The Old Kinship - washingtonpost.com: Once, they were young men, living in the South, raised by a black community that provided love and sustained attention. They folded into a fraternity of men who preached self-reliance and offered protection, humor and support during their shared struggles. In white places, where a black boy could be jailed or beaten, the world was fraught and perilous. And they might be the last generation of black men who share the memory of being deliberately taught how to walk in the world.
'When we were in the South, that's all we had was each other. We were still competing in school or athletics or whatever, being the best we could be, but we still had the community,' Hodges said. And community held you up. Black people have lost that, the bowler said. 'We're separate now. Now, we're fragile.'
