), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, October 12, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 1, story 8, Daphne Maxwell Reid describes the community in which she grew up in New York City