A MEETING WITH KERRY WASHINGTON IN THE BRONX

Today, The Grandma has visited the Bronx accompanied by one of her closest friends, Kerry Washington, who was born in this incredible neighbourhood.

Kerry Marisa Washington (born January 31, 1977) is an American actress, producer, and director. She gained wide public recognition for starring as crisis management expert Olivia Pope in the ABC drama series Scandal (2012–2018). For her role, she was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and once for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress -Television Series Drama. 

 

Her portrayal of Anita Hill in the HBO television political thriller film Confirmation (2016), and her role as Mia Warren in the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere (2020), both earned nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.

In film, Washington is known for her roles as Della Bea Robinson in Ray (2004), as Kay in The Last King of Scotland (2006), as Alicia Masters in the live-action Fantastic Four films of 2005 and 2007, and as Broomhilda von Shaft in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). She has also starred in the independent films Our Song (2000), The Dead Girl (2006), Mother and Child (2009), Night Catches Us (2010), and American Son (2019).

Time magazine included Washington in its Time 100 list of most influential people in 2014.

In 2018, Forbes named her the eighth highest-paid television actress. Washington has won a Primetime Emmy Award and five NAACP Image Awards, including The President's Award.

Washington was born in the Bronx, New York City, the daughter of Valerie, a professor and educational consultant, and Earl Washington, a real estate broker. Her father's family is of African American origin, having moved from South Carolina to Brooklyn.

Her mother's family is from Manhattan, and Washington has said that her mother is from a mixed-race background and from Jamaica, so she is partly English and Scottish and Native American, but also descended from enslaved Africans in the Caribbean.

More information: Twitter-Kerry Washington

The Bronx is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York.

It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River.

The Bronx has a land area of 109 km2 and a population of 1,472,654 in the 2020 census. If each borough were ranked as a city, the Bronx would rank as the ninth-most-populous in the U.S. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density.

It is the only borough of New York City not primarily on an island. With a population that is 54.8% Hispanic as of 2020, it is the only majority-Hispanic county in the Northeastern United States and the fourth-most-populous nationwide.

The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.

Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914. About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center.

The Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden is thousands of years old; it is New York City's largest remaining tract of the original forest that once covered the city. These open spaces are primarily on land reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan.

The word Bronx originated with Faroese-born Jonas Bronck, who established the first settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639.

European settlers displaced the native Lenape after 1643. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from European countries (particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe) and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic), as well as African American migrants from the southern United States, Panama, Honduras, West Africans, and South Asians.

The Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, the 15th. There are, however, some upper-income, as well as middle-income neighborhoods such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club.

Parts of the Bronx saw a steep decline in population, livable housing, and quality of life in the late 1960s, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and into the early 1990s, culminating in a wave of arson in the late 1970s. The South Bronx, in particular, experienced severe urban decay. The borough began experiencing new population growth starting in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day.

 More information: The Bronx Historical Society

  

I am born and raised in the Bronx.

Where I grew up, it is a really working-class neighborhood
and it does give you a really good work ethic.

Cara Buono