Sidewalk Songs, Jump-Rope Rhymes, and Clap-Hand Games of African American Children
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Back during elementary days when everyone walked to school, the neighbors checked kids’ bad behavior, then reported it to your parents, where you’d really get it again for doing what you had no business doing in the first place. In those days, not everyone owned a television set. Those who did had to patiently wait for TV time after the news and those God-awful “variety” shows for grown ups. By then, it was bedtime. Left to our own playful imaginations, we creatively filled time with various sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games. There were no headphones, no Sega games, no video arcades, no boom boxes, no CD or MP3 players, no palm pilots, no cell phones. This was before the “Mall,” and most shopping was done downtown at back counters during Jim Crow. In many ways, it was a simpler time when many parents walked their kids to and from the bus stop or school in the neighborhood because few folks on the block owned cars. We lived in Black neighborhoods, shopped at neighborhood groceries, and sat in Colored-only balconies at the Saturday matinee. It was just us kids. We had each other; we had time. We were creative; and mostly, we just had good fun together.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Materials published in the Children's Folklore Review (CFR) remain the property of their authors. CFR encourages authors to honor the journal with exclusive rights to their work for the period of one year following its initial publication; however, authors may offer their work for reprint as they see fit. Submissions may be withdrawn at any point during the review process. Once the material has been published in CFR, however, it becomes part of the CFR record and cannot be removed.Likewise, CFR may emend the appearance of materials to maintain a consistency of design, but will make only make changes to the text when requested by the author. At the author’s request, and with the agreement of the editor, additions and amendments may be added as separate files to the table of contents.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Derivative License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
- While CFR adopts the above strategies in line with best practices common to the open access journal community, it urges authors to promote use of this journal (in lieu of subsequent duplicate publication of unaltered papers) and to acknowledge the unpaid investments made during the publication process by peer-reviewers, editors, copy editors, programmers, layout editors and others involved in supporting the work of the journal.