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Break-dancing, as performed by students from P.S. 140 on Saturday, has had a big part in the musical history of the Bronx.

  Students from Public School 140 performing as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, with Khalil Wilson, center, as Lymon.

Youthful Twist & Dance To Old School Tunes 

Khalil Wilson’s braids bounced as he bobbed his head, snapped his fingers and sang a cappella, his high-pitched voice carrying across the ballroom. The cheers he drew from the audience were nothing new for a boy who has been singing since age 3 and once auditioned for a role in “The Lion King.”

Yet these spectators were excited about much more than Khalil’s precocious performing skills. It was the context of his performance that seemed most captivating.

Khalil, 11, and several of his classmates from Public School 140 in the Bronx were playing the roles of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, doo-wop sensations of the 1950s. Singing the hit “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” these youngsters were a dancing, singing history lesson.

Bringing history to life was a prevailing theme on Saturday as students from several New York City public schools displayed exhibits and put on performances at the annual convention for the Organization of American Historians, which was held in Midtown Manhattan. This was the first time that students have participated in the convention.

Some considered it a breath of fresh air for an event that can be dull and insular, with scholars spending much of their time reading and discussing their work with one another.

“Now you’re bringing the student work into the convention,” said Mark Naison, a professor of African-American studies and history at Fordham University and an organizer of the exhibition. “It’s like saying history should not be in an ivory tower. History is a place where people can carry on a discussion, which goes from the university to the community college to the high school to the elementary school, and all of these people can communicate with each other.”

Professor Naison, a 61-year-old with round, thick-framed glasses and ruffled gray hair that is receding, perhaps best got his point across when he took to the stage.

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Bronxites Are Excluded from Metro-North Trains, As Congestion Pricing Looms

As New York government officials consider imposing a tax for driving into lower Manhattan, many of the Metro-North Railroad trains which stop to let off suburban riders in the Bronx refuse to take Bronx passengers on board for the last leg of the trip into Grand Central Station.

When these trains stop at the Fordham Road station in the Bronx, the public address system announces that they are “discharge only” and that anyone who insists on getting on will be charged the highest possible fare. Among those excluded or over-charged are Bronxites who have paid over $140 for a monthly pass from Fordham to Grand Central.

This longstanding policy was questioned on March 26 at a public hearing of the Metro-North Railroad president Peter Cannito. Along with questions about allowing more bicycles on the MNRR trains and better policing late-night drunken riders, Inner City Press asked Mr. Cannito to explain why the company he runs, at least until later this year, denies its services to pre-paid customers in the Bronx.

While several of the other MNRR board members present seem surprised that this takes place, Cannito said it is a product of an operating agreement between the states of Connecticut and New York. He said that since Connecticut pays 65% of the New Haven line’s costs, they have requested that no passengers be allowed on the New Haven lines trains which stop to discharge passengers in the Bronx.

When Inner City Press questioned the social, racial and environmental justice logic of keeping paying customers from The Bronx from riding the suburban commuter trains even when they have paid, Cannito said, even if “you don’t accept it,” he had explained it. Another board member interjected that what Inner City Press had raised showed the “regionality of service” which is “something we are keenly aware of and working toward.”

Further inquiry by Inner City Press has revealed as an explanation of the exclusion of Bronxites that the Connecticut and New York lines of the Metro-North system don’t have in place a system to invoice each other for riders like Bronxites riding New Haven line trains south into Manhattan.

The bureaucratic fix appears simple, unless an implicit selling-point of the New Haven line is the exclusion of more “urban” riders. While some intrepid Bronxites have found a way around the MNRR’s policy of exclusion — by buying a holding a ticket from Westchester to Grand Central, as if they had gotten on further north — these games are not accessible to everyone, cost more and should not be necessary, particularly with congestion pricing looming.

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