Whitehead, Colson

American writer Art Colson Chipp Whitehead spent his early years at 139th Riverside in Harlem, a tough place by his reckoning. His family later moved to other living quarters in Manhattan. His parents were middle class and well-to-do. Whitehead had three siblings. The children attended private schools, but his father still considered it mandatory to teach him the art of survival in such a racist environment as New York City. Now a father of two kids himself, he has taught them the same.