When he was little, Feelings' mother collected welfare, but when World War II broke out his mother and many other women were able to get jobs, and the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. "Our new block, Putnam Avenue . . . looked clean and it even had four trees, something rare in Brownsville," Feelings said.
However, looks were deceiving. There were gangs in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and sometimes even gang killings. "As you got older, ten on up, fear as a young boy in Bed-Sty was tied mostly to gang wars and the chance of getting killed, even if you didn't belong to a gang. For if you were neutral (or smooth) you were liable to get whipped by both groups. Strangely, most of the kids in my block didn't belong to any fighting gangs," Feelings said. He attributes this lack of gang activity on Putnam Avenue to the influence of the Edwardses, a family of immigrants from the West Indies with eight children (six boys and two girls) born in the States. The Edwardses became an extended family for many young people on Putnam Avenue, and many spent as much time at the Edwardses as they did at home.
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