L.t. Woody

In Black in White L.t. Woody 1st edition

Harlem Park is the name of one of the bleakest, meanest neighborhoods on Baltimore's West-side. The nasty scourges of heroin, crack, and a host of other inner-city drug and criminal activity are as prolific in Harlem Park as they are in far too many other neighborhoods around Baltimore City (also known as Charm City), and many other American cities as well. Notable television dramas; HBO's The Corner, NBC's Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire have explored and dramatized many of Baltimore City's societal ills. These television productions explored, in excruciating detail, the ravages of heroin and its attendant criminal activity on the daily lives of the citizens of Charm City where heroin is nothing less than an epidemic. There is also the frequent national news coverage of the more outrageous murders and assorted mayhem plaguing this relatively small metropolis.

In Black In White looks at the lives of some of the people who have worked, played, loved and died on Baltimore's mean streets. It examines a time (1960's -70's) before the periods examined in the aforementioned television shows; a time when life was still dangerous and hard; but perhaps when the neighborhood still retained some of the charm for which Baltimore is sometimes noted. It was a time of great social upheaval and seeming great promise, despite the desperate circumstances of day-to-day life. This is Harlem Park as seen through the eyes of someone actually living squarely in the midst of the fray, someone determined to find another "choice" through the impossible miracle of a scholarship to the all-boys St. Paul's Episcopal School in Concord, New Hampshire, an exclusive private boarding school; the same school attended by one-time presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and numerous other elite American families and luminaries.