Yea! Thank you Becky. Now I can expand on the photo. 🙂
Actually, they do go there to get fit.. This street is just a few blocks away from where the ghetto starts. It’s easy walking distance. The African American owner established a real gym, and then offers the people who come in (mostly guys, I imagine) a disciplined fitness routine and a Black Church expression of the love of God. I capitalize that because the experience of church in the African American communities is totally different than an experience of church in the while communities. It comes out of the slavery experience and is a place where the black community can completely be themselves. They can let down their guard, and not have to try to fit into the white world. Because of that, the Sunday services usually last several hours. When the girls were growing up, we would sometimes attend black churches in the summer, so that they had the experience. They were in integrated schools (white, Latino, and black), and we wanted to expose them to the added dimension of what the role of church played in the African American communities. (We don’t speak Spanish, so we couldn’t do the same thing for the Hispanic churches.) It was all part of our decision to expose them to different cultures within the United States so that they would end up having something of an intuitive understanding of different communities of color.
I love getting comments....... so weigh in! Cancel reply
Zebra's Child 
Not where I expected them to get fit!
Yea! Thank you Becky. Now I can expand on the photo. 🙂
Actually, they do go there to get fit.. This street is just a few blocks away from where the ghetto starts. It’s easy walking distance. The African American owner established a real gym, and then offers the people who come in (mostly guys, I imagine) a disciplined fitness routine and a Black Church expression of the love of God. I capitalize that because the experience of church in the African American communities is totally different than an experience of church in the while communities. It comes out of the slavery experience and is a place where the black community can completely be themselves. They can let down their guard, and not have to try to fit into the white world. Because of that, the Sunday services usually last several hours. When the girls were growing up, we would sometimes attend black churches in the summer, so that they had the experience. They were in integrated schools (white, Latino, and black), and we wanted to expose them to the added dimension of what the role of church played in the African American communities. (We don’t speak Spanish, so we couldn’t do the same thing for the Hispanic churches.) It was all part of our decision to expose them to different cultures within the United States so that they would end up having something of an intuitive understanding of different communities of color.