African American Life in the Bronx: Before The Fires

African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930’s to the 1960’s (Fordham University Press, 2016)

Robert Gumbs, graphic designer, photographer, artist, and raised in the South Bronx, and Mark Naison, professor of history and African American studies at Fordham University, co-authors of Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930’s to the 1960’s (Fordham University Press, 2016), tell the stories of a neighborhood and 16 African American men and women who lived in the South Bronx before the “Bronx is Burning” era that threatened to decimate it, and what contributed to its revival.