Narrow Hallway Research Articles

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz

Children's Environments Vol. 9 No. 2 (1992) There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America Kotlowitz, Alex (1991). New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday; 318 pages. $14.95. ISBN 0385265565. Late last fall the Boston Globe reported on the homicide trial of seventeen yearold Felicia Morgan in Milwaukee. Morgan was tried for gunning down a girl herown age who had refused to hand over her leather trench coat when Morgan andfriends demanded it. Morgan's attorney, Robin Shellow, in an unusual insanitydefense, attempted to convince the jury that her client suffered fromposttraumatic stress syndrome, and was unable to distinguish right fromwrong. Felicia Morgan, she claimed, had grown up in the unrelentingly violentenvironment of the inner city. This, together with her abusive home life, had sodamaged her psychologically that she should be absolved from responsibility forher crime. James Garbarino, a noted expert on the effects of violence onchildren, testified that life for children in America's urban areas is asbrutal, insecure, and traumatic as it is for those in war zones. The judge,however, would not allow the jury to hear his testimony. Morgan in the end was not absolved. The jury convicted her of murder and armedrobbery, and she was committed to life in prison. Felicia Morgan's crime waschilling, and it is hard not to sympathize with the conclusion of her victim'sfather. For him it was a matter of right and wrong: 'You don't kill no one overa coat,' he said. 'I wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that.' But Morgan'sattorney raised a critical issue, and one that needs to be raised again andagain, until we as a society are willing to look unflinchingly at the lives ofchildren reared in the violence of our cities, and to consider whereresponsibility lies. Nowhere are these lives more effectively chronicled that in Alex Kotlowitz' finebook, There Are No Children Here. Kotlowitz describes in graphic detail theextent to which children do indeed live in war zones in this country. Thesubjects of his book are brothers, 292 Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, aged 11 and 9when the account begins. They live with their mother and 4 year old tripletsiblings in a Chicago public housing highrise. The elevators don't work, thebasement is full of rats and rotting carcasses, and putrid smells rise throughthe plumbing to make their apartment unbearable on a hot day. Kotlowitzdescribes two years in the lives of the boys, and it is a wrenching report byany standard. He tells of his first meeting with Lafeyette, when the boy wasbarely ten years old. They were discussing his plans for the future. 'If I growup,' the boy says, 'I'd like to be a bus driver.' 'If,' Kotlowitz points out,'not when. At the age of ten, Lafeyette wasn't sure he'd make it to adulthood.'His mother, LaJoe, is no more secure about his chances. In the six monthspreceding the summer of 1987, 57 children were killed in the city, fiveof them in the vicinity of the family's building. That summer LaJoe took outburial insurance on the two boys and the younger children. Gunfire in the projects is a fact of life. Rival gangs shoot at one another fromhighrise to highrise on a regular basis. In the boys' apartment there are bulletholes in the livingroom curtains, in a bedroom window, and in one of thedoors. The narrow hallway is their fallout shelter, and they spend hours theresometimes, trying to contain the restless triplets, and waiting for the soundsof battle to end. There is a harrowing account of a gang dispute one day just asschool is letting out, and of Lafeyette's fear that Pharoah will run through thegunfire on his way home. Pharoah makes it home and pounds frantically on thedoor to be let in, but he cannot be heard over the sounds of the shooting. The wonder is that these children hold on to any kind of hope. We hear ofLafeyette's longing for another kind of life and his determination not to dropout or join a gang; of his despair at being convicted for a crime he didn'tcommit; of his pain and growing cynicism, as...

Whose History Is It? Planning Henry Ford Museum's Clockwork Exhibit

Whose History Is It? Planning Henry Ford Museum’s Clockwork Exhibit Donna R. Braden (bio) What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? 1 “History wars” have been discussed on television, in the news, and at professional meetings. Today public history is being contested as part of a national debate about who owns history, a debate that climaxed with the cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. As part of this debate, critics are denouncing museum exhibits as too authoritarian, as insensitive to the multiple perspectives, experiences, and values of their diverse audiences. The questioning of authority in exhibit planning is, in fact, a relevant issue in countless museums, not just those publicized in the national media. Henry Ford Museum’s Clockwork: American Time and Timepieces, is a case in point, illustrating how questions of authority within the planning team, and between the team and important “outside” interests, had an impact on the exhibit’s final product. Changing ideas of time, clock technology, and the history of the American clock industry are all subjects that have received historical scrutiny in recent years. 2 To the exhibit planners, the process of incorporating current [End Page 489] scholarship and some recently acquired pieces into an updated exhibit of the museum’s timekeeping collection at first seemed straightforward. Right from the beginning, however, the team found itself mediating between advocates of dramatically different goals, points of view, and value systems. Setting the Context The original charge given to the exhibit planning team in the fall of 1994 was to redesign the museum’s “clock corridor” within the brief span of a little over a year and with the modest budget of forty thousand dollars. The funding for this exhibit was bequeathed to the museum by J. Alford Jones, a clock collector who donated many clocks to the museum. Because funding came from a member of the local, close-knit clock collectors’ “community,” the museum assumed from the outset that the exhibit had to retain, at its core, examples of the museum’s exceptionally fine clock collection. From the beginning, two clock collectors became actively involved in the planning. The two had previously cataloged the museum’s clock collection and had been instrumental in obtaining the funding for the exhibit. Their voluminous notes on roughly 250 of the “most significant” clocks in the museum’s collection served as an invaluable resource in selecting objects for the exhibit. In deciding which objects were “significant,” the planners thus used the perspective of clock collectors. The so-called clock corridor in the museum is a long, narrow hallway, comprising about 2,500 square feet and used for many years to display rows and cases of clocks from the museum’s extensive collection. This corridor was dark and gloomy, and the labels were several years if not decades old. Many clocks had not even been exhibited for many years. Corridor spaces such as this one are particularly tricky spaces in which to develop exhibits. Studies of visitors in museum exhibits have shown that when faced with “competing” exhibits along both sides of a hallway, most visitors will generally look along only one side and will not return to view the other side. 3 The exhibit thus had to be designed so that people would continually move from one side of the corridor to the other. The corridor’s imposing architectural features, including several large pillars—part of the 1929 building’s colonial revival detailing—also posed challenges to an updated exhibit design. Another restriction to the design was the corridor’s ancillary role as an emergency fire exit (the fire marshal’s restrictions on the corridor’s [End Page 490] space became increasingly rigid as the exhibit planning progressed). Furthermore, the hall was the only accessible entrance to the offices of the museum’s security staff. Other museum staff imposed (or sought to impose) limits on the exhibit design as well. The museum conservators’ views on the...

Little Trips: Documentation

Norman Taffel's Little Trips was presented at 70 Grand Street in New York City on the ground floor of a loft building. Passing through a narrow hallway, one entered a small room where some people sat on cots and benches; others stood. Everyone was asked to pay a contribution. At approximately 9 p.m., a young girl in leotard and tights (or a boy in dungarees, depending on who was playing the role that evening) entered from the adjoining room and addressed the waiting audience. “Good evening. Would you please come inside.” (Note: The dialogue quoted in this description is only approximate, since the exact words changed at each performance. This description is written about performances when the Guide was played by a girl; performances did not change significantly when a boy played the part.)The audience followed her through the door into a large, well-lit room. The high ceiling was supported by three pillars making a line across the center of the space.

Adaptation to displaced vision measured with three tests

Adaptation to laterally displacing prisms was produced by walking a narrow hallway for ½ hr. Three tests given before and after adaptation showed a significant adaptation effect. Pointing to a visual target and pointing straight ahead in darkness showed apparently equal adaptation, while a visual forward direction test measured a smaller effect.