Harlem Hellfi ghters
to be awarded
Congressional
Medal of Honor
BY DEAN JAMIESON
Over a century after they
fought and bled in the
trenches of France, the
Harlem Hellfi ghters, an African-
American U.S. Army regiment,
will finally be awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor,
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer
announced Aug. 13.
“The Harlem Hellfi ghters are
an example of courage under
fi re,” Schumer said. “It has taken
too long for this country to recognize
their bravery.”
Offi cially designated 369th
Infantry Regiment, the Harlem
Hellfighters were an almost
entirely African-American unit
sent to France in 1917 as part
of the American Expeditionary
Force. While training in South
Carolina, the men of the regiment
were subjected to reprehensible
discrimination. Shop
owners refused to serve them.
Once over the Atlantic, they
were put under French command
– white soldiers refused
to fi ght beside them.
“Even though this regiment
was consigned to racial segregation,”
said Schumer. “They still
loved America, fought hard for
America, and died for America.”
And fought they did. During
the War, the regiment spent more
time in the frontline than any
other American unit – 191 days –
and suffered the most casualties:
1,500 men, a stunning proportion
of their original strength.
Schumer made the
The Harlem Hellfighters By International Film Service, Photographer (NARA record: 544230) –
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain
announcement alongside U.S.
Representatives Tom Suozzi and
Adriano Espaillat, New York
State Senator Brian Benjamin,
Assemblymembers Inez Dickens
and Al Taylor, as well as family
members of the Harlem Hellfi ghters.
The Harlem Hellfighters
Congressional Gold Medal Act of
2021 passed overwhelmingly and
is now headed to the President’s
desk, for signature.
Art & Design students spend summer
working with HBO Max mentors
BY ALEJANDRA O'CONNELLDOMENECH
While most New York City public
school students taking part
in the city’s Summer Rising
education program are working towards
making up lost course material from
school year disrupted by the pandemic,
teens at Manhattan’s Art and Design High
School have been gaining valuable work
experience.
As part of Summer Rising and Career
and Technical Education Summer programming,
about 60 students at the arts
high school are working with mentors
from HBO to develop marketing pitches for
HBO Max Pa’lante, the television network’s
rebranded Latino outreach platform.
For four weeks, students broke off into
four small groups to craft interactive marketing
campaigns and received feedback
on strategy, story and pitching from 20
coaches for a series of short fi lms highlighting
Latino stories.
Students at Art and Design High School
get specialized hands-on instruction in a
number of commercial arts areas like
Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter with students from the Arts and
Design High School in Manhattan.
animation, cartooning, fashion design,
graphic design, illustration and photography
and frequently take part in internships
COURTESY NYC DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
in each industry.
And given the large number of Latino
students at Art and Design High
School—about 52% of students in the
2019-2020 school year identifi ed as Hispanic,
according to Inside Schools— many
students taking part in this new internship
get to create content that refl ects their own
experiences and communities.
“The most special piece of this project is
we are the audience,” said Carl Landegger,
a design instructor at the high school, told
amNew York Metro. Landegger added that
a few LGBTQ students taking part in the
program worked to incorporate Queer experiences
in their marketing ideas as well.
“They are enriching and celebrating the
Latinx, LGBTIA communities through and
having them take actionable change with
various types of creative tactics,” he added.
One group of students for their marking
plan for the short fi lm Extranjero, which
follows a man’s journey back to his hometown
after he was forced to leave, pitched
creating a museum exhibition of refugee
and immigrant artwork with a virtual
reality component to help audiences identify
with the character and potentially stir
social change.
“It could be a good learning experience
for a variety of people, it could be connected
to people that felt like an outsider,”
said recent Art and Design alum and group
member Leila Eng-Perez. “It could bring
new awareness, kind of like to people
who took their privilege for granted.”
10 August 19, 2021 Schneps Media