Heirs of Harlem Hero Call for Street, Pool Renaming
When Hilda Stokely decided her son should have skis, nothing got in her way. She went out and bought a pair, but she didn’t send him to Aspen or Vail. Instead, she grabbed a shovel and built her own slope on a hill in Central Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park.
“I was the only black kid in Harlem who had skis,” said Bill Stokely Jr., now 57.
“She would make a decision about what she felt her family should have and she went about doing that,” said his sister, Madlyn Stokely. “She always taught us that we had a right to be whoever we wanted to be.”
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