Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City - Hardcover

Archie Boston

9780971205017: Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0971205019 ISBN 13: 9780971205017

Publisher: Archie Boston Graphic Design, 2009

Lil Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City is based on a true story. This story is about a mischievous fat-mouth kid, Flea Parrot, and the place where he grew up, Robinson Court, a housing project in Saint Petersburg, Florida. St. Petersburg is located in the central part of Florida, on the West Coast bordering the Gulf of Mexico. The city is called, The Sunshine City, and Florida, The Sunshine State. The Colored folk s section was on the south side of the City. The Colored folks called the city, The Burg. Robinson Court was called The Neck. Flea s world was the Colored section on the south side in The Neck. There was pain and suffering in The Neck, but the good times far exceeded the bad. I used the real nicknames of the children that were featured in this story. Flea was as roguish as a kid could be. A real rascal. This story should answer questions from anyone that ever wondered what it was like growing up Colored in a small town in the Deep South. This book will tell about how Flea and his buddies had a lot of fun segregated in the Colored section of a retirement Mecca from 1948 to 1958. This story is about Colored people, but is also for people of all races, especially those who may not have been exposed to many African Americans, or have not heard about how Colored people lived in the Sunshine City back in the day.

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About the Author:

Archie Boston is a nationally known art director, designer, writer, educator, and publisher. He was chair of the Visual Communication Design Program at California State University Long Beach. He has also operated his own design-consulting firm, Archie Boston Graphic Design for the past 33 years. He has served two terms as president of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles. Since 1964, Mr. Boston has been a consistent award winner in distinguished shows across the country. He is considered one of the nations leading design instructors and a highly respected graphic designer. Boston was featured in Graphic Design: USA as one of 35 designs pioneers in 2003. In 2001, Boston published Fly in the Buttermilk: Memoirs of an African American in Advertising Design & Design Education. Boston was named the 2003-04 Outstanding Professor of the Year at California State University Long Beach. In 2007, Mr. Boston was the recipient of the Fellow Award from the Los Angeles Chapter of AIGA in recognition of making a significant contribution to raise the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within their local or regional design community. Mr. Boston also transferred to DVD, documentaries on 20 Outstanding Los Angeles Designers, which he videotaped on a sabbatical leave project in 1986. These documentaries are now collected by libraries around the country.

Review:

Saint Petersburg, FL. Uncle Doug was a migrant farmworker who visited his family from Lakeland during the winter growing season. He had his nephew, Archie Boston, help him roll Prince Albert tobacco. When he drank moonshine, he preached fire and brimstone and told stories to Boston and his siblings. He once told us that he drove a truck from St. Petersburg to Hawaii, said Boston, who grew up in segregated St. Petersburg and is now a retired graphic design professor at California State University Long Beach. My uncle was a great storyteller. That scene and others are in Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City, which is about Boston's childhood in the Robinson Court housing project between 1948 and 1958. At a book signing Monday night at the James Weldon Johnson Branch Library, Boston said there were hard times but that he and his siblings and friends mostly had fun. Boston explained that everyone and everything back then had a nickname. Robinson Court was The Neck. He was called Flea Parrot because a friend joked that he attracted fleas and because of his fat lips. His best friend, who had a tendency to stutter, was Billy Billy Goat Goat. Boston, a defiant child, also spoke about getting into his first fight (over a marbles game) and sneaking off to go skinny dipping in Booker Creek. Bill Newmon, or Billy Billy Goat Goat, traveled from Bellingham, Wash., to read part of the book with his best friend. Newmon said that even though St. Petersburg was segregated, it was more racially progressive than other cities in the South. The book gives you a sense of what a lot of the black kids were experiencing in the Deep South, he said. We could do things that kids in a lot of cities in the South couldn't do. After graduating from Gibbs High School, Boston left for California to begin his career in graphic design. He later married Juanita, whom he had met at Gibbs. Boston wrote, designed and published Lil' Colored Rascals. He has also written a memoir about his design career, Fly in the Buttermilk. That book discusses some of Boston's early, provocative work such as a picture of him dressed in a KKK robe or wearing a for sale sign. My work sort of defied convention, he said. I've always tried to stay outside the box. The box is boring. --Saint Petersburg Times, July 24, 2009

I've communicated to Archie how great the book is.He could do a series on Lil' Rascals. I have said to people the same as Bill said St. Pete was segregated, but was more progressive than most other Southern cities. Kudos to Mr.Boston !!! --Dr. Fred Fredrick

Even though I did not grow up in The Neck, I do remember most of the sites and events mentioned in the book and it did bring back how simple it was to just have clean fun and hang out with friends and the feeling of family. --Shirley Puller

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