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Raleigh Lee

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@ Weeksville Heritage Center

Nzhinga Garner, Raleigh Lee

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Raleigh Lee was born in 1943 in Suffolk, VA. He has fond memories of his childhood in the South: he calls it a “play land.” He recalls that his school was segregated as a child, but that the quality of education was better than in the North. As a child, he and his cousins did work for farmers to pay for their school clothes: they picked strawberries, worked in the peanut fields, chopped grass, stacked hay and picked cotton and white and sweet potatoes. Raleigh and his siblings lived with his grandparents in Virginia while his parents worked in New York City. He recalls that growing up, he and his brothers lived in New York for the summer, and in Virginia for the school year. When Raleigh was 19, the family moved to West Philadelphia because his parents were separating. Raleigh first moved with his mother, to her sister’s house in Philadelphia, but when he was 25, he decided to join his father in New York. His father contacted him, letting him know that he had found Raleigh a job at a restaurant on First Avenue and 57th Street, called the “Hole in the Wall.” Despite his father finding him a job, when Raleigh arrived in New York with his brother, he did not know where his father lived. For the next few years, he lived in Manhattan searching for his father. Eventually, he found his father and uncle living in Brooklyn, which is why he moved to the Weeksville...
Type:
Oral History Wav
Contributors:
Nzhinga Garner, Raleigh Lee, Meron Tebeje
Created Date:
1943 2007
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Record Contributed By

Weeksville Heritage Center