My Harlem Prep Journey commenced as my confinement in Dante's Inferno ended. You see, for eleven years I attended Roman Catholic elementary and high school. At the end of my junior year I decided that I had enough of the Roman Catholic ethos and I needed a changed.It was the early seventies and the world was in upheaval. Civil Rights was still the agenda of the day along with the struggle for equality for women. Rockefeller sent the National Guard to quell the riot at Attica, Vietnam was raging and Nixon had started bombing Cambodia:
"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This Summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio."
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Although I was a good student academically I ran into problems with the school administration because of my political leanings. I was a member of High School Youth Against War and Fascism and the Prisoners Solidarity Committee, an organization that hired buses to transport family members to the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. I was very political and fiery. I also had an inquisitive nature and I did not hesitate to question authority. This was too much for my teachers at Cardinal Hayes High School, most of whom were priests.
I decided I needed a new direction and I registered for the 1972 fall semester at the Harlem Preparatory School.
Harlem Prep was a "school without walls" both physical and mental. At the Prep I found that I flourished to an amazing degree. As students we were allowed to pursue thoughts and ideas unencumbered. My most memorable class was Being and Non-Being an existentialist literature class. We read Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Hesse and Martin Buber. Things we would never be allowed to read in Catholic school. I embraced the existentialists with a passion and they returned the embrace by providing me with the key to my own liberation. The class was taught by George "Sandy" Campbell who remains my dear friend to this day. Through Sandy's class I learned the importance of personal responsibility: whatever I am whatever I am to be - was totally in my hands, especially since, at that time, I believed that there was no God to determine our collective fates.
My personal philosophy would evolve over the years as I constantly reinvented myself. Harlem Prep taught me that I could be whatever I wanted to be: the human spirit unfolds and flowers again and again over a lifetime. I found this to be true when Harlem Prep provided with another opportunity flourish.
In the spring of 1973 I entered and won an essay contest sponsored by CBS and The World Youth Forum. Dawn Mitchell, another Harlem Prep student, and I along with seven other students spent two months traveling throughout Europe: England, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. My world was turned upside down. In Europe I was accepted as a person, a human being my ethnicity and country of origin were insignificant. I had never, ever had such a feeling nor did I think such a thing was possible. It's now thirty six years later and I'm still under the influence of that trip. My ethos - my world view - was forever changed and I am all the better for it.
Although I was a good student academically I ran into problems with the school administration because of my political leanings. I was a member of High School Youth Against War and Fascism and the Prisoners Solidarity Committee, an organization that hired buses to transport family members to the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. I was very political and fiery. I also had an inquisitive nature and I did not hesitate to question authority. This was too much for my teachers at Cardinal Hayes High School, most of whom were priests.
I decided I needed a new direction and I registered for the 1972 fall semester at the Harlem Preparatory School.
Harlem Prep was a "school without walls" both physical and mental. At the Prep I found that I flourished to an amazing degree. As students we were allowed to pursue thoughts and ideas unencumbered. My most memorable class was Being and Non-Being an existentialist literature class. We read Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Hesse and Martin Buber. Things we would never be allowed to read in Catholic school. I embraced the existentialists with a passion and they returned the embrace by providing me with the key to my own liberation. The class was taught by George "Sandy" Campbell who remains my dear friend to this day. Through Sandy's class I learned the importance of personal responsibility: whatever I am whatever I am to be - was totally in my hands, especially since, at that time, I believed that there was no God to determine our collective fates.
My personal philosophy would evolve over the years as I constantly reinvented myself. Harlem Prep taught me that I could be whatever I wanted to be: the human spirit unfolds and flowers again and again over a lifetime. I found this to be true when Harlem Prep provided with another opportunity flourish.
In the spring of 1973 I entered and won an essay contest sponsored by CBS and The World Youth Forum. Dawn Mitchell, another Harlem Prep student, and I along with seven other students spent two months traveling throughout Europe: England, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. My world was turned upside down. In Europe I was accepted as a person, a human being my ethnicity and country of origin were insignificant. I had never, ever had such a feeling nor did I think such a thing was possible. It's now thirty six years later and I'm still under the influence of that trip. My ethos - my world view - was forever changed and I am all the better for it.
When I returned from Europe, I was scarcely home for a week before I left to study at Brown University. I studied Anthropology, Portuguese and Film with heavy doses of philosophy, music and art. All of which I still pursue to this day.
I have many more stories to tell, and I hope to share them with you soon.
Clifford Jacobs
Cliff Jacobs, Sandy Campbell, 2008
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Hello Mr. Jacobs,
ReplyDeleteI am doing research on Harlem Prep with Dr. Hussein Ahdieh and would be interested in hearing about your memories. If you would be available for this please contact me at hillarychapman@gmail.com, Thanks, Hillary Chapman