Growing Up Bronx: 1940s-1950s (Part 1 of 2)

Sue Ann Heaney is the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants, and tells the story of her childhood and young adult life as a Bronx kid. She grew up accustomed to the middle class Irish, Italian, and Jewish demographic of her neighborhood, but saw the transformation in race firsthand as she matured. As a child, Heaney barely knew what a black person was, but as years passed by in sixties, she felt that it would be best to uproot her husband and children and move to suburbia. The population of the Bronx quickly followed in the Heaney family’s footsteps, as the borough saw an exodus of its white population, making way for Latinos, Dominicans, and African Americans.