"Young men and women roamed the desolate blocks--slowly going nowhere. Others hung out on corners with the trash swirling about their feet--hungry, jobless, and sullen with defeat. Harlem, a prison of crumbling squares, seemed to be sinking into itself. Its inhabitants were a long way from the promise of the American dream."--Gordon Parks, photographer/film director/author, from his book, To Smile in Autumn: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 1979), Page 180.
The young people Gordon Parks witnessed in Harlem were among the many whose American dreams, if they had any, were deferred.
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